It’s the scholar’s task, claimed H.W. Janson, “to doubt what has been taken for granted.” Over the years, that same good sense has led to dramatic revisions of his History of Art, first published in 1962. Perhaps the doubt Janson spoke of has now rendered the “definitive” art book obsolete. Forthcoming books suggest that histories can always be re-evaluated.

One such history comes from the sterling architecture critic at the New York Review of Books, Martin Filler. Originally published in some form at the Review, the 19 essays in Makers of Modern Architecture, Volume II: From Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas find the critic assessing fresh scholarship on Wright and Le Corbusier, and pursuing contemporary figures such as Michael Arad.

An Italian-born Brazilian, Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) was a lesser-known force in 20th-century architecture. Lina Bo Bardi by Zeuler R. Lima is the first major study of the modern architect and activist whose lively concrete and glass buildings preserved a commitment to cultural traditions and “social inclusiveness.” Devoted to a more contemporary Brazilian’s work, Waltercio Caldas accompanies the artist’s first U.S. retrospective at Texas’s Blanton Museum of Art. Two well-respected critics—Robert Storr and Richard Shiff—examine Caldas’s ongoing dialogue with art history, and where he falls into it.

Clearly, the focus on Brazil reflects broader trends. As Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Avant-Gardes declares, “the old establishment is being challenged by a new order of art communities.” Curators report on the activity of 12 emerging contemporary art centers, among them Beirut, Bogotá, Cluj, and Vancouver.

There’s something new to be said about the old, too. Kurt Schwitters’s exile from Nazi Germany is the focus of Schwitters in Britain, from an exhibition at London’s Tate, the first to exclusively survey the artist’s late work. Similarly, John Elderfield, who authored a monograph on the late American artist in 1989, revisits Helen Frankenthaler’s early paintings with a new essay in Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959.

Schwitters, whose collages evoked a fragmented Europe, certainly prepared the way for the artists in Damage Control: Art and Destruction since 1950, a catalogue that attends a fall exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The volume examines how artists across media have applied destruction as “spectacle and catharsis, as a form of rebellion and protest, or as an essential part of re-creation and restoration.” As a street artist, D*Face (a.k.a. Dean Stockton) has also relished havoc. His first monograph, The Art of D*Face: One Man and His Dog, highlights his Lichtenstein-possessed satire (self-described as “aPOPcalyptic”) and includes a foreword by Shepard Fairey—a rite of passage for urban art megastars.

For something less contemporary, Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900, from London’s National Gallery, explores bourgeois portraiture in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Juxtaposing paintings by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele with earlier artworks, it complicates “the conventionally held distinctions between 19th-century and early-20th-century art.”And finally, a great artist’s fascination with felines and adolescent girls, which generated some of his most iconic works, is plumbed by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Sabine Rewald in Balthus: Cats and Girls.

PW’s Top 10: Art, Architecture, & Photography

Makers of Modern Architecture, Volume II: From Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas. Martin Filler. New York Review Books, Aug. 20.

Lina Bo Bardi. Zeuler R. M. de A. Lima, foreword by Barry Bergdoll. Yale University Press, Nov. 28.

Waltercio Caldas. Blanton Museum of Art. University of Texas Press, Oct. 15.

Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Avant-Gardes. Antawan I. Byrd. Phaidon, Sept. 2.

Schwitters in Britain. Emma Chambers and Karin Orchard, eds. Abrams/Tate, Sept. 3.

Helen Frankenthaler: Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959. John Elderfield. Abrams, Sept. 3.

Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950. Kerry Brougher, Russell Ferguson, et al. Prestel/DelMonico, Oct. 1.

The Art of D*Face: One Man and His Dog. D*Face. Laurence King, Oct. 1.

Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900. Gemma Blackshaw, foreword by Edmund de Waal. National Gallery London, Nov. 28.

Balthus: Cats and Girls. Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 28.

Art, Architecture & Photography Listings

Abbeville Press

Selling Russia’s Treasures: The Soviet Trade in Nationalized Art, 1917–1938, edited by Nicolas V. (Sept. 3, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0789211545). This illustrated volume presents the definitive account of the sale of Russia’s cultural patrimony by the Soviet government. Long-dispersed works are reunited in a virtual museum illustrating the blow inflicted on Russia’s heritage; rare photographs and archival documents bring buried history to light.

