This season features spotlights on underrepresented artists, including Native Americans, along with deep analysis of well-known moments in art history.
Top 10
Amaza Lee Meredith Imagines Herself Modern: Architecture and the Black American Middle Class
Jacqueline Taylor. MIT, Nov. 28 ($39.95, ISBN 978-0-262-04834-7)
Architect Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984), cofounder of a Black vacation community in Sag Harbor, N.Y., deserves a place in the conversation about American modernism, argues Taylor.
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art
Lauren Elkin. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov. 14 ($35, ISBN 978-0-374-10595-2)
Elkin unpacks the term “art monster,” popularized in Jenny Offill’s 2014 novel Dept. of Speculation, with a critical study of women artists’ relationships to their bodies.
A Falling-Off Place: The Transformation of Lower Manhattan
Barbara G. Mensch. Empire State Editions, Sept. 5 ($39.95, ISBN 978-1-5315-0439-7)
Photographer Mensch documents the upheaval of downtown New York City’s working-class and immigrant communities from the 1980s to the 2000s with images of disasters and bulldozing.
Familiar Faces: Photography, Memory, and Argentina’s Disappeared
Edited by Piotr Cieplak. Goldsmiths, Oct. 24 ($39.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-913380-76-2)
This illustrated volume documents the role photography played during Argentina’s 1976–1983 dictatorship as activists and mourners brought visibility to the lives of the disappeared and appropriated images from the Pinochet government.
Fluid: A Fashion Revolution
Harris Reed. Abrams, Nov. 7 ($45, ISBN 978-1-4197-6758-6)
A designer whose clothing has been worn by Sam Smith, Beyoncé, and other celebrities presents an illustrated history of gender fluidity and fashion.
An Indigenous Present
Edited by Jeffrey Gibson. Delmonico, Aug. 22 ($75, ISBN 978-1-63681-102-4)
This illustrated anthology of Native American contemporary art features work by artists of many disciplines including filmmakers, painters, photographers, and writers.
Manet/Degas
Stephan Wolohojian and Ashley E. Dunn. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 12 ($65, ISBN 978-1-58839-763-8)
Essays and illustrations explore the friendship and rivalry of the two French impressionists.
Postindustrial DIY: Recovering American Rust Belt Icons
Daniel Campo. Fordham Univ., Nov. 7 ($24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5315-0468-7)
The ruins of factories and refineries in Buffalo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh offer new possibilities for revitalizing the Rust Belt, according to this architectural study from urbanist Campo.
The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever
Prudence Peiffer. Harper, Aug. 1 ($38.99, ISBN 978-0-06-309720-9)
Art historian Peiffer offers a group biography of the diverse artists at the center of a scene that arose in lower Manhattan in the 1950s and ’60s, including painters Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin.
The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters
Benjamin Moser. Liveright, Oct. 10 ($39.95, ISBN 978-1-324-09225-4)
Pulitzer winner Moser, best known for his literary biographies (Susan Sontag, Clarice Lispector) and translations, meditates on the paintings of Dutch masters.
Art, Architecture & Photography longlist
Abbeville
Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States by William Morgan (Oct. 17, $45, ISBN 978-0-7892-1468-3) surveys the adoption of the Gothic style by elite U.S. universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and its continued application today.
ABRAMS
Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne by Christopher Payne (Oct. 10, $75, ISBN 978-1-4197-4739-7) collects color photographs of factories and manufactured goods in traditional textile mills, cutting edge airplane production, and more.
Vanity Fair: Oscar Night Sessions: A Decade of Portraits from the After-Party by Mark Seliger (Nov. 14, $80, ISBN 978-1-4197-5478-4). Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Spike Lee, and more feature in Seliger’s portraits of the magazine’s annual post-Oscars bash.
Afterall
Alfredo Jaar: Studies on Happiness by Edward A. Vazquez (Aug. 29, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-84638-259-8) presents Chilean-born artist Jaar’s Studies on Happiness project (1979–1981), involving interviews with fellow Chileans in the twilight of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Basic
The Living City: Why Cities Don’t Need to Be Green to Be Great by Des Fitzgerald (Nov. 21, $30, ISBN 978-1-5416-7450-9). Sociologist Fitzgerald surveys architects and urban planners to support his argument about the contradictions of green cities.
