Books
Book Review: How we almost lost the Mona Lisa
The Spanish involvement with Nazi-looted art and the part played by the Austrian resistance in saving works of art are among the revelations in this book
The use of American art in the Cold War
This book reveals how the CIA’s promoted US artists as a way of stopping the spread of Communism in the years after World War II
The Victoria and Albert Museum. The great Kensington Kunstkammer
The museum and the Great Exhibition from which it derives are the subject of five new books
Books: All the marvels of Mughal painting
The latest volume in the catalogues of the Khalili Collection describes the art of the Muslim courts of India
Books: Expanding on Hallmark's photographic collection
This second edition includes even more of the collection, providing a fine survey of the medium in America
Books: Modernism behind the Iron Curtain and in wartime Paris
The progress of Modernism in the Communist States and the response of the French Avant-garde to World War I are examined in these two books
Books: Essays on sex, gender and identity in Dada
Naomi Sawelson-Gorse edits this collection on the often overlooked women of Dada
The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany
Medieval German women’s art and spirituality examined with too much of the gender-studies approach
Books: Recognising the writer, Dalí
A new collection draws attention towards a neglected part of the Surrealist's output
Two new books examine ceramics from different points of view
One is a technical and stylistic analysis; the other a cultural critique. Both are well worth a read
Books: Capa's photographs of the Spanish Civil War
Tales of stoicism in the face of extreme adversity
The lives of the collectors: J. Pierpont Morgan. Everything but the art
This blockbuster biography records the life of the American financier in exhaustive and exhausting detail, but fails to tell the story of his collecting
Man Ray photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum
The book forms part of the museum's paperback photography series
“Private dreams and unknowable pleasures” in early photography
Clementina, Lady Hawarden, a forgotten precursor of Julia Margaret Cameron, is the subject of this book and of the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition
Books: Salvador Dalí’s art and writing receives refreshing review
A new study of the Surrealist painter's life and work
Books: Wyndham Lewis and the art of modern war
This collection positions Lewis as an “anti-war war artist”
Books: Caroline Tisdall's new book is the way to go on anything Beuys
This substantial volume, predominantly photographic, is the comprehensive account of Joseph Beuys’s life and work
Publishing Tate's colourful past to celebrate its centenary
Histories and anecdotes of the Tate Gallery and the British Museum
Lives of the collectors: Norton Simon and Hans Berggruen. Culture clash
Similar in many ways, the subjects of these two biographies present contrasting styles of operation in the art market
Books: The market muscles its way back onto the agenda, with Bacon and the body keeping pace
Mammon’s shrine in the groves of academe
Lives of collectors: a faux Frick biography
This biography of Henry Clay Frick takes a psychological approach that leaves much to be desired
Giorgione: the painter of “poetic brevity”
This study is based on a close look at conservation and restoration research, a scientific examination of the artist’s technique, and new documentary evidence
"Renaissance women patrons, wives and widows in Italy, c. 1300-1550"
Catherine E. King's book reviewed
Books: Leonardo's beginnings
This study maintains that Verrocchio’s “Tobias and the angel” in London is the first example of the artist’s hand
Books: Carlo James explores the history of art conservation
A critical look at old and new conservation and preservation techniques
Books: Guido Reni, loved by the Victorians, despised by modernists and purists
Reni is in for a late twentieth-century treatment as political activist and secretly gay
Timothy Mowl's William Beckford biography casts the famed collector as "a sexual and architectural Lucifer"
The story of the Regency dilettante, eccentric and collector is told in all its scandalous detail
The haphazard methods of art restoration over the past 400 years
Christine Sitwell and Sarah Staniforth (eds), Studies in the history of painting restoration
Collector profile: Sir Paul Getty's two weaknesses, books and cricket
Over twenty-five years this Anglo-American has built up a great library of early books, manuscripts and incunabula
Portrait miniatures, Little England
Three books demonstrate the revival of interest in portrait miniatures and the leading role of the Victoria and Albert Museum in this field