Book Club
The Art Newspaper’s Book Club shines a light on art books in their myriad forms and brings you exclusive extracts, interviews and recommendations from leading art world figures. Sign up to our monthly newsletter above
August Book Bag: from a ‘behind-the-scenes’ studio book to artists joining in with the American Revolution
Our round-up of the latest art publications
Ultimate reading lists
Interviews with writers
Illustrator Clive Hicks-Jenkins on dealing with violent imagery and finding ways of ‘showing the impossible’
Ahead of the publication of a new edition of Homer’s epics—which he has illustrated—the artist also explains why he switches mediums for different books
New book looks at the shaping of Modern art in the Middle East beyond politics and war
The Arab art specialist Saeb Eigner talks about his comprehensive new biography spanning from 1900 to today
Tacita Dean on why she has made a book about her night in a museum with Cy Twombly’s art
The British artist has published a new book of detailed photographs of her hero’s work
‘He could be grotesquely, wildly intemperate’: biographer Blake Gopnik tells us about the great collector Albert C. Barnes
A new biography on the renowned businessman, who amassed one of the most important collections of Modern art in the US, looks at what made him tick
Don McCullin on swapping war zones for museums and why his ‘printing days are over’
The revered photojournalist has turned his focus to ancient statues for a new photography book
Features
Rain, insomnia and finding a model: how Morocco challenged and changed Matisse
The author of a new book, Jeff Koehler, tells us about the French artist’s fruitful but sometimes tricky sojourns in Tangier
Sex, beauty and the body: how Helen Chadwick shaped British contemporary art
The “provocative, punky, perverse” artist died far too young but her work’s influence endures, argues a new biography
The trials and tribulations of putting together Lucian Freud’s catalogue raisonné
The forensically researched volume on the British artist's oil paintings offers a depth of scrutiny that he himself was famous for
What is the art world reading?
Book extracts
Arshile Gorky’s experience as an immigrant to the US and the painting that defined it
An exclusive extract by Adam Gopnik on the Armenian American painter, taken from a collection of essays about the artist’s time in New York City
‘I thought I would be trampled to death’: travelling with Gilbert & George to put on a show in 1990s Beijing
An exclusive extract from a new book by James Birch who helped organise exhibitions for the artist duo in Communist Russia and China
‘An impossible stillness that artists have chased’: Alvaro Barrington on Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ
In this exclusive extract from a new book, the London-based artist explains why Piero’s painting is his favourite in the National Gallery collection
‘He laughed like a madman’: when Édouard Manet decided to touch up one of Berthe Morisot's paintings
An extract from a new book by Sebastian Smee—about the Impressionists during the Siege of Paris and Paris Commune—brings to life the peculiar episode of artistic intervention
Katherine Parr: power, patronage and the first full-length portrait of an English queen
In this exclusive extract from a new book about Henry VIII’s six wives, the art historian Suzannah Lipscomb writes about “perhaps the greatest artistic patron of them all”
In Pictures
In Pictures | Artist billboards across America tell a story of US politics today
Ahead of the November presidential election, a new book by the For Freedoms organisation brings together the topical and political posters that it has commissioned since 2016
In Pictures | Ukraine before the 2022 Russian invasion, from holidaymakers in Odesa to the frontlines of Mariupol
Mark Neville’s new photobook—of images taken over the past six years—is a call to action that has been sent to hundreds of politicians and other influential people around the world
In Pictures | How Gianfranco Gorgoni captured the mysticism of the Land Art movement
More than 150 rarely-seen photographs chronicle the history of seminal earthworks in the landscape
In Pictures | Behind the scenes of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work wrapping the Arc de Triomphe
A new book looks at the detailed preparations and 60 years of planning behind the work being unveiled in Paris
In Pictures | Barkley L. Hendricks unseen photographs gathered in new publication
The US artist’s images are joined by an extract from the book looking at how aspects of his painting and photography overlapped
