In art book publishing, there is an increasing confluence of disciplines—visual arts becomes urban design becomes social critique and eventually lands as cultural history. This season’s listing are replete with books on green architecture, sustainable design, and voices of dissent, and plenty of major artists. Hard to chose 10 titles among the diversity of offerings, so I will opt for reflecting that diversity.

The prominence of David Hockney as a great, living painter only increases each year. This spring, Abrams will bring out new color-drenched paintings by the British artist, including works rendered on his iPhone, in David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, while Nan Talese will publish Christopher Simon Sykes’s much-awaited tome, David Hockney: The Biography.

Past masters also get their due, with Vermeer: The Complete Paintings by Walter Liedtke, also from Abrams, and Yale will bring out the first volume of Michael Hirst’s two-volume biography, Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame, 1475–1534, which follows the artist from his beginnings to his departure from Florence at the age of 59, by which time he was considered the world’s greatest artist.

Former New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman recently wrote about parking lots, occasioned by his awestruck reading of ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph (HarperCollins/It Books). Ben-Joseph’s assemblage of data and photos about the world’s public accommodation of the private motor vehicle is shocking, yet the author makes a case for urban designers to please, please make them prettier. It Books has another notable title, with a whopping 50,000-copy first printing, Foster Huntington’s The Burning House: What Would You Take? that illustrates the whats and whys of our last grabs on the way out. Along the way, it tells about our intimate relationship to objects and interiors.

One of the myriad legacies of Steve Jobs’s genius is Pixar, and the studio this summer will bring out its 13th feature film. Chronicle’s Art of the Brave will be a behind-the-scenes take on this animated fairy tale, with plenty of input from the screenwriter, the directors, and Pixar brass.

A major issue for people everywhere—and especially people in charge of how we build and grow—is the environment. Rizzoli weighs in with a massive collection of 60 essays in Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future, edited by Tigran Haas, with the voices of architects and planners who mean to make a difference. What is likely to be a very different view of urbanism and beyond might be found in the season’s most surprising book about architecture—and it is graphic fiction at that: Citizens of No Place: A Collection of Short Stories by Jimenez Lai, an architect and comic book artist closely affiliated to the Midwest Mafia of Architecture Schools, which imagines other worlds and engages the design of architecture through telling stories.

Lastly, Christopher Benfey, familiar to readers of the New York Review of Books, reflects on the origins of what makes American art American in Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival.

PW’s Top 10: Art & Architecture

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture

Essays by Marco Livingstone, Margaret Drabble, Tim Barringer, Xavier Salomon, Stuart Comer and Martin Gayford. Abrams, Feb.

David Hockney: The Biography

Christopher Simon Sykes. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, Apr.

Vermeer: The Complete Paintings

Walter Liedtke. Abrams, Feb.

Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame, 1475–1534

Michael Hirst. Yale, Feb.

ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

Eran Ben-Joseph. MIT Press, Feb.

The Burning House: What Would You Take?

Foster Huntington. HarperCollins/It Books, June.

The Art of the Brave

Jenny Lerew et al. Chronicle, May.

Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future

Edited by Tigran Haas. Rizzoli, Apr.

Citizens of No Place: A Collection of Short Stories

Jimenez Lai. Princeton Architectural Press, Mar.

Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival

Christopher Benfey. Penguin Press, Mar.

Art & Architecture Listings

Abrams

Design Like You Give a Damn [2]: Building Change from the Ground Up by Architecture for Humanity (Apr. 11, paper, $35, ISBN 978-0810997028) demonstrates the power of design to improve lives. 35,000-copy announced first printing.

Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Manfred Sellink (Feb. 8, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-1419703096). The Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569) is considered the first Western landscape and genre painter. He has been especially beloved through the centuries for his paintings of peasant scenes. 1,500-copy announced first printing.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture by Marco Livingstone, with texts by Margaret Drabble, Tim Barringer, and others (Feb. 15, hardcover, $95, ISBN 978-1419702808). This book of large, colorful works includes many landscapes of Hockney’s native Yorkshire rendered on canvas and in iPhone and iPad drawings.

