• The best books on The Sublime - On the Sublime by Longinus
  • The best books on The Sublime - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
  • The best books on The Sublime - Critique of the Power of Judgement by Immanuel Kant
  • The best books on The Sublime - The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
  • The best books on The Sublime - The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England by Samuel Monk

The best books on The Sublime, recommended by Robert Clewis

Whenever we go in search of rugged landscapes, thundering waterfalls or awesome vistas, we are in search of ‘the sublime’—an aesthetic quality that has been the subject of significant philosophical, artistic and psychological study. Here, philosopher Robert Clewis talks us through the landmark studies of the sublime, and makes some recommendations for those seeking introductory books on the subject.

  • The Best Books for Graphic Designers - Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition by Josef Albers
  • The Best Books for Graphic Designers - The Elements of Typographic Style: Version 4.0: 20th Anniversary Edition by Robert Bringhurst
  • The Best Books for Graphic Designers - Meggs' History of Graphic Design 6th Edition by Philip B. Meggs
  • The Best Books for Graphic Designers - A Designer's Art by Paul Rand
  • The Best Books for Graphic Designers - The Modern Poster by Stuart Wrede

The Best Books for Graphic Designers, recommended by Linda Secondari

What does it take to be a good graphic designer in our media-saturated age? Linda Secondari, member of the Executive Board of the Graphic Artists Guild, gives us a glimpse of her reference library, five must-have volumes for every design aspirant and those whose work relies on effective visual communication. That she is a book designer by trade is, of course, grist to our mill here at Five Books.

  • The best books on Goya and the art of biography - Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen by Giles Tremlett
  • The best books on Goya and the art of biography - de Kooning: An American Master by Annalyn Swan & Mark Stevens
  • The best books on Goya and the art of biography - El «Cuaderno italiano», 1770-1786: los orígenes del arte de Goya by Jesús Urrea Fernández & Manuela B. Mena Marqués
  • The best books on Goya and the art of biography - Cartas a Martín Zapater by Mercedes Águeda & Xavier de Salas
  • The best books on Goya and the art of biography - The Peninsular War: A New History by Charles Esdaile

The best books on Goya and the art of biography, recommended by Janis Tomlinson

The art of Francisco de Goya reflects the social and political chaos of Spain in his day, leaving later generations to read into his prolific work—by turns formal and bizarre, official and fantastic—many often contradictory interpretations. Art historian Janis Tomlinson recommends books that disentangle Goya from the retroactive projections of later admirers and situates him in his own time. We also consider what makes for a compelling biography.

  • Best Books on the Art Museum - The Art Museum: From Boullee to Bilbao by Andrew McClellan
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - A View from the Pacific: Re-Envisioning the Art Museum by Michael Govan
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Anti-Museum by Adrian Franklin
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Dinah Casson
  • Best Books on the Art Museum - Living Museums: Conversations with Leading Museum Directors by Donatien Grau

Best Books on the Art Museum, recommended by Charles Saumarez Smith

How has the architecture, vision, financing and public role of art museums around the world been transformed in the last century? And what does the history of art museums presage for their future as contested sites of cultural significance in the context of the pandemic’s challenge to public gathering places? Charles Saumarez Smith, one of the UK’s leading museum figures, brings us five books that reveal both the historic, civic humanist mission of the art museum, and its antithesis in the face of twenty first century challenges.

  • The best books on Northern Renaissance - The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany by Michael Baxandall
  • The best books on Northern Renaissance - The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550 by David Landau & Peter Parshall
  • The best books on Northern Renaissance - The Art of Arts by Anita Albus
  • The best books on Northern Renaissance - Bosch and Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life by Joseph Leo Koerner
  • The best books on Northern Renaissance - Into the White: The Renaissance Arctic and the End of the Image by Christopher P. Heuer

The best books on Northern Renaissance, recommended by Christopher S. Wood

The Renaissance had quite distinct manifestations in Northern Europe and Italy: if the Southern Renaissance was all about abundance and positivity, the dominant theme of the Northern Renaissance was negativity, says New York University Professor Christopher S. Wood. He recommends what to read to learn more about the Northern Renaissance, from Bosch’s fantasy bestiary of the demonic and the grotesque, to Bruegel’s comic and badly proportioned peasants.

