The Art & Artists Report Part I: Books
The most recommended contemporary art books
Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to The Art & Artists Report.
Thank you to all the continuing subscribers, and welcome to the many new subscribers who have been here since last week.
Again, The Art & Artists Report provides new art enthusiasts and potential art patrons with a substantial, nuanced, and diverse introduction to the world of contemporary art. It is based on a detailed survey I conducted in late 2024 of over 50 global art experts. The report will be presented here in a series of posts over the next few months.
I’m excited to get this all started, but before I do, please remember this project is self-supported. If you like what you are reading and would like to see future reports and more research-based contemporary art studies like this, please consider a paid subscription or become a Founding Member.
The Most-Recommended Books
I’m starting with books. As an art historian and educator, books have been formative to my own career and practice. I love advising people about which books might get them interested in—or help them dive deeper into—a particular subject.
A few books that have been crucial to my own understanding of modern and contemporary art history include: Robert Rosenblum’s 19th Century Art; Lawrence Weschler’s biography of Robert Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees; Julie Ault’s Alternative Art New York, 1965-1985; and Irving Sandler’s Art of the Postmodern Era.
I still believe, even with our glut of digital content and social media, that books are miracles of educational delivery. They envelop us in a particular subject and prose style, often leading us toward new discoveries and unexpected expertise.
The first question of the survey was:
“Which 1-3 books (or publications) would you give as a gift to someone to help them better understand contemporary art? (These can be survey books, monographs, art theory, or other formats.)”
While I expected a range of responses to this question, I thought there would be consensus, that perhaps a handful of books would receive the lion’s share of attention. I believed my question would encourage the suggestion of more accessible, user-friendly books that provide an overview of the subject. In this vein, I expected books like Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark; Julian Stallabrass’s Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction; Brandon Taylor’s Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970; Kyung An and Jessica Cerasi’s Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art? or Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World.
Yet I was wrong. There wasn’t much consensus. A few books were mentioned multiple times. But the most popular book was mentioned just four times. And many of the recommended books were art theory volumes or monographs. Ideas about accessible entry points to contemporary art, it turns out, are (at least currently) as diffuse and creative as our industry itself.
I’ve listed the most mentioned books below in alphabetical order, with the frequency of their votes in parentheses.
I’ll also note that I received multiple responses from people who suggested “anything” by the great art historian Linda Nochlin. I can’t argue with this. Linda was one of my PhD advisors and was incredible—a genius scholar who also was 100% present for her advisees, even copy-editing our papers! So even though no one suggested any specific books of hers, she qualifies. (That said, my top pick of Linda’s writings is, as you might expect, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?)
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1972) (4)
One of the most influential modern texts on art, which formed the basis for a 1972 BBC television series. Berger takes a Marxist perspective and is concerned with, among other things, how images are experienced in general (not just by a specialized art elite); the historical significance of the female nude; how oil paintings seek to represent the world; and how advertising imagery presents the world.
Bianca Bosker, Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See (Viking, 2024) (2)
Bosker is an award-winning journalist who throws herself into subcultures. Her 2017 book Cork Dork dove deep into the inner workings of the wine industry, and Get the Picture does the same for the contemporary art world. Bosker takes the perspective of a non-insider and, with a sense of humor, tries to figure out the art world by going undercover: She works at various industry jobs, uncovering why artists, curators, collectors, and other groups are so obsessed with it.
Ben Davis, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket, 2013) (3)
Davis is one of the most influential full-time contemporary art critics—a sadly dwindling group—and has been Artnet’s National Art Critic since 2016. This was his first book: a collection of essays looking at the intersection of art and class. He examines how art fits into the broader economy; if art is fashion and/or entertainment; and what we can expect from political art in today’s culture.
Jeffrey Gibson, An Indigenous Present (Delmonico, 2023) (2)
A landmark compendium of Native North American contemporary artists, musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, architects, writers, photographers, designers, and more. This book was conceived by Jeffrey Gibson, an artist of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee descent and the 2024 U.S. representative at the Venice Biennale.
Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art (Plume, 2013) (2)
A brief, accessible history of modern art, written by a former BBC arts editor. Gompertz takes the reader from Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain to the art of the present moment and attempts to define all of the “isms” (“Futurism,” “Postmodernism,” etc.) for a mass audience.
bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (New Press, 1995) (2)
hooks was one of the most influential feminist thinkers of her era and was instrumental in expanding the Western canon to include Black artists. This book is a collection of writings exploring the connections between art and identity politics. Essays concern the fraught representation of Black bodies; the creative processes of women artists; and the use of blood in contemporary art. The book also includes conversations with contemporary artists such as Carrie Mae Weems.