Saints and Their Symbols by Rosa Giorgi (Feb. 8, hardcover, $19.95, ISBN 978-1419702242). The origin and significance of the symbols associated with the most important saints. 30,000-copy announced first printing.

Vermeer: The Complete Paintings by Walter Liedtke (Feb. 22, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-1419703089). Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) is one of the most admired and influential European painters. His limited output, as well as his extremely private life and his supposed use of a camera obscura, have until recently made him appear to be an isolated genius shrouded in mystery. Liedtke fleshes out the man. 2,000-copy announced first printing.

Robert Capa: The Paris Years 1933–54 by Bernard Lebrun and Michel Lefebvre (Feb. 22, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1419700620). An intimate illustrated biography of the legendary photojournalist’s Paris years. 10,000-copy announced first printing.

Women Are Heroes by JR. (Apr. 4, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1419703331). Guerrilla street artist JR traveled to Brazil, Cambodia, India, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan to seek out women struggling in their everyday lives and, in his words, “to take their stories around the world.” “JR is the most ambitious street artist working,” says Shepard Fairey.

Allworth Press

My Life in the New York Times: An Artist and His Work by Ross Bleckner (July 1, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1581159035). More than 100 collages assembled from clippings of New York Times articles chosen for their personal significance to the artist who is known for his symbolic investigations of loss and memory.

Batsford

London Buildings: An Architectural Tour by Hannah Dipper and Robin Farquhar (Feb. 7, hardcover, $14.95, ISBN 978-1849940238). The design team of Farquhar and Dipper conduct a stylish graphic tour of 45 London buildings.

Chronicle Books

Alcatraz: History and Design of an Icon by Ira Nadel and Donald MacDonald (Feb. 15, hardcover, $16.95, ISBN 978-1452101538). Enlightening volume that provides the first complete history of Alcatraz told through its architecture, by the authors of Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of an Icon.

The Art of the Brave (May 16, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1452101422). A behind-the-scenes look at Pixar’s 13th film, and its first fairy tale, due for release in theaters in June. The book is written by animation story artist Jenny Lerew, with a foreword by directors Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews, as well as a preface by Pixar’s chief creative officer John Lasseter.

Invisible Flower by Yoko Ono (May 23, hardcover, $16.95, ISBN 978-1452109114). A book of simple pastel drawings by the 19-year-old Ono, with a foreword by her son, Sean Lennon.

Counterpoint

A Complicated Marriage: My Life with Clement Greenberg. A Wife’s Story by Janice Van Horne (Mar. 19, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1582438214). In 1955, Jenny Van Horne was a naïve college graduate on her own for the first time in New York. She meets 46-year-old Clement Greenberg, who, she is told, is “the most famous, the most important, art critic in the world.” Knowing nothing about art, she finds herself swept into the center of an art movement, abstract expressionism, and a raucous social circle.

Crowood Press

(dist. by IPG)

Green Roofs: A Guide to Their Design and Installation by Angela Youngman (Apr. 1, paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-1847972965) explains the process of designing and installing a green roof and is essential reading for anyone interested in energy-efficient buildings.

Doubleday/Nan A. Talese

David Hockney: The Biography by Christopher Simon Sykes (Apr. 3, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0385531443). The first authorized biography of the English painter, written by Sykes, who collaborated with Eric Clapton on his life story.

Duke Univ. Press

Darger’s Resources by Michael Moon (Mar. 7, paper, $22.95, ISBN 978-0822351566). Moon turns his attention to Henry Darger, an eccentric and self-taught artist whose work was only discovered after his death. Since then the work has become famous, but Darger himself has generally been seen as a withdrawn outsider artist whose work may have been the result of mental illness.

Globe Pequot Press/Lyons Press

Shark by Richard Ellis (Apr. 1, $24.95, ISBN 978-0762777976). What do sharks want, and what do they mean to the ecosystem and to mankind? The great marine biologist Ellis, who curates a show of hundreds of shark images this spring at the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art on sharks, weighs in.

