A Holiday Art Book Gift Guide, for Every Artsy Archetype

"The best art novel of recent years is Brandon Taylor's Minor Black Figures. It's a tricky genre, but readers both steeped in and mystified by the art world will find it affecting. Olivia Laing's genre-bending The Silver Book melds art writing, historical interviews, and fiction in a novel that follows famed Italian filmmakers navigating fascism (reviewed here). And Imani Perry's Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People is a moving meditation on a cool hue's history and meaning, tracing everything from Coretta Scott King's blue wedding dress to the blue of the sky and sea marking the Middle Passage."

"This year, Americana icon Stephen Shore published Early Work-early as in age 13. It might sound audacious, but the images are anything but amateur; as our reviewer notes, MoMA acquired Shore's work when he was just 14. If you want something more classic and Christmas-y, there's Lee Friedlander: Christmas, a collection of holiday photographs by one of the medium's greats. For the more conceptually inclined, consider Sophie Calle's Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished, a compendium of projects she never completed, first assembled when she moved into the Picasso Museum-where, she told A.i.A., she began thinking about the legacy she'll leave behind."

Brandon Taylor's Minor Black Figures functions as an affecting art novel for readers both steeped in and mystified by the art world. Olivia Laing's The Silver Book blends art writing, historical interviews, and fiction to follow Italian filmmakers navigating fascism. Imani Perry's Black in Blues traces the history and cultural meaning of the color blue, linking Coretta Scott King's blue wedding dress to the sky and sea of the Middle Passage. Stephen Shore's Early Work collects photographs made as early as age 13, with MoMA acquiring his work when he was 14. Lee Friedlander: Christmas gathers holiday photographs. Sophie Calle's Catalogue Raisonne9 of the Unfinished compiles projects she never completed. Johanna Hedva's How to Tell When We Will Die interrogates illness and disability through visceral embodiment. Nayland Blake's My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio collects writings and interviews from 1983–2024.

Read at ARTnews.com