Matthew Israel, A Year in the Art World: An Insider’s View (Thames & Hudson, 2020) (2—thanks!)
A cross-continental journey through a year in the field of art that lifts the veil on a diverse, adventurous, nuanced, and meaningful culture. From Los Angeles and New York to Paris and Hong Kong, the book engages with artists, curators, critics, gallerists, and institutions, uncovering the working lives of these art world figures, both renowned and unseen.
Helen Molesworth, Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing about Art (Phaidon, 2023) (3)
For the past twenty years, Molesworth has been an influential curator in the world of contemporary art. Since leaving the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2018, she has struck out on her own and curated influential exhibitions at major galleries such as David Zwirner and Jack Shainman, and hosted the critically acclaimed podcast “Death of an Artist” about the death of Ana Mendieta. Open Questions is a collection of Molesworth’s essays, all previously published in exhibition catalogues and art journals. Among the artists she covers are contemporary art “stars” such as Kerry James Marshall, Catherine Opie, and Lisa Yuskavage.
Linda Nochlin, “Anything by her” (3)
Nochlin was one of the most influential art historians of the 20th century (and, again, I was lucky to be one of her students). Nochlin is widely credited as one of the founding voices of feminist art history, and her aforementioned 1971 article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” was one of the groundbreaking texts of the movement.
Phaidon’s “Vitamin” series (2)
Inaugurated in 2002, Phaidon’s “Vitamin” series, which has editions for painting (Vitamin P), drawing (Vitamin D), and other mediums, has been a very popular introduction to contemporary art. The series has sold a quarter of a million copies and features nominations by top curators and critics.
Veronica Roberts, Day Jobs (Radius, 2024) (2)
Day Jobs is an exhibition catalogue for a recent show at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, curated by Veronica Roberts, which originated at the Blanton Museum of Art. The show examined the overlooked impact of artists’ “day jobs.” While the usual narrative for artistic success is that artists should eventually quit their day jobs, this exhibition takes a different perspective and suggests that “day jobs can often spur creative growth by providing artists with new materials and methods, hands-on knowledge of a specific industry that becomes an area of artistic investigation, or a predictable paycheck and structure that enable unpredictable ideas.”
Michael Shnayerson, Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art (PublicAffairs, 2020) (2)
A history of postwar modern and contemporary art with a focus on the market and major Western art dealers. Concentrated mostly in the U.S. and Europe, and starting in the 1950s with the launch of Abstract Expressionism, the book profiles the world’s most influential gallerists such as Leo Castelli, Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth.
Peter Selz and Kristine Stiles, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (University of California Press, 2012) (2)
This seminal compendium of writings by contemporary artists reflects the belief that artists’ own theories (rather than other people’s writing about them) provide a major access point to understanding art and art history. The book features a wide range of leading and emerging artists since 1945 who work across disparate media and represent a variety of critical perspectives.
Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War (Verso, 2019) (2)
A collection of short essays and public talks from the filmmaker and theorist Hito Steyerl, one of the most influential contemporary artists working today. Her concerns are wide-ranging: Steyerl makes connections between philosophy, art, pop culture, the military, and the economy. Her subjects include video games, WikiLeaks files, freeports, Internet spam, cat videos, and Twitter bots.
Marcia Tucker, A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World (University of California Press, 2010) (2)
A memoir by the founder of the New Museum. Tucker was the first woman to be hired as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and her dismissal there led her to found downtown Manhattan’s New Museum of Contemporary Art (today’s New Museum), which focuses on the art of today. The memoir starts with Tucker coming of age in the 1960s and goes on to detail her involvement in the feminist movement and the burgeoning New York art world of the 1960s and 1970s. Under her leadership, the New Museum became a groundbreaking force in contemporary art. Tucker organized the first exhibitions of some of today’s major artists and consistently mounted shows that focused on the nexus of art and politics.
The above is a multifaceted list that I’d consider using in the classroom. There are the overviews like mine (thank you again to those kind respondents); essential critical perspectives, which range from the relatively more historical (Nochlin, Berger, hooks) to the more contemporary (Molesworth, Davis); as well as recent books that speak to what happened just last year (Gibson, Bosker). The outlier is Roberts’ book, but I think it struck a chord due to its unusual but accessible discussion of artists’ day jobs. Maybe it served as inspiration for a wide array of creatives who have day jobs and found support in the fact that, in Roberts’ words, “day jobs can spur creative growth.”