All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies, and Provocateurs by LeRoy Neiman (June 1, $29.95, ISBN 978-0762778379). A portrait of the 20th century from the unique perspective of the portraitist of sporting heroes and celebrities, who enjoyed a ringside seat at many great events and parties.

David R. Godine

Yousuf Karsh: Beyond the Camera by David Travis (June 21, paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1567924387). Karsh was a Canadian photographer of Armenian heritage. His mastery of studio lighting resulted in many iconic portraits of Churchill, Bogart, and many others. Travis presents him to a new generation.

Harper Design

The Universe According to Peter Max: A Psychedelic Odyssey by Peter Max (June 20, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0062121394). An intimate, magical look inside the world of Peter Max. Vibrantly colored artwork accompanies evocative personal essays, in which Max, for the first time, tells his life story and philosophizes in his own words. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

HarperCollins/It Books

The Burning House: What Would You Take? by Foster Huntington (June 20, paper, $16.99, ISBN 978-0062123480). An illustrated exploration into what makes us tick fueled by a single question: if your house were on fire, what would you take? The answers are evocative, compelling, and deeply personal. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

Hodder & Stoughton

(dist. by IPG)

Vanishing Ireland: Recollections of Our Changing Times by Turtle Bunbury, photos by James Fennell (Feb. 1, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1444733051). A unique collection of portrait and landscape photographs and moving personal interviews that evoke traditional Irish culture. Fennell is a leading Irish photographer; Bunbury has written about Irish pubs; together the two have done two other volumes in the series.

Korero Books

(dist. by IPG)

Viva Van Story’s Sheer by Viva Van Story (May 1, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1907621048). A follow-up to Viva Van Story: Bullet Bras and Backseat Betties by an artist described as “one of the most respected and busiest pinup photographers in the country.”

Macmillan UK

(dist. by IPG)

London Unfurled by Matteo Pericoli (Apr. 1, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0330517829). An unprecedented portrait of London in two 37-foot-long pen-and-ink drawings depicting the north and south banks of the Thames.

MIT Press

“Our Kind of Movie”: The Films of Andy Warhol by Douglas Crimp (Mar. 9, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0262017299). “We didn’t think of our movies as underground or commercial or art or porn, they were a little of all of those, but ultimately they were just ‘our kind of movie.’ ” Warhol created more than 100 movies and nearly 500 portraits known as “screen tests.” Crimp is professor of art history at University of Rochester.

ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph (Feb. 24, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0262017336). There are an estimated 600 million passenger cars in the world, and more and more parking spaces are being created to accommodate them. Ben-Joseph’s book was recently profiled by Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times. The author, an urban planner, argues that we should make parking lots more aesthetically pleasing.

The Monacelli Press

Happenings: New York, 1958–1963 by Mildred L. Glimcher (Feb. 28, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-1580933070). Allan Kaprow started it with “18 Happenings in 6 Parts,” and “the happening” became a downtown art world practice, eventually involving artists like Carolee Schneeman, the Fluxus group, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Claes Oldenburg.

Murdoch Books

Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton by Jane Ussher and Nigel Watson (June 1, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1741967395). A haunting photographic study of the Antarctic huts that served as expedition bases for explorations led by Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

North Atlantic Books/Evolver Editions

Nothing and Everything—The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant Garde: 1942–1962 by Ellen Pearlman (Apr. 24, paper, $21.95, ISBN 978-1583943632). Art history fans will delight in this study of Buddhism’s influence over the art world in postwar America, particularly in New York City. The book covers an array of art from avant-garde to beat literature and includes the unpublished accounts of D.T. Suzuki’s Columbia lectures on Zen.

W. W. Norton

Andrew Jackson Downing: Essential Texts by Andrew Jackson Downing, edited by Robert Twombly (May 21, paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0393733594). A collection of essential writings by the father of landscape architecture and the urban park movement in the United States.

Pallas Athene

The Nature of Gothic by John Ruskin, preface by William Morris (May 1, paper, $35, ISBN 978-1843680703). The first ever facsimile edition of Ruskin’s rare book, justly famous for its indictment of meaningless modern labor and its celebration of medieval architecture.

