The days have grown long; the art world’s social flurry has calmed. As always, summer is the perfect season to catch this year’s must-see exhibitions, and, in the quieter moments, to catch up on reading. We asked four artists to revisit the one book that shaped them most, and to share what is on their reading list for the weeks ahead. The result is a set of unexpected influences, from tech-driven philosophy to haunted landscapes.

Marina Abramovic

Which book most changed your life?

With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel, 1929

Alexandra David-Neel is a big inspiration for me. She was a French woman who left Paris to travel all the way to Tibet in the 1920s. She stayed in the monasteries and in different parts of Tibet in complete seclusion for many, many months. She learned the Tibetan language and had the determination and willpower to endure very difficult living conditions: extreme heat and cold, and long periods of time with hardly any food. Able not just to read but also to experience the real knowledge of Tibetan mystics, she really fulfilled my belief that nobody can change just by reading a book about somebody else’s experience. Change only comes if you make the journey yourself. She spent more than 17 years on this journey. Her books are full of wisdom, and they inspire me. They pushed me to make my own journeys into the Aboriginal culture of central Australia, into shamanism in Brazil, and to live for long periods of time in deserts. She died at the age of 100 in France after her journey was completed.

What are you looking forward to reading this summer?

Haruki Murakami’s new book The Tale of KAHO, 2026.

On view:

‘Balkan Erotic Epic: The Exhibition’, Gropius Bau, Berlin, until August 30, 2026
‘Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy’, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, until October 19, 2026

Andreas Angelidakis

Which book most changed your life?

Deconstructivist Architecture, Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, 1988

My mom had read about this book, a MoMA exhibition catalog, in the International Herald Tribune in 1988, and to find it in Athens in the 1980s wasn’t easy. In it, I saw Frank Gehry’s house and it was a paradigm shift for me. I decided I needed a different education, and reading it led to me studying at SCI-Arc in California. It proved that there’s a different kind of architecture out there, not just one that serves a building, but makes meaning out of the object. The book, and Mark Wigley’s essay in it, also showed me that architecture can be a monument to disaster, trauma, or accident. All my favorite star architects were in this book – and all the later starchitects came from this book. The catalog for my Venice Biennale Greek pavilion project is exactly the same size as Deconstructivist Architecture – between a book and a magazine. It’s my own internal reference. Back in 1988, Deleuze, Guattari, and the other Poststructuralist philosophers had an outlet in architecture. I still have my original copy. Books as objects are really important to me.

What are you looking forward to reading this summer?

Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation, 2022, by Nuar Alsadir. It’s about a clown school. Clowns can make you laugh when you’re failing at something.

On view:

‘Escape Room’, Greek pavilion, Venice Biennale, until November 22, 2026.

John Gerrard

Which book most changed your life?

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Manuel DeLanda, 1991

In 1994 I pitched up in this beautiful little art school, the Ruskin at Oxford. I was an Irish kid who had just turned 20, and Oxford is an astounding place, full of brilliance and history. In my second year, I came across this book. In it, DeLanda traces the history of war and tech in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, when power became abstract. Weaponry goes far beyond the military – there’s a transfer of cognitive structure from humans to machines. In boarding school we’d watched the Gulf War on TV in our common room, so I was primed to think about violence and technology in my teens. But when this book dropped into my hands, I learned how people write about society through a prism, in this case computing and violence. It introduced me to criticality, and I could look at everyday reality through the work of a philosopher and think about life in more complex ways. In a weird way it’s informed my whole practice since – looking at society through computing and thinking of the conditions of our time. The Zero 10 sector at Art Basel in Basel, curated by Trevor Paglen, was titled The Condition, right? My original copy is still on my bookshelf. It’s been a ‘talisperson’ for me, because it reorientates my thinking.

What are you looking forward to reading this summer?

Marvin Minsky’s 1986 book The Society of Mind in the studio – I’ve read it before. But on the beach, Ursula K. Le Guin, because I always travel with her book A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968. It’s wisdom imbedded in fiction.

On view:

SPIRITS, online exhibition, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, until December 21, 2026.

Nancy Lupo

Which book most changed your life?

The Changeling, Joy Williams, 1978

I read Joy Williams’s The Changeling recently. It completely changed my life or at least the richness of dimension in which life in general plays out. The book came out in 1978, and it’s unlike anything I’ve read before from any period. In it, Williams articulates things about latent energies in particular regions in the US. She unfolds a lot in what a landscape does to the imagination and psychological state of being. The regions in the book include parts of American northeast and Florida, but there is something I associate with where I grew up in Arizona. I found out she lives in Tucson, but is very hard to reach: no phone, no email. The Changeling could be described as cinematic. Thankfully the book has never been adapted, but something about it reminded me of Lucrecia Martel’s film La Ciénaga: the drunk intermingling of kids and creatures and the reciprocal haunted relationship between creatures and landscapes. Maybe this idea of a fever dream is what happens when the desire to manifest the feeling of a situation produces a churning impossibility. After The Changeling, I wanted to read everything Williams had ever written. Has it influenced my work? That’s trickier. Yes. But I can’t point to exactly how. Hopefully it’s still coming.

What are you looking forward to reading this summer?

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000.

On view: 

'Several Chickens Later', Spike Island, Bristol, until September 6, 2026.