  • The best books on Design - Designing Design by Kenya Hara
  • The best books on Design - The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) by John Maeda
  • The best books on Design - Design: The Invention of Desire by Jessica Helfand
  • The best books on Design - Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships by Gail Greet Hannah
  • The best books on Design - Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary by Jasper Morrison & Naoto Fukasawa

The best books on Design, recommended by Kevin G. Bethune

When we think of design, we often think of objects, typefaces and graphic art. In fact, Kevin G. Bethune argues, design is an essential human activity that goes far beyond that to encompass designing institutions and social structures, a continuum that extends from the material world to our civic existence and the ways in which we collaborate to solve problems and achieve collective ends.

  • The best books on Understanding the Nude - Ways of Seeing by John Berger
  • The best books on Understanding the Nude - The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality by Lynda Nead
  • The best books on Understanding the Nude - Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy by Ruth Barcan
  • The best books on Understanding the Nude - A Brief History of Nakedness by Philip Carr-Gomm
  • The best books on Understanding the Nude - Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism by Brian Hoffman

The best books on Understanding the Nude, recommended by Annebella Pollen

Nudity is not the same as the nude. Nor is nudity the same as nudism, but they tend to overlap quite a lot in people’s minds. Annebella Pollen, an authority on the many varied forms of British nudism in the twentieth century shares key influences on her own research to help us unpack (or undress?) the idea of nudity in western culture, showing the many ways in which nakedness can be a form of dress.

  • The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement - The Routledge Companion to William Morris by Florence Boos
  • The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement - William Morris by Linda Parry
  • The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement - International Arts and Crafts by Karen Livingstone & Linda Parry
  • The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement - Views of Albion: The Reception of British Art and Design in Central Europe, 1890 –1918 by Andrzej Szczerski
  • The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement - National Style and the Nation-State: Design in Poland from the Vernacular Revival to the International Style by David Crowley

The best books on The Arts and Crafts Movement, recommended by Julia Griffin

Originating in 19th-century Britain, the Arts and Crafts movement was an international phenomenon extending across many media to Europe, America and Japan. Julia Griffin, who has examined its impact in Poland, tells us how it advanced notions of national identity and provided roots to modernism by establishing a sensitivity to materials, designs, and forms, a sensibility that is still with us today.

  • The best books on Figurative Painting Today - Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism by B. H. D. Buchloch, David Joselit, Hal Foster & Rosalind E. Krauss
  • The best books on Figurative Painting Today - Painting Today by Tony Godfrey
  • The best books on Figurative Painting Today - Painting (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art) by Terry R. Myers
  • The best books on Figurative Painting Today - Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting by Barry Schwabsky
  • The best books on Figurative Painting Today - Picturing People: The New State of the Art by Charlotte Mullins

The best books on Figurative Painting Today, recommended by Julien Delagrange

Collectors and curators have been clamouring for figurative art in recent years, as a generation of painters take a more traditional, representational approach to addressing major cultural themes in their work. But is figurative painting today merely a reactionary impulse, a kind of nostalgia for art that preceded modernism, postmodernism and the fragmentation in art-making that was ushered in by conceptual art? There is much more to it than that, argues painter and art historian Julien Delagrange.

  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Emil and the Detectives by Eileen Hall (translator) & Erich Kästner
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Private View: The Lively World of British Art by Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), Bryan Robertson & John Russell
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - A Free House!: Or, The Artist as Craftsman by Walter Richard Sickert
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Memoirs of the Life of John Constable: Composed Chiefly of His Letters by C.R. Leslie
  • The best books on Lucian Freud - Nollekens and his Times: Comprehending A Life Of That Celebrated Sculptor, And Memoirs Of Several Contemporary Artists

The best books on Lucian Freud, recommended by William Feaver

Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to his confidante and frequent collaborator, William Feaver, on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver’s transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume biography. He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century.