The Complete List
This (much) longer list reflects my own interests and those of my community: It’s not especially focused on the market, and it nicely reflects a broad range of interests in the world of contemporary art today. In this respect, I was happy to see a focus on historical and contemporary Black, Indigenous, and women artists as well as highly academic philosophy and critical theory.
For the art audience, comments are welcome. Is there anything you don’t see here that should be on the list? Or anything you don’t believe deserves its place? For those new to the subject—which book might you pick up first?
As a final note, several respondents mentioned magazines instead of books. They seemed to be questioning whether books are the best language-vehicle to learn more about contemporary art. After all, magazines have the advantage of a quick turnaround time: You can see a review of a show that opened last month. A book, on the other hand, might go into production two years after the events that it details.
These were the suggestions. By no means are they a complete list of good art world magazines and websites—yet they are all good sources of art world news and (generally) critical perspectives:
And now, the complete list of books suggested, in alphabetical order. (Apologies in advance for any bibliographic errors.)
Agamben, Giorgio. What Is an Apparatus? And Other Essays. Stanford University Press, 2009.
Baker, George, et al. Sanya Kantarovsky: Selected Works 2010-2024. Edited by Nicolas Linnert, MIT Press, 2024.
Barrett, Terry. Why Is That Art? Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Baudrillard, Jean. “Anything.”
Bazin, Germain. The Loom of Art. Translated by Jonathan Griffin. Simon and Schuster, 1962.
Behrman, S. N. Duveen. Harmony Books, 1982.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, 1972.
Bosker, Bianca. Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See. Viking, 2024.
Cerasi, Jessica. Contemporary Art Decoded. Tate Ilex, 2021.
Chase, Marilyn. Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa. Chronicle Books, 2020.
Choi, Connie H., et al. Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem. American Federation of Arts; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Rizzoli Electa, 2019.
Crimp, Douglas. Before Pictures. Dancing Foxes Press; The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Danto, Arthur C., and Lydia Goehr. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Davis, Ben. 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. Haymarket Books, 2013.
Davis, Ben. Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy. Haymarket Books, 2022
Deller, Jeremy. Art Is Magic. Cheerio, 2023.
Duchamp, Marcel, et al. The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Da Capo Press, 1973.
Dyson, Torkwase, and Pace Gallery. Torkwase Dyson: A Liquid Belonging. Pace Gallery, 2023.
Eakin, Hugh. Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America. Crown, 2022.
Eisler, Benita. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz : An American Romance. Penguin Books, 1991.
Elkin, Lauren. “Something by her”
Eshun, Ekow, et al. In the Black Fantastic. The MIT Press, 2022.
Filipovic, Elena, and David Hammons. David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale. Afterall Books, 2019.
Fleetwood, Nicole R. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Harvard University Press, 2020.
George, Adrian. The Curator’s Handbook: Museums, Commercial Galleries, Independent Spaces. Thames & Hudson, 2015.
Gibson, Jeffrey, et al. An Indigenous Present. BIG NDN Press: DelMonico Books, 2023.
Godfrey, Mark and Katy Siegel, eds. Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection. Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2023.
Godfrey, Tony. The Story of Contemporary Art. The MIT Press, 2020.
Golden, Thelma, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art: Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994.
Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art. Phaidon Publishers; distributed by Oxford University Press, 1950.
Gompertz, Will. What Are You Looking at? The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art. Plume, Published by the Penguin Group, 2012.
Goode-Bryant et al. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2022.
Graylin, Alvin Wang, et al. Our next Reality: How the AI-Powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2024
Harris, Lyle Ashton, et al. Lyle Ashton Harris: Our First and Last Love. Edited by Lauren Haynes and Caitlin Julia Rubin, Gregory R. Miller & Co.; Queens Museum; Rose Art Museum, 2024.
Hickey, Dave. Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy. Art Issues Press; Distributed by D.A.P., 1997.
Hoban, Phoebe. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. St. Martin’s Press, 2010.
Hockney, David, and Martin Gayford. A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen. Abrams, 2016.
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. The New Press, 1995.
Israel, Matthew. The Big Picture: Contemporary Art in 10 Works by 10 Artists. Prestel, 2017.
