Book Review
How Painting Saved One of Our Most Iconic Designers
A visit to Michaels craft store helped restore book jacket designer Peter Mendelsund during a deep bout of depression.
Book Review
Book Review
A Visual Archive of Diasporican Liberation
A new book pulses with artistic forms by Puerto Rican artists born of necessity, urgency, collaboration, and activism.
Book Review
Jewelry Deserves a Place in Art History
Beyond Adornment explores what the depiction of jewelry in art says about adornment, artists, and their subjects, from Charlemagne to Frida Kahlo.
Book Review
Why Are We Still Obsessed With Pompeii?
In The Buried City, the director of the archaeological park brings a more humane and soulful version of the site to life.
Book Review
Do We Need to Vindicate Paul Gauguin?
Sue Prideaux’s new biography of the artist reveals both a discomfort with his complex legacy and that, in 2025, redemption arcs sell.
Book Review
Unraveling the Imperial Impulses of Chinese Textiles
Like an art history detective, Mei Mei Rado mines textiles and techniques to reveal cross-cultural Chinese-European liaisons driven by nationalism and a keen interest in design.
Book Review
A Mystical, Obsessive Encounter With the Ginseng Root
Craig Thompson’s rhizomatic new graphic novel about the root’s farming industry exposes the paradoxes of Trump’s America.
Book Review
Internet Misinformation Is the New Medieval Magical Thinking
Readers might enjoy the gross and gory fairy-tale quality of this new book — or its parallels to the Trumpian internet.
Book Review
Eadweard Muybridge and the Making of the Motion Picture
A new comic book is as much a social history of photography and its relationship to culture during the 19th century as it is one man’s life story.
Book Review
The Small Magazines That Birthed Surrealism
Surrealism through Its Journals reminds us that the movement began with, and cannot be understood without, the written word.
Book Review
The Story of Surrealism Isn’t Whole Without Gala Dalí
In Surreal, Michèle Gerber Klein asks us to confront the unjust eclipse of Gala’s legacy by that of her husband, Salvador, whose career she brought to fruition.
Book Review
Reading Georgia O’Keeffe Along Lines of Class and Race
A new book sets its sights on the artist’s lesser-known post-war career and her negotiations of identity.