Books

Booksnews

The very first Monuments Man

Alexandre Lenoir, the founder of the Musée des Monuments Français

Booksnews

The changeable Californian: on Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn’s four-volume catalogue raisonné reveals his variable styles

Booksnews

The Storr story: how Paul Storr designed and orchestrated the production of silverware

For 45 years in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the silversmith made exuberant work

Booksnews

Remains of Gauguin’s father found near Tierra del Fuego

Scientists matched DNA from the artist’s teeth with bones belonging to Clovis Gauguin—and confirmed the ancestry of Paul’s grandson

Booksnews

Catalystic collecting

This Festschrift for Peter Hecht illuminates the transformative powers of museum acquisitions

Booksnews

200,000 incantations a day to enliven his art

The art of the Japanese Buddhist monk Tankai

Reviewnews

Blockbuster on a manageable scale: on Richard Dorment

A farewell collection of reviews by the American-born, British art critic

Reviewnews

Glocal dynamics versus the R-word

Roman art shared a common visual repertory throughout the Empire, but there were significant variations in local styles

Reviewnews

Tracey the Tory: on the YBAs

A new history of Britart is long on anecdote but short on critical insight

Many strategies for survival: Barbara Rose on painting after Postmodernism

Rumors of the death of painting have been greatly exaggerated

Reviewnews

The archaic torso lesson

Rainer Maria Rilke’s apprenticeship under Auguste Rodin

Reviewnews

Small but perfectly formed

A complete historical catalogue of the Wallace Collection’s Italian sculptures

Reviewnews

Long may he continue: on John Berger at 90

Writings, new and old, by the nonagenarian, Marxist and self-confessed “stop-gap” storyteller

Reviewnews

Poop and pray: on domestic devotion in ancient Greece and Rome

New discoveries are changing how we understand ancient domesticity

Reviewnews

'Art too is just a way of living': on Rachel Corbett's You Must Change Your Life

A splendid new book examines what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke learned from Auguste Rodin

Reviewnews

Porcelain’s poor relation

Chinese painted enamels on copper are now valued in their own right

Reviewnews

Kissin’ and collectin’ cousins

How one branch of a German noble family married into every European royal family and acquired spectacular works of art

Booksnews

‘We’re a part of American art too’: Black artists speak on their roles in art history

A new book surveys four generations of abstract art in the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection

Reviewnews

What did Rembrandt think he was doing?

Exploring the artist's treatment of movement

Reviewnews

Grand melancholy and class: on Anthony van Dyck

The artist’s soulful portraits conferred high status on his sitters—and on subsequent owners

Reviewnews

How Jewish identity shaped artistic patronage in turn-of-the-century Vienna

A new book offers a study of Jewish patrons in fin de siècle Vienna

Reviewnews

Not a step wrong: on Pompeo Batoni

A revised catalogue of the artist's work brings his achievements into view