Israel, Matthew. A Year in the Art World: An Insider’s View. Thames & Hudson, 2020.
Joselit, David. After Art. Princeton University Press, 2013.
Judd, Donald. Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975: Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports, Statements, Complaints. Judd Foundation, 2016.
Kaabour, Marwan et al., eds. The Queer Arab Glossary. Saqi Books, 2024
Kelsey, John, et al. Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art. Sternberg Press, 2010.
Kholeif, Omar. Internet Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs. Phaidon Press Limited, 2023.
Kraus, Chris. Where Art Belongs. Semiotext(e); Distributed by the MIT Press, 2011.
Laing, Olivia. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.
Lepecki, André. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. Routledge, 2006.
López, Miguel A., ed. And If I Devoted My Life to One of Its Feathers? Aesthetic Responses to Extraction, Accumulation, and Dispossession. Kunsthalle Wien; Wiener Festwochen; Sternberg Press, 2022.
Martin, Courtney J., ed. Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art. Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2016.
McNamara, Kate, et al. Staying with the Trouble. Tufts University Art Galleries, 2021.
Mitchell, W. J. T. Art and the Public Sphere. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Molesworth, Helen. Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art. Edited by Donna Wingate, Phaidon, 2023.
Morrison, Toni. “Any of her essays.”
Muir, Gregor. Lucky Kunst: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art. Aurum, 2009.
Nochlin, Linda. “Anything.”
O’Neill, Paul, et al., editors. How Institutions Think: Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse. LUMA Foundation; Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; The MIT Press, 2017.
Ortega Y Gasset, Jose. Velazquez. Random House, 1953.
Paper Monument (Organization). Social Medium: Artists Writing, 2000-2015. Edited by Jennifer Liese, Paper Monument, 2016.
Powell, Richard J. Black Art: A Cultural History. Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2021.
Raza, Sara. Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion. Black Dog Press Limited, 2022.
Ringgold, Faith. Tar Beach. Dragonfly Books; Crown Publishers, 1996.
Roberts, Veronica, ed. Day Jobs. Blanton Museum of Art, and Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Radius Books, 2024.
Robertson, Jean, et al. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. Fifth edition, Oxford University Press, 2022.
Rodney, Seph. The Personalization of the Museum Visit: Art Museums, Discourse, and Visitors. Routledge, 2019
Rose, Barbara. American Art since 1900. Praeger, 1967.
Rubell Family Collection, et al. 30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection. Rubell; D.A.P./Distributed Art Pub., 2011.
Rubin, Rick, and Neil Strauss. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Penguin Press, 2023.
Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. Verso, 2020.
Schjeldahl, Peter. Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-2018. Edited by Jarrett Earnest, Abrams Press, 2019.
Schwabsky, Barry and Julia Hasting. Vitamin P₂: New Perspectives in Painting. Phaidon, 2011.
Self, Tschabalala, et al. Bodega Run. Gregory R. Miller & Company, 2024.
Seu, Mindy, ed. Cyberfeminism Index. Inventory Press, 2022.
Shlain, Leonard. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. Harper Perennial, 2001.
Shnayerson, Michael. Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art. First edition, PublicAffairs, 2019.
Sillman, Amy. Faux Pas: Selected Writings and Drawings. After 8 Books, 2020.
Simpson, Lorna. Lorna Simpson Collages. Chronicle Books, 2018.
Solnit, Rebecca. “Anything.”
Sontag, Susan. Essays of the 1960s & 70s. Edited by David Rieff, The Library of America, 2013.
Stevens, Mark, et al. De Kooning: An American Master. A.A. Knopf, 2004.
Steyerl, Hito. Duty Free Art. Verso, 2017.
Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded, University of California Press, 2012.
Storr, Robert, and Francesca Pietropaolo. Robert Storr: Interviews on Art. HENI Publishing, 2021
Thompson, Donald N. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production. Melville House, 2012.
Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. W.W. Norton, 2008.
Tucker, Marcia, and Liza Lou. A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World. University of California Press, 2008.
Turner, Jane. From Expressionism to Post-Modernism: Styles and Movements in 20th-Century Western Art. Grove, 2000.
Varnedoe, Kirk. A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern. H.N. Abrams, 1990.
Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Thanks again for your interest in this project, and I’m looking forward to seeing you back here in two weeks. Next up, I’ll share which institutions will influence the future of contemporary art.
Best,
Matthew
Great resource!
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