  • The Best Books by Artists - The Artist and His Critic Stripped Bare: Correspondence by Marcel Duchamp & Robert Lebel
  • The Best Books by Artists - Worte Nicht in Giftige Buchstaben Einwickeln by Lisa Wenger & Meret Oppenheim
  • The Best Books by Artists - Diaries by Eva Hesse
  • The Best Books by Artists - Robert Voit: The Alphabet of New Plants by Robert Voit
  • The Best Books by Artists - Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian by Hans Ulrich Obrist

The Best Books by Artists, recommended by Michaela Unterdörfer

Why should we read what visual artists have written? Michaela Unterdörfer, head of publishing for the art gallery Hauser & Wirth, argues that the visual and artistic language of artists makes archival material more immediate and compelling. Artists’ testimonies refer not only to physical archives but above all to the mental archives of artists, their cultural and historic inheritance, which books like these bring to life.

  • The best books on Minimalism - In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
  • The best books on Minimalism - Donald Judd Writings by Donald Judd
  • The best books on Minimalism - Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki
  • The best books on Minimalism - Silence by John Cage
  • The best books on Minimalism - Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art by Nancy Princenthal

The best books on Minimalism, recommended by Kyle Chayka

In times of political or personal turmoil, there’s a tendency to seek solace in stripping back life to its bare essentials. Minimalist thought is threaded through Stoicism and Zen Buddhism; absence and space became major preoccupations of 1960s US art. Kyle Chayka, the art critic and author of The Longing for Less, recommends five books on the philosophy that underpins the present fad for minimalist self-help.

  • The best books on Venice - The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin
  • The best books on Venice - Italian Venice: A History by R.J.B. Bosworth
  • The best books on Venice - The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith
  • The best books on Venice - The Architectural History of Venice by Deborah Howard
  • The best books on Venice - Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon

The best books on Venice, recommended by Matthew Rice

Venice once ruled an empire that stretched across the eastern Mediterranean, but by the early modern period was already evolving into a city whose greatest claim to fame was as a tourist destination. Here Matthew Rice, author and illustrator of Venice: A Sketchbook Guide, recommends books to read about Venice and its history and architecture, as well as a couple of crime thrillers to read while you’re there.

  • The best books on Drawing and Painting - The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed
  • The best books on Drawing and Painting - The Journal of Eugene Delacroix by Eugene Delacroix
  • The best books on Drawing and Painting - The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
  • The best books on Drawing and Painting - On Painting by Leon Battista Alberti
  • The best books on Drawing and Painting - Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland

The best books on Drawing and Painting, recommended by Juliette Aristides

Geniuses may only be born once a century or so, but great art gets made all the time. Some of it follows atelier methods inspired by an apprenticeship model that has been handed down through the centuries. Juliette Aristides, an artist at the forefront of the atelier revival movement, discusses five books that are ‘core curriculum’ for anyone who wants to learn how to paint and draw, and thereby explore the virtues of sustained attention and close observation that come with making representational art.

  • The best books on Rembrandt - Rembrandt: The Painter at Work by Ernst van de Wetering
  • The best books on Rembrandt - Rembrandt's Universe: His Art, His Life, His World by Gary Schwartz
  • The best books on Rembrandt - Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama
  • The best books on Rembrandt - The Painter and the Girl by Margriet de Moor
  • The best books on Rembrandt - Rembrandt: the Complete Drawings & Etchings by Peter Schatborn

The best books on Rembrandt, recommended by Onno Blom

Though he left more self-portraits to posterity than practically any Old Master, there remains an air of mystery around Rembrandt the man—even on the 350th anniversary of his death. Piecing together the very few personal letters and documents left behind, Onno Blom has now reconstructed Rembrandt’s formative years in Young Rembrandt. Here he guides us through five of the most authoritative—and imaginative—accounts of the artist.

  • The best books on John Ruskin - The Life of John Ruskin by W. G. Collingwood
  • The best books on John Ruskin - Ruskin Today by Kenneth Clark
  • The best books on John Ruskin - John Ruskin: A Life in Pictures by James S. Dearden
  • The best books on John Ruskin - Effie in Venice by Mary Lutyens
  • The best books on John Ruskin - The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton by Charles Eliot Norton

The best books on John Ruskin, recommended by Michael Glover

As a believer in the humanising nature of proper work, the virtues of sustained attention and the value of aesthetics as the keystone to ideals for a truly prosperous society, John Ruskin’s abiding concerns are still very much with us today. On the bicentenary of this eminent Victorian’s birth, Michael Glover, author of the idiosyncratic Ruskin Dictionary, explains why we should still be reading Ruskin closely in the twenty first century.

