The Best Art Books

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.

Kayla Rae Whitaker composes an ode to ‘women who make things’, from wooden dolls to indie music, and post-modern triptychs to the best candy bar you’ll ever taste. These are tales about what happens when the muse becomes the artist

The biographer and editor of John Berger reveals how Berger's self-characterisation as a storyteller is visible across the numerous genres he writes in.

Good writing about visual experience allows us to see things we otherwise wouldn't, says Rachel Cohen. The author picks some of her own favourite books about art.

It used to be said that you could be parachuted into any country and know where you were from the typeface used on its road signs. The author of Just My Type tells us about the variety and meaning of different fonts.

What is pop art? Why did it catch on, and what does it mean? And what about Warhol – was his work as superficial as he liked to say it was? The art professor answers all this and more

The author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, who is also a ceramic artist, tells us about books that have influenced both his careers, from the life of a celebrated potter to a collection of Japanese haiku

Pictures operate in space, words in time, and the best stories are told with both, says the acclaimed American author and cartoonist, Ben Katchor. He tells us how visual narratives are making a deserved comeback.

'People learn how to read critically and think critically, but I don’t believe we learn how to see critically.'

One of the world's leading garden photographers talks us through the many different styles employed in his field