Abrams

Helen Frankenthaler: Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 by John Elderfield (Sept. 3, hardcover, $100, ISBN 978-1419710612). Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the 20th century. This beautifully illustrated new book devoted to Frankenthaler’s paintings from the 1950s brings together nearly 30 paintings, including important works from Frankenthaler’s estate.

Marcel Dzama: Sower of Discord by Marcel Dzama, stories by Dave Eggers, essays by Raymond Pettibon and Bradley Bailey (Nov. 5, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-1419704079). This lavishly illustrated monograph is the definitive publication on the internationally renowned Canadian artist Marcel Dzama. Textual contributions include a foreword by the contemporary artist Raymond Pettibon, three original short stories inspired by Dzama’s work by Dave Eggers, an essay by the art historian Bradley Bailey, and an interview with Dzama by the filmmaker Spike Jonze.

Chronicle Books

Brian Eno: Visual Music by Christopher Scoates with Brian Eno (Sept. 24, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1452108490). This comprehensive monograph celebrates the visual art of renowned musician Brian Eno. Spanning more than 40 years, Brian Eno: Visual Music weaves a dialogue between Eno’s museum and gallery installations and his musical endeavors, all illustrated with never-before-published archival materials.

Faber & Faber

Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Barnaby Martin (Sept. 17, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0374167752). The gripping story of post-Mao China and the harrowing fate of the artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit by Witold Rybczynski (Oct. 8, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0374211745). Modern architecture runs the gamut from fantasy to engineering to retro. Here is an essential toolkit for understanding architecture as both art form and the setting for our everyday lives.

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon (Nov. 19, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0374113094). Who was Norman Rockwell? Behind the folksy, pipe-smoking façade lay a surprisingly complex figure—a lonely man all too conscious of his inadequacies. This is a long-awaited biography of the defining illustrator of the 20th century by a celebrated art critic.

Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain’s Great Modern Painter by Geordie Greig (Oct. 22, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0374116484). Greig, one of a few close friends who regularly had breakfast with the painter during the last years of his life, tells an insider’s account—accessible, engaging, revealing—of one of the 20th century’s most fascinating, enigmatic, and controversial artists.

Insight Editions

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork by Scott Gutterman, foreword by Quincy Jones (Oct. 15, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1608872237). Around 1980, Miles Davis turned to sketching and painting to, as he explained, keep his “mind occupied with something when [he was] not playing music.” This hobby quickly turned into a serious passion. Announced first print: 10,000.

Laurence King Publishers

The Art of D*Face: One Man and His Dog by D Face (Oct. 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1780672779). With a foreword by Shephard Fairey, this long-waited monograph features the work of Banksy contemporary D*Face. Containing previously unseen images as well as firsthand anecdotes, this book is an insider’s view into one of Britain’s most important urban artists.

Knopf

The Great War by Hilary Roberts and Mark Holborn (Oct. 29, hardcover, $100, ISBN 978-0385350709). On the occasion of the centenary of World War I in August 2014, an unprecedented, spectacular pictorial history of the first global war in 380 black-and-white photographs, many never seen before, from the Imperial War Museums in London.

Kodansha USA

Hi, Konnichiwa: Yayoi Kusama Art Book by Yayoi Kusama (Nov. 1, paper, $22, ISBN 978-1568365381). Best known for her use of polka-dot patterns, Yayoi Kusama has been in the vanguard of contemporary art for 60 years. This book brings together Kusama’s vivid imagery, her haunting words, and photos of her and her work, creating a portrait of a very complicated and fascinating woman.

The Menil Collection

Strange Eggs by Claes Oldenburg with Michelle White (Oct. 28, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-0300197853). In 1957–1958, Oldenburg began making collages he has described as “mostly done in an uncontrolled and intuitive dream mode.” Made from found, printed photographic imagery, the Strange Eggs are enigmatic, surrealistic, and vastly different. These 18 collages from the Menil Collection are being published here for the first time, with a short text by Menil curator Michelle White.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Balthus: Cats and Girls by Sabine Rewald (Oct. 28, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-0300197013). An insightful new look at Balthus’s ongoing fascination with cats and girls, including his controversial paintings of young adolescents.

Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France, edited by Perrin Stein, with contributions by Charlotte Guichard, Rena Housington, and Elizabeth Rudy (Oct. 28, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0300197006). Featuring works by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Hubert Robert, and many others, this volume embarks on a fresh exploration of how etching flourished in ancien régime France, shedding new light on artistic practice and patronage at that time.

MIT Press

A Question of Qualities: Essays in Architecture by Jeffrey Kipnis, edited by Alexander Maymind (Aug. 23, paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0262519557). Kipnis’s essays on contemporary architects are less about making critical judgments than about explication, exegesis, and provocation. In these 11 essays, written between 1990 and 2008, he considers projects, concepts, and buildings by some of the most recognized architects working today, including Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl.

Why Photography Matters by Jerry L. Thompson (Aug. 23, hardcover, $14.95, ISBN 978-0262019286). Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works—not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. It matters because how we understand what photography is and how it works tell us something about how we understand anything.

Robert Morris by Julia Bryan-Wilson (Aug. 9, paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-0262519618). This volume from the October Files series gathers essays, an interview, and a roundtable discussion on the work of Morris, one of the most influential American artists of the postwar period. It includes a little-known text on dance by Morris himself and a never-before-anthologized but influential catalogue essay by Annette Michelson.

Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949–1979 by Sérgio B. Martins (Sept. 13, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0262019262). Brazilian avant-garde artists of the postwar era worked from a fundamental but productive out-of-jointness. They were modernist but distant from modernism. Martins seizes on this uncanny obliqueness and uses it as the basis for a reconfigured account of the history of Brazil’s avant-garde.

Monacelli Press

Lee Miller in Fashion by Becky Conekin (Oct. 8, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-1580933766). Fashion model, surrealist artist, muse, photographer, war correspondent—Lee Miller defies categorization. Mid-career, she made the unprecedented transition from one side of the lens to the other, from a Condé Nast model in Jazz Age New York to fashion photographer, creating stunning images that imbued fashion with her signature wit and whimsy.

Museum of Modern Art

Isa Genzken: Retrospective: Dedicated to Jasper Johns and Myself by Laura Hoptman (Nov. 18, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0870708862). Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive retrospective of Isa Genzken’s work in the United States, this is the most complete monograph on the artist available in English.

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938 by essays by Anne Umland, Stephanie D’Alessandro, Michel Draguet, Claude Goormans, Josef Helfenstein, and Clare Elliot (Sept. 22, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-0870708657). This richly illustrated publication is the first to focus exclusively on Magritte’s breakthrough Surrealist years.

Duchamp: A Biography by Calvin Tomkins (Oct. 15, paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0870708923). This new and revised edition of the classic Duchamp biography features full-color illustrations for the first time.

National Gallery London

Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 by Gemma Blackshaw, foreword by Edmund de Waal (Nov. 28, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1857095616). An engaging look at how the middle classes of fin-de-siècle Vienna used innovative portraiture to define their identity.

New York Review Books

Makers of Modern Architecture, Volume II: From Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas by Martin Filler (Aug. 20, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1590176887). In the first volume of Makers of Modern Architecture (2007), Filler examined the emergence of a revolutionary new form of building and explored its aesthetic, social, and spiritual aspirations. Now the critic continues his investigations into the building art.

Phaidon Press

The Chinese Art Book by Katie Hill, Jeffrey Moser, and Colin Mackenzie (Sept. 2, hardcover, $59.95, ISBN 978-0714865751). This authoritative overview examines the art of Earth’s oldest civilization. Every form of Chinese visual art is represented, with 300 works from the earliest dynasties to the contemporary.

The Anatomy of Fashion: Why We Dress the Way We Do by Colin McDowell (Sept. 30, hardcover, $100, ISBN 978-0714849478). McDowell, one of the world’s leading fashion commentators, explores how we dress and why we look the way we do. Through a series of essays, McDowell reveals the anatomical and historical influences that have interacted to shape all aspects of our appearance.

Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Avant-Gardes by Antawan I. Byrd (Sept. 2, hardcover, $79.95, ISBN 978-0714865362). This smartly curated book explores the artistic heritage and cultural climate of 12 emerging hubs on the international art circuit, including Beirut, Bogota, Cluj, Delhi, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Lagos, San Juan, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, and Vancouver.

