Elizabeth King and W. David Todd, Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend, Getty Publications, 256pp, 74 colour &
67 b/w illustrations, $45/£40 (hb), published 15 August
Usually viewed as products of the Enlightenment, automata at the intersection of religion, science and art in the late Renaissance are the focus here. Saints alive!
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Andrea Hart and Ann Datta, Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould, Prestel/Natural History Museum, 248pp, 220 colour illustrations, £55 (hb), published 7 September
A tribute to the spectacular and accurate illustrations by Elizabeth Gould (1804-40) of 600 birds from six continents, and the central role of women in the progress of science.
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Owen Davies, Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells, Yale, 256pp, 200 colour & b/w illustrations, £25 (hb), published 10 October
A lavishly illustrated examination of magic and occult knowledge textbooks spanning millennia and civilisations, from Greek and Egyptian papyri via South American pulp prints to Japanese demon encyclopaedias.
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Claudia Rankine, Sampada Aranke, Akili Tommasino, Rashid Johnson, Phaidon, 160pp, 200 illustrations, £39.95 (pb), published 12 October
This comprehensive survey explores the influential American artist’s work, labelled by art critics as “conceptual post-black art”, covering a wide-range of media from painting, sculpture and photography to video and performance.
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Andaleeb Badiee Banta and Alexa Greist, Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800, Art Gallery of Ontario, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Goose Lane Editions, 264pp, 500 illustrations, $60 (hb), published 17 October
Examining the full breadth and diversity of women’s contributions to European art across more than 250 works.