Chronicle
The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families by Charly Palmer and Karida Brown (Oct. 10, $40, ISBN 978-1-79721-682-9) draws inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1920 Brownies’ Book with an anthology of works by contemporary Black artists and writers.
Empire State Editions
Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic by Joseph Heathcott (Oct. 3, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-5315-0451-9). The photographer documents a New York City borough defined by its many contradictions.
Fantagraphics
A Doorway to Joe by Joe Coleman (Nov. 21, $99.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-870-2). The subjects of painter Coleman’s biographical portraits include tragic celebrities, such as Hank Williams and Jayne Mansfield, presented with an introduction by musician Tom Waits.
Flashpoint
Picturing Joy: Stories of Connection by George Lange (Oct. 24, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-959411-35-2) examines the stories behind Lange’s photographs, whose subjects range from the luminous to the quotidian.
Laurence King
Marina Abramovic: A Visual Biography by Katya Tylevich and Marina Abramovic (Nov. 28, $100, ISBN 978-0-85782-946-7). Abramovic, with arts writer Tylevich and photos from her archive, documents her life and work.
Frances Lincoln
The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That Is Unreal by S. Elizabeth (Sept. 12, $30, ISBN 978-0-7112-7995-7). William Blake, Francisco Goya, and Salvador Dali are among those featured in this survey on fantasy in art.
La Martinière
Seth: On Walls by Julien Malland (Oct. 10, $42, ISBN 978-1-4197-6950-4) explores how street artist Malland, better known as Seth, collaborates with others and draws on local lore in the varied places where he works, such as Cambodia and Ukraine.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Africa and Byzantium, edited by Andrea Myers Achi (Oct. 24, $65, ISBN 978-1-58839-771-3), highlights achievements by medieval African artists in mosaics, painting, and more.
MFA
Fashioned by Sargent by Erica E. Hirshler (Oct. 24, $65, ISBN 978-0-87846-894-2) gathers essays and illustrations to document painter John Singer Sargent’s intersections with Gilded Age fashion.
MIT
Shadows of Reality: A Catalogue of W.G. Sebald’s Photographic Materials, edited by Clive Scott and Nick Warr (Sept. 19, $59.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-911343-66-0), complements a recent exhibition in Norwich, England, near the coastline featured in Sebald’s 1995 novel Rings of Saturn.
Monacelli
Luciano Fabro: Reinventing Sculpture by Margit Rowell (Oct. 25, $75, ISBN 978-1-58093-611-8). Critic and curator Rowell offers a monograph of the late Italian sculptor’s experimental work, part of the arte povera movement.
National Geographic
National Geographic Invisible Wonders: Photographs of the Hidden World by Anand Varma (Sept. 26, $45, ISBN 978-1-4262-2314-3). Subjects on display include a hummingbird’s tongue, stem cells, and other living things imperceptible without a lens.
New Museum
Judy Chicago: Herstory, edited by Massimiliano Gioni, Gary Carrion-Murayari, and Margot Norton (Nov. 29, $79.95, ISBN 978-1-83866-707-8), surveys the conceptual feminist artist’s decades-long career as she engaged with various movements in art history.
Norton
Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities by John King (Nov. 7, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-02032-5). A design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle traces the shifting fortunes of the landmark building on the city’s Embarcadero.
Pegasus
Falling Rocket: James Whistler, John Ruskin, and the Battle for Modern Art by Paul Thomas Murphy (Dec. 5, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-63936-491-6). Historian Murphy tells the story of an American painter who successfully sued an English art critic over a bad review in 1878.
Phaidon
Cerith Wyn Evans by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Nancy Spector (Nov. 29, $54.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83866-193-9) presents the work of contemporary Welsh conceptual artist Evans, who began as an experimental filmmaker.
Princeton Univ.
Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead (Aug. 22, $38, ISBN 978-0-691-25448-7). The multidisciplinary Surrealist artist gets the illustrated bio treatment from journalist Moorhead, Carrington’s cousin.
