Books

Booksarchive

Book Review: The arch of time

From its invention by the Romans, the monumental arch has been a feature of the built environment ever since

Book Review: A largely visual tour of Anselm Kiefer’s enormous studios and working methods

More than 300 illustrations explain how the German artist’s studio spaces have played a fundamental role in shaping his vision, work and philosophy

Booksarchive

Parr and Badger's photobook trilogy completed with The Photobook: a History

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger explore propaganda, conflict, sex, and death

Booksarchive

Books: A far from academic set-up at the Académie royale

The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture promoted “diversity of manners” rather than stylistic unity

Booksarchive

Portrait of Prince Nicholas II Esterházy as an avid collector, a bankrupt, and a womaniser

The Prince's passions cost him his fortune but gave Hungary a fine collection of art

Eli Broadarchive

If you read one book this year, make it one of these

Art-world luminaries, from Eli Broad and Marina Warner to Tim Marlow and Xu Bing, pick the best art books they read in 2013

The scholarly battle over Beuys

Let’s admit it: without the artist to explain and animate his work, much of it is incomprehensible

Booksarchive

Books: The saviour of the Warburg Institute

Alongside Warburg, there was no room for Fritz Saxl to be anything other than his most faithful assistant

Books: William Morris and creating a social fabric

An indispensable book on Morris’s revolutionary cloth designs and techniques—and the political views that inspired them

Booksarchive

Book Review: The first in-depth study of Pre-Raphaelite stained glass

Angels and Icons is an important contribution to Pre-Raphaelite studies and a welcome addition to scholarship on post-Medieval stained glass in Britain

Booksarchive

Books: How Warburg helped to invent the exhibition—and the curator

The art historian’s collected writings include an illuminating essay drawn from his dazzling, lengthy lectures

Magnum Contact Sheets go under the microscope

A heavyweight volume exploring Magnum Photos goes in between the contact sheets to celebrate a dying technique

Booksarchive

Maiolica explained through the world’s greatest collection of Renaissance decorative art

This book, linked to a current exhibition, explores the V&A’s unrivalled holdings

Booksreview

From the archive | Book review: How Caspar David Friedrich's star rose in the age of post-modernism

A magnificent visual record of the work of the German artist, who was virtually unknown before the 1960s, is matched by its scholarly text

Books: Francis Bacon, metaphysician

A new book considers the theological dimensions of the artist’s paintings

Forgeriesarchive

Books: The fake’s progress from a sign of genius to a nefarious act... and back again

The history and scholarship of art forgery, and a faker’s delighted account of a life of deception

Booksarchive

Book Review: Ford Madox Brown’s moment

This catalogue is the first comprehensive examination of the pre-Raphaelite artist’s career for half a century

Phaidonarchive

New owner plans digital future for Phaidon

Leon Black says art publisher to launch digital products

Booksarchive

Books: Raphael—all things to all ages

Three new monographs show the artist is still the equal of Leonardo and Michelangelo, if not so popular

Booksarchive

Books in brief: Paul Nash in Pictures

This book is a welcome reinterpretation of Nash for contemporary audiences

A tale of two ladies

Investigators sit neatly on the fence

Ottoman perspectives

This original and brilliant book describes how Western archaeology and archaeologists appeared to Turkish eyes.

Books: The ecumenicity of iconophobia

Christian, Jewish and Muslim anxieties about images

Booksarchive

Book Review: A decade of change between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetic movement

An excellently wrought assessment of the cast of characters that defined the mid-19th century