Penguin Press

Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival by Christopher Benfey (Mar. 15, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1594203268). A thoughtful and reflective journey to unearth the beginnings of American art by Benfey, a literary critic and Emily Dickinson scholar.

Phaidon Press

Vitamin Green by Joshua Bolchover (Feb. 27, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0714862293). An overview of sustainable design and architecture from around the world, with features on more than 100 buildings, landscapes, and products.

Princeton Architectural Press

Citizens of No Place: A Collection of Short Stories by Jimenez Lai (Mar. 7, paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1616890629). A graphic novel on architecture and urbanism that’s entertaining as well as critical. Lai is an architect, a comic book artist, and an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. He has also lived in shelters, shipping containers, and on a pier in Rotterdam.

Princeton Architectural Press/Hyphen Press

Jazzpaths: An American Photomemento by David Wild (Feb. 15, hardcover, $22.50, ISBN 978-0907259459). Previously unpublished photographs of musicians such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and street scenes in Chicago and New Orleans. The accessible autobiographical narrative includes photomontages using these and other images, in the spirit of Wild’s previous book, Fragments of Utopia.

Rizzoli

Portraits of the Presidents: The National Portrait Gallery (Updated Edition) by Frederick S. Voss, intro. by Martin E. Sullivan (Feb. 21, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0847837632). One of the most visited rooms of the National Portrait Gallery is “America’s Presidents,” the collection of portraits of the elected leaders of the United States that is at the heart of the gallery’s mission, and includes Shepard Fairy’s once-controversial portrait of President Obama.

We Own the Night: The Art of the Underbelly Project by Workhorse, PAC, and Eric Haze aka HAZE.(Feb. 7, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0789324955). From early 2009 to mid-2010, the Underbelly Project was the world’s best-kept urban art secret, in which art was committed to the walls of an abandoned New York City subway station, since boarded up. Here, 300 photographs document that project.

Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future, edited by Tigran Haas (Apr. 10, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0847838363). The city in the 21st century faces major challenges, including social and economic stratification, wasteful consumption of resources, transportation congestion, and environmental degradation. Here are 60 essays by the likes of Henry Cisneros and Peter Eisenman.

Ryan McGinley by Chris Kraus, essay by Gus Van Sant (Mar. 6, hardcover, $55, ISBN 978-0847838318). In 2002, two years after McGinley, then a student, staged his first exhibition of photographs in a SoHo gallery, he created a series of handmade books that caught the attention of Sylvia Wolf, then curator of photography at the Whitney, which gave him a show. He is now compared to Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, and other fierce documentarians of life on the margins.

Rizzoli Skira

Louise Nevelson by Germano Celant (Mar. 13, hardcover, $110, ISBN 978-8857204451). This monograph presents an impressive collection of 560 works by Nevelson (1899–1988).

James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys by James Franco, with texts by Alanna Heiss, Klaus Biesenbach, Diana Widmaier Picasso, and Frank Bidart (Apr. 10, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0847838134). Drawn from the exhibition curated by Heiss and organized by the Clocktower Gallery, actor/writer Franco’s book explores themes of childhood and nostalgia, games and destruction. This dense, often diaristic survey reflects Franco’s interest in the contemporary American landscape of adolescence and young adulthood.

The Barnes Foundation: Masterworks by Judith F. Dolkart and Martha Lucy (June 12, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0847838066). The Barnes Foundation, established by scientist, entrepreneur, and educator Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 outside Philadelphia, is home to a legendary art collection. Barnes assembled one of the world’s largest and finest groups of postimpressionist and early modern paintings, as well as great works by earlier masters.

Julian Schnabel: Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing by Sir Norman Rosenthal (Feb. 14, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-8857211022). An internationally famous painter, sculptor, and film director, Schnabel stands out for his expressive power across media. Rosenthal was the longtime curator at the Royal Academy in London.

Rizzoli Universe

How to Read New York: A Crash Course in Big Apple Architecture by Will Jones (Feb. 21, paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-0789324900) unveils the diversity of Gotham’s architectural wonders, covering every era of New York architecture, from what remains of the colonial days to the latest postmodern skyscraper.

