10 Art Books to Curl Up With This November
Celia Paul’s latest essay collection from Venice, Salman Toor’s painted worlds, the secret herbarium of Rosa Luxemburg, a new Roy Lichtenstein catalog for old fans, and more.
The publishing industry is already preparing for spring, but we're still stuck on all the delights and challenges of this fall's slate of art books. Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara recommends an exploration of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg's secret garden of pressed plants, an art form in its own right; critic Natalie Weis sinks into painter Celia Paul's kinetic prose. Catalogs on Salman Toor, Roy Lichtenstein, and more to discover below. —Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, edited by Alex Da Corte and Meg Onli | Whitney Museum of American Art, November 3
In this publication, the Whitney frames its Roy Lichtenstein show as a “radical” picture as “never before,” made up of a “novel” selection that is “genuinely new” to an audience “newer than ever” (emphasis the museum’s). But the catalog, inspired by the composition notebooks the artist kept to gather inspirational clippings, doesn’t feel academic or overstuffed, and includes beautiful plates — in other words, it’s easy, clean, and classic, all the reasons we’ve always loved Lichtenstein. —Lisa Yin Zhang
Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice by Celia Paul | New York Review Books, November 17
Celia Paul writes much like she paints, excavating shimmering insights from familiar subjects, in prose that is as haunting and luminous as her portraits. In this memoir, she uses a Venetian residency to examine her relationship with her deceased husband, mother, and first lover (the unnamed Lucian Freud). Grief, guilt, death, and desire stalk the artist through the city’s narrow corridors; once more, Paul seeks self-knowledge through art, literature, and the act of painting. —Natalie Weis
Visualizing Latinx: Creative Practices in Fashion, Film, and Beyond by Arlene Dávila | Duke University Press, October 13
Arlene Dávila begins where most mainstream criticism of Latinx art ends: by challenging the term itself. The professor and curator’s ninth book continues her decades-long critiques of perfunctory “Latinx representation” through shrewd essays on indie filmmakers, fashion designers, and artists — such as Edra Soto and Ela Troyano — who refuse the tropes imposed on their work and often operate outside of the Los Angeles and New York bubbles. Her insights are a reminder to question the narratives that “make Latinx culture palatable for mainstream culture,” to always dig deeper. —Lakshmi Rivera Amin