  • The best books on Bohemian Living - Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art by Dan Franck
  • The best books on Bohemian Living - Laughing Torso by Nina Hamnett
  • The best books on Bohemian Living - David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years by Michael Luke
  • The best books on Bohemian Living - The Surrender of Silence: A Memoir of Ironfoot Jack, King of the Bohemians by Jack Rudolph Neave
  • The best books on Bohemian Living - Francis Bacon’s Gilded Gutter Life by Daniel Farson

The best books on Bohemian Living, recommended by Darren Coffield

The bohemian world of London and Paris in the 20th century was a fabled land, where people could go to get lost, reinvent themselves and live life as they wanted. Poverty, alcoholism and misery were often the frequent travelling companions on this journey but, Darren Coffield argues, these marginalised areas of society allowed for a freedom that is almost unimaginable in our own world. He picks the best books on bohemian living.

  • The best books on Future Cities - City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn by William J. Mitchell
  • The best books on Future Cities - The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture: City, Technology and Society in the Information Age by Federico Soriano, Fernando Porras, José Morales, Manuel Gausa, Vicente Guallart & Willy Müller
  • The best books on Future Cities - Cities In Civilization by Peter Hall
  • The best books on Future Cities - The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers and the Future of Urban Life by Carlo Ratti & Matthew Claudel
  • The best books on Future Cities - Local Code: 3,659 Proposals about Data, Design and the Nature of Cities by Nicholas de Monchaux

The best books on Future Cities, recommended by Davina Jackson

We are a city-dwelling species. Our urban existence creates both opportunities and challenges, as the recent pandemic has illustrated. One thing seems clear, however. Understanding the way we interact with our built environment is becoming an increasingly data-driven enterprise, as Davina Jackson argues compellingly in her book, Data Cities. Here, she shares the five books that best explain the technology behind the urban planning of the future.

  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Turner: Imagination and Reality by Lawrence Gowing
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers by T J Clark
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable by Ronald Paulson
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by Musa Mayer
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books - Neglected Genius: The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1808–1846 by Benjamin Robert Haydon

Andrew Graham-Dixon on His Favourite Art Books

Art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon takes us through his favourite art books, one of which is the best thing he has ever read about art. He contends that Monet is a follower of Turner, reflects on how the purpose of history of art has changed, and introduces us to the diaries of an “astonishingly bad” painter which reveal him to be one of the nineteenth century’s greatest prose writers.

  • The best books on The Renaissance - Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy by Michael Baxandall
  • The best books on The Renaissance - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
  • The best books on The Renaissance - Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance by Lisa Jardine
  • The best books on The Renaissance - The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth L Eisenstein
  • The best books on The Renaissance - The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The best books on The Renaissance, recommended by Jerry Brotton

A century-and-a-half ago the Swiss art historian, Jacob Burckhardt, popularized the idea of a ‘Renaissance’ in 14th century Italy. For most people, the term still conjures up works of art by the likes of Michelangelo or Leonardo. But there is much, much more to it than that. Professor of Renaissance studies, Jerry Brotton, picks the best books to read for a more complete understanding of the Renaissance.

  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art by Joseph Leo Koerner
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting by Victor Stoichita
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - On Photography by Susan Sontag
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
  • The best books on The Lives of Artists - Just Kids by Patti Smith

The best books on The Lives of Artists, recommended by Maria Loh

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh, author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master, talks to Five Books about the curated self.

  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces by Philip Steadman
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Il Libro dell'Arte by Cennino Cennini
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Vision and Art by Margaret Livingstone
  • The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method - Letters on Cézanne by Rainer Maria Rilke

The best books on Vermeer and Studio Method, recommended by Jane Jelley

Painting is not what it used to be. With materials and photography close to hand, it’s easy to forget the sheer labour involved in producing an Old Master canvas. What does studio method – the making of masterpieces – tell us about artistic genius, then and now? Painter Jane Jelley considers the question using Johannes Vermeer as her starting point.