The Best Art Books

From the Baroque painter who killed a man in Rome during the Counter-Reformation to the surrealist artist who left Britain and died in Mexico City in 2011, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux talks to us about her favorite biographies of artists. Her new biography of Paul Gauguin, Wild Thing, is out this week and has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

From the latest research on what art does to the brain to how women in Renaissance times used cosmetics, this year saw a range of accessible and authoritative books about art. Art historian Francesca Ramsay recommends her best art books of 2023—and argues that for all the doom and gloom, it's an exciting time to be an artist.

Artists the world over interpreted Modernism in very distinctive ways, explains the expert curator Chris Stephens. In Britain, painters like David Hockney and Francis Bacon worked in transatlantic dialogue with their contemporaries in the US, producing "English-accented echoes." Here, Stephens selects five of the best books on Modern British painting that illuminate its place within a global movement.

Doodling is no mere pastime; drawing is a form of thinking. In fact, visuospatial reasoning underlies all thinking, as this selection of books about drawing from painter and scholar Andrea