Book Review
John Constable’s Four Seasons
Art historian Susan Owens's exquisitely illustrated new book narrates the painter’s story through his relationship to weather, place, and time.
Book Review
Book Review
Every Dog Has Its Artist
A compassionate new book explores how canine companions across Western art history break down the emotional boundaries between species.
Book Review
James Cahill’s Character Study of the Art World
“The Violet Hour” is a dreamy chronicle of fame, greed, and ambition, full of cartoonish personalities you’ve likely had the misfortune of encountering firsthand.
Book Review
The World That Held Peter Hujar and Paul Thek
As a dyke, I particularly cherished this portrait of queer entanglement characterized by duration and valences beyond the sexual or romantic.
Book Review
The Looter Who Built Your Favorite Museum
A new book maps the network that allowed Douglas Latchford to violently rip Khmer statues from their homes and funnel them into Western institutions.
Book Review
Anni Albers Wasn’t Afraid to Start From Zero
Nicholas Fox Weber’s new biography draws on their nearly 25-year friendship, allowing her dedication to textile art and her warm humor to shine through in equal measure.
Book Review
The Mysterious Life of Fluxus Dame Alison Knowles
Even a book by a leading expert on the avant-garde artist can’t tell us much about her personal life.
Book Review
Jan Staller Photographs the Nuts and Bolts of Manhattan's Urban Symphony
The American photographer's new book transforms the city's endless construction sites into otherworldly visions.
Book Review
Hans Holbein Painted the Human
He surpassed all of his colleagues in the sheer depth, visceral intimacy, and empathy conveyed in his renderings of nobles, aristocrats, and thinkers.
Book Review
The Unnameable Artists of the Canton Trade System
In a book on Qing-era trade portraitists whose names are lost to history, Winnie Wong shows us how our restless pursuits of authenticity guide us into pitfalls of our own making.
Book Review
Ai Weiwei and the Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut
“On Censorship” offers timely reflections from the dissident artist, whose entire life and career have been marked by state persecution.
Book Review
In “Discipline,” Larissa Pham Explores Predatory Art-World Mentorship
The art critic and former painter reinvents the genre’s well-trod territory in her debut novel, which makes heartbreakingly acute the consequences of teacher-student relationships.