19 art books the Art Basel community is reading this summer

Nonfiction

From essay collections to detailed biographies and books about artists and the expression of art itself, nonfiction offers informative and stimulating insights. Among our community’s recommendations is a classic page-turner about the art world during the boom years divided into seven day-in-the-life-type chapters (Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World). They also include an exhilarating chronicle narrating the lives of five artists who fiercely fought for their place among their Abstract Expressionist male peers (Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women). Here are five nonfiction books to inspire, boost creativity, or, simply, to teach you something new.

A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World (2008)
by Marcia Tucker

This memoir brings to life the behind-the-scenes struggles of Marcia Tucker, the first woman to be hired as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art (2019)
by Michael Shnayerson

What was Larry Gagosian like before he built an empire? What made Leo Castelli tick? How did Marian Goodman get her start? Filled to the brim with exciting anecdotes, Boom gives the reader an insider perspective on the art market from the postwar period to the present day.

Cooking for Artists (2015)
by Mina Stone

Chef Mina Stone knows a thing or two about feeding artists: she has been cooking delightful lunches at Urs Fischer’s Brooklyn art studio for more than five years and producing private gallery dinners since the mid-2000s. The book presents more than 70 of Stone’s family-style recipes inspired by her Greek heritage and her love of food.

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (2017)
by Mary Gabriel

The author portrays with brio the lives of Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler and repositions their often overlooked – and yet seminal – role in the history of the New York School, working alongside titans such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Seven Days in the Art World (2008)
by Sarah Thornton

The book is divided into several chapters, each focusing on a different facet of the contemporary art world: an auction at Christie’s, an art school ‘crit’ at the California Institute of the Arts, a biennial, an artist’s studio, an art prize, a magazine, and of course – an art fair.

Fiction

A favorite in the fiction list is a witty coming-of-age story following a freshman in the 1950s who decides to major in art: The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel In Two Semesters by Chip Kidd. History lovers will enjoy Rachel Halliburton’s The Optickal Illusion: A Novel. Based on a real scandal that deceived British Royal Academicians, it stages an intriguing plot in which a captivating female character offers to reveal Titian’s secret to an aging painter whose inspiration has run dry.

An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
by Kazuo Ishiguro

A moving reflection on artistic success and its trappings, Ishiguro's novel stages the rumination of an aging painter looking back on his life in post-World War II Japan.

The Art Forger
by Barbara Shapiro (2012)

In March 1990, thirteen artworks worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains one of the most significant unsolved art heist in history. Shapiro takes the event as a starting point and sends a fictional young artist on a quest for the truth.

The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel In Two Semesters (2001)
by Chip Kidd

This coming-of-age novel taking place over two semesters revisits the classic narrative arc of a student finding their calling thanks to the help of an inspiring and eccentric mentor.

The Flamethrowers (2013)
by Rachel Kushner

The book narrates the journey of a female artist in the 1970s and ripples with stories inspired by Kushner’s personal experiences during her college years as well as her interests in art, revolution, and radical politics.

The Goldfinch (2013)
by Donna Tartt

The 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows 13-year-old Theodore Decker who survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother is killed – and a small bird painting by Old Master Carel Fabritius mysteriously disappears.

The Optickal Illusion (2018)
by Rachel Halliburton

Halliburton’s first novel, which takes the reader to London when Europe was coping with the aftermath of the French Revolution, is filled to the brim with envy, scandal, and everything in-between.

Soul Mountain (1990)
by Gao Xingjian

An erroneous lung cancer diagnosis pushes an unnamed narrator to set off in rural China in search of the legendary Lingshan (Soul Mountain). A painter, writer, playwright, and all-around Renaissance man, Gao Xingjian was the first Chinese author to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Art history and criticism

The below recommendations include Olivia Laing’s hot-off-the-press collection of essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency that explores why art matters in a moment of crisis. They also feature The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion by Antwaun Sargent, which highlights the work of 15 groundbreaking black artists working at the threshold of art and fashion photography.

Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (2020)
by Olivia Laing

A collection of Laing’s essays, profiles, book reviews, love letters, and more, positioning art as a tool and source of healing in difficult times.

The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion (2019)
by Antwaun Sargent

Writer and curator Antwaun Sargent received critical acclaim for his collection of essays showcasing the work of black artists operating in between the realms of art and fashion photography. His incisive style paints the vivid portrait of a new generation which struggled to get its due, while breaking new grounds for the representation of the black body.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2017)
Edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley with contributions by Linda Goode Bryant Susan E. Cahan, David Driskell, Edmund Gaither, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, and Samella Lewis

This exhibition catalog is the companion to an acclaimed touring show which examined the extraordinary contribution of African American artists during the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the decades that followed. Featuring the likes of Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Alma Thomas, and Charles White, this show proved to be a landmark in Western institutions’ handling of overlooked art histories.

South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017)
by Kellie Jones

Jones shines a spotlight on the African American communities of Angelino artists – including Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi – who gave Los Angeles a vibrant, alternative, underground art scene.

Ways of Seeing (1972)
by John Berger

Based on the acclaimed 1972 BBC series of the same name, Ways of Seeing examines the role of art over the centuries and its role in shaping how we look at the world.

What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye (2012)
by Will Gompertz

A lively and accessible whistle-stop tour of Modern Art history by BBC’s Arts editor and former Tate director Will Gompertz.

Yoshitomo Nara (2020)
by Yeewan Koon

Written by art historian Yeewan Koon in collaboration with Nara himself, this not-to-be-missed volume explores three decades of the artist’s work – and is considered the first authoritative monograph on the artist.