Seven Stories Press

Stolen Images: Lumumba and the Early Films of Raoul Peck by Raoul Peck, foreword by Bertrand Tavernier, trans. by Catherine Temerson (Mar. 13, paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-1609803933). Screenplays and piercing images from Peck’s films, including Haitian Corner and Lumumba.

Taschen

Studio Olafur Eliasson by Philip Ursprung (Apr. 1, hardcover, $39.99, ISBN 978-3836527279). Eliasson’s Berlin studio is an experimental laboratory that functions as an interdisciplinary space, generating dialogues between art and its surroundings. Ursprung is a professor of the history of art and architecture in Zurich.

The Great Designers: Fashion’s Hall of Fame, from A to Z by Valerie Steele (May 1, hardcover, $200, ISBN 978-3836528221) covers the most important designers of the 20th and 21st centuries and their most remarkable works. The first printing is available as a series of limited designer editions, bound in a fabric from a designer in the book. Five hundred designs from the holdings of the Fashion Institute of Technology will be featured; the book is an off-shoot of a two-part show currently at FIT in New York.

Tate Publishing

Manet and the Object of Painting by Michel Foucault, intro. by Nicolas Bourriaud (Feb. 8, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1854379962). Translated into English for the first time, this book pairs French philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the 20th century’s greatest minds, and Edouard Manet, an artist fundamental to the development of modern art, as Foucault explores Manet’s importance in the overthrow of traditional values in painting. 2,500-copy announced first printing.

Tate Modern Artists: William Kentridge by Kate McCrickard (Feb. 8, paper, $27.50, ISBN 978-1854379726) looks at one of the world’s most distinguished living artists, the South African Kentridge, who mixes film, animation painting, and set design in his work. 1,000-copy announced first printing.

Thames & Hudson

Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, edited by Marko Daniel Matthew Gale (Apr. 25, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0500093672). An illustrated retrospective survey focuses on Miró’s politically engaged art, published to accompany a major touring exhibition.

Umbrage Editions

Girl and Her Room by Rania Matar, with Susan Minot (May 1, $40, ISBN 978-1884167768). Award-winning photographer Matar captures the interior lives of teenage girls in intimate portraits shot within the personal spaces of their bedrooms, investigating notions of identity and the transition from child to adult. Novelist Susan Minot contributes essays.

Univ. of Missouri Press

Blue Highways Revisited by Edgar I. Ailor IV, with photos by Edgar I. Ailor III, foreword by William Least Heat-Moon (May 1, hardcover, $34.95, ISBN 978-0826219695). This oversize book is a photographic retracing of William Least Heat-Moon’s 14,000-mile journey traced famously in his bestselling Blue Highways, published 30 years ago. The Ailors (father and son) capture the local color and beauty of the back roads and people of the original trek.

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Lynda Barry: Girlhood Through the Looking Glass by Susan E. Kirtley (Mar. 1, $25, ISBN 978-1617032356). Best-known for her long-running comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, illustrated fiction (Cruddy; The Good Times Are Killing Me), and graphic novels (One! Hundred! Demons!), the art of Lynda Barry (b. 1956) has branched out to incorporate plays, paintings, radio commentary, and lectures.

We Go Pogo: Walt Kelly, Politics, and American Satire by Kerry Soper (June 1, $25, ISBN 978-1617032844). Walt Kelly (1913–1973) is one of the most respected and innovative American cartoonists of the 20th century. His long-running Pogo newspaper strip has been cited by modern comics artists and scholars as one of the best ever.

Univ. of Washington Press

The Carbon-Efficient City by A-P Hurd and Al Hurd, foreword by Denis Hayes (June 1, paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-0295991719). A green economy and a prosperous economy are not mutually exclusive—in fact, the time is now to build our economy and create a more carbon-efficient society, argue the authors. 2,000-copy announced first printing.

Yale Univ. Press

Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame, 1475–1534 by Michael Hirst (Feb. 1, $40, ISBN 978-0300118612) is the first of two volumes in what may well be the definitive modern biography of Michelangelo. Hirst is a renowned specialist in the drawings of Michelangelo.