Yuan: Chinese Architecture in a Mongol Empire by Nancy Steinhardt (Jan. 9, $75, ISBN 978-0-691-24016-9) draws on research and fieldwork for a study of prodigious building during the Mongol dynasty in China in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Rizzoli Electa
Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick by Aimee Ng and Antwaun Sargent (Sept. 19, $50, ISBN 978-0-8478-7359-3) celebrates the portraits of late American painter Hendricks, often of Black subjects, and draws connections between his practice and his study of European paintings in the Frick Collection.
Scribner
Humanize: A Maker’s Guide to Designing Our Cities by Thomas Heatherwick (Nov. 7, $29, ISBN 978-1-66803-443-9). The English architect behind New York City’s Vessel, also known as the “shawarma building,” makes his case for what works and doesn’t work in the design of urban buildings.
Smithsonian
Staging the Supernatural: Ghosts and the Theater in Japanese Prints by Kit Brooks and Frank Feltens (Oct. 31, $14.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-58834-720-6). The 19th-century woodblock prints in this exhibition catalog represent the folkloric imagery of kabuki and Noh theater.
Soft Skull
Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Nov. 7, $27, ISBN 978-1-59376-735-8). The memoirist, novelist, and queer activist assesses her connection to modern art through the story of her complex relationship with her painter grandmother.
Stanford Univ.
Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form by Rizvana Bradley (Oct. 24, $30 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5036-3713-9) discusses work by such artists as Glenn Ligon, Mickalene Thomas, and Sondra Perry.
Sternberg
Joar Nango, edited by Axel Wieder (Sept. 26, $39, ISBN 978-3-95679-617-3). Nango’s collaborators describe working with the Sámi architect and artist on his boundary-pushing projects, featured in the 2023 Venice Biennial of Architecture.
Strange Attractor
Artist as Astronaut: The Otherworldly Art of Ionel Talpazan by Daniel Wojcik (Oct. 31, $34.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-913689-25-4). Folklorist and art writer Wojcik documents the work of the late Romanian artist, which was purportedly inspired by an extraterrestrial vision.
Tate
Isaac Julien by Maria Jane Balshaw (Oct. 10, $60, ISBN 978-1-84976-839-9) collects film stills and photos from British installation artist and filmmaker Julien, including his Lessons of the Hour (2019), based on the life and times of Frederick Douglass.
Motherhood by Ann Coxon (Sept. 12, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-84976-837-5) presents paintings and sculpture by Lucien Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Titus Kaphar, and others to explore motherhood as depicted in art.
Thames & Hudson
Abstract Painting: Contemporary Painters by Amber Creswell Bell (Sept. 19, $50, ISBN 978-1-76076-363-3) defines the language of abstraction and surveys a multitude of artists, locating their varied sources of inspiration.
Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words by Michael Peppiatt (Nov. 21, $45, ISBN 978-0-500-02186-6). Art historian Peppiatt gathers sketches and letters from the provocative 20th-century British painter.
The Japanese House Since 1945 by Naomi Pollock (Oct. 17, $85, ISBN 978-0-500-34373-9) offers a study of 97 architect-designed houses in Japan with historical context and commentary organized by decade.
Univ. of Florida
Wild Florida: An Animal Odyssey by Kirsten Hines (Nov. 14, $40, ISBN 978-0-8130-6981-4). Photographer Hines captures Florida’s wildlife on land, sea, and swamp, including black bears, panthers, and the loggerhead sea turtle.
Yale Univ.
Black Artists in America: From Civil Rights to the Bicentennial by Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins, Celeste-Marie Bernier, and Alaina Simone (Jan. 9, $45, ISBN 978-0-300-27346-5) complements a recent show at Memphis’s Dixon Gallery and Gardens of various artists and their contributions to art history.
Why Surrealism Matters by Mark Polizzotti (Jan. 2, $26, ISBN 978-0-300-25709-0). Literary translator Polizzotti contributes to Yale’s Why X Matters series with a wide-ranging survey of surrealism in film, theater, painting, and other mediums.
Zone
Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle by Jonathan Crary (Sept. 5, $32, ISBN 978-1-942130-85-7). Essayist Crary tackles the impact of films, paintings, performance art, and more in this collection.