Art & Place: Site-Specific Art of the Americas by the Editors of Phaidon (Oct. 21, hardcover, $79.95, ISBN 978-0714865515). A compilation of site-specific art in the Americas featuring over 500 works visited by millions of people each year. From Anish Kapoor to Diego Rivera, this is art to be experienced.

The Phillips Collection

Van Gogh Repetitions by Eliza Rathbone, William H. Robinson, and Marcia Steele (Nov. 28, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0300190823). A fascinating look at van Gogh’s “repetitions”—multiple versions of single compositions—and what they reveal about the artist and his creative process.

Prestel/DelMonico Books

John Divola: As Far as I Could Get by Kathleen Stewart Howe, Britt Salvesen et al. (Oct. 1, hardcover, $49.95, ISBN 978-3791352916). Encompassing four decades of work in the field of photography, this publication examines the art of Divola, one of the most admired photographers working today.

Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 by Kerry Brougher, Russell Ferguson, and Dario Gamboni (Oct. 1, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-3791353166). Timely and wide-ranging, this volume explores in-depth the theme of destruction in international contemporary art.

Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, edited by Stephanie Barron and Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Nov. 1, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-3791353098). Calder’s most beloved creations—from his mobiles to his public sculpture—are examined from every angle in this stunning book.

Prestel

Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium by Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott (Sept. 1, paper, $39.95, ISBN 978-3791347592). The authors of After the Revolution return with an incisive study of the work of contemporary women artists.

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Revised and Expanded Edition by Rachel Kent, Robert Hobbs, and Anthony Downey (Jan. 1, hardcover, $55, ISBN 978-3791348728). Newly revised and updated, this authoritative book presents the exciting, ironic, and often subversive work of Yinka Shonibare MBE, one of the stars of the international art scene.

Princeton Architectural Press

Jorn Utzon: Drawings and Buildings by Michael Asgaard Andersen (Dec. 10, hardcover, $55, ISBN 978-1616891800). Visionary Danish architect Utzon was just 38 years old when, in 1957, he was named the winner of an international competition to design the Sydney Opera House in Australia. This book presents all of his important work as well as many of his lesser-known, though equally important, competition entries, furniture designs, and other built projects.

Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography by John Comazzi (Oct. 15, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1616891961). As one of the most celebrated architectural photographers, Korab captured images as graceful and elegant as his subjects. Now available in paperback, this illustrated biography traces Korab’s circuitous path from a forced exodus from his native Hungary to his emigration to the United States, where he launched his career as Eero Saarinen’s on-staff photographer.

From Russia with Doubt: The Quest to Authenticate 150 Would-be Masterpieces of the Russian Avant-Garde by Adam Lerner (Nov. 12, paper, $30, ISBN 978-1616891626). Is it real or is it fake? Two amateur art collectors track down 181 might-be masterpieces of the Russian avant-garde acquired from a mysterious seller in Germany they met on eBay.

Princeton University Press

Art and the Second World War by Monica Bohm-Duchen (Dec. 22, hardcover, $49.50, ISBN 978-0691145617). The first book in English to provide a comprehensive and detailed international overview of the complex and often disturbing relationship between war and the fine arts during this crucial period of modern history.

Rizzoli

Doug Aitken: 100 Yrs by Bice Curiger, Aaron Betsky et al., with an introduction by Francesco Bonami (Oct. 15, hardcover, $85, ISBN 978-0847838325). This comprehensive book on the innovative multimedia artist Aitken features visual essays by the artist and surveys his work in all mediums.

Skira

Wang Guangyi: Words and Thoughts 1985-2012 by Demetrio Paparoni (Nov. 5, hardcover, $95, ISBN 978-8857215679). The first monograph conceived for the international market devoted to one of the most important Chinese contemporary artists, considered one of the emblems of new China because Guangyi’s work underlines, through new language forms, the deep social changes the country is experiencing.

Giuseppe Capogrossi, edited by Guglielmo Capogrossia and Francesca Romana Morelli (Oct. 1, hardcover, $210, ISBN 978-8857215068). The first catalogue raisonné of works by Capogrossi (1900–1972) presents for the first time all the painter’s works up to 1949, recording in detail the artist’s path toward the development of an increasingly abstract language and the invention of his famous “signs.”

Roy Lichtenstein Sculpture, edited by Germano Celant, with essays by Clare Bell and Richard Calvocoressi (Nov. 5, hardcover, $90, ISBN 978-8857218892). An exceptional selection of Lichtenstein’s sculptures from 1968 to the end of the artist’s life, from early ceramic sculptures to large-scale public works.

Skira Rizzoli

Jules de Balincourt by Bob Nickas, Andrea K. Scott, and Eric Troncy (Sept. 3, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-0847839759). One of the most exciting and intuitive painters of his generation, channeling a uniquely American perspective on our current moment. In this most comprehensive book on the artist’s work accompanying a major mid-career retrospective, the entirety of the artist’s oeuvre is considered.

Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter by Johan Cederlund, Hans Hendrik Brummer, Per Hedstrom, and James A. Ganz (Oct. 29, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0847841516). Accompanying a major retrospective of Zorn’s work, this is the first volume in English to explore the Swedish Impressionist’s entire career in depth, providing a thorough introduction to the artist and his works, from portraiture to landscapes and his famous nudes.

Iván Navarro by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, essay by Hilarie M. Sheets (Oct. 15, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0847841141). Navarro is known internationally for his sociopolitically charged sculptures of neon and fluorescent light. In this first monograph on the artist, Rabinowitz considers the personal stories underlying Navarro’s sleek, industrially produced works.

St. Martin’s Press

Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography, a True Story of Genius and Rivalry by Helen Rappaport and Roger Watson (Nov. 26, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1250009708). An intimate look at the journeys of two men—a gentleman scientist and a visionary artist—as they struggled to capture the world around them, and in the process invented modern photography.

Tate Publishing

Schwitters in Britain, edited by Emma Chambers and Karin Orchard (Sept. 3, paper, $39.95, ISBN 978-1849760263). The first book to concentrate on German-born artist Schwitters’s late-period art, made during his eight-year exile in Britain. He’s seen here not as an artist in isolation but as part of a network of other refugee artists and figures in the European avant-garde.

Thames & Hudson

Paul Klee: Making Visible by Matthew Gale (Oct. 28, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0500239155). A new retrospective survey that reveals the complexities of this popular artist best known for his playful and colorful aesthetic.

University of Chicago Press

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris by Sarah Kennel, with essays by Peter Barberie, Anne de Mondenard, Joke de Wolf, and FranCoise Reynaud (Aug. 22, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0226092782). This monograph begins with the city scenes and architectural studies Marville made throughout France and Germany in the 1850s and explores his landscapes and portraits, as well as his most famous photographs of Paris.

University of Texas Press

Waltercio Caldas by Blanton Museum of Art, foreword by Simone Wincha and essays by Fundação Iberê Camargo, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Richard Shiff, and Robert Storr (Oct. 15, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0292753112). Lavishly illustrated with more than 80 works, including drawings and sculptures, objects and installations, this catalogue of the first U.S. retrospective exhibition of Caldas offers insight into his entire artistic production to date, one of the most productive in Brazilian art.

Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World by Harry Ransom Center, edited by Steven Hoelscher, foreword by Geoff Dyer (Sept. 1, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0292748439). This first reading of the vast Magnum Photos archive as a body of work presents an astonishingly rich survey of life and death in the second half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries, as well as a concise history of modern photography.

Yale University Press

Leger: Modern Art and the Metropolis, edited by Anna Vallye. essays by Christian Derouet, Maria Gough, Spyros Papapetros, Anna Vallye, and Jennifer Wild (Nov. 28, paper, $60, ISBN 978-0300197662). An insightful look at the dynamic relationship between modern art and modern urban life in 1920s Paris through the lens of Léger’s masterpiece The City.

Lina Bo Bardi by Zeuler R. M. de A. Lima, foreword by Barry Bergdoll (Nov. 28, hardcover, $65, ISBN 978-0300154269). Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), one of the most important architects working in Latin America in the 20th century, was remarkably prolific and intriguingly idiosyncratic. This is the first major retrospective of the Brazilian modernist architect’s life and work.

Whitney Museum of American Art

Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE by Barbara Haskell (Oct. 28, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0300196863). An insightful and long overdue reassessment of the full scope of the career of Indiana, who combined Pop Art, hard-edged abstraction, and language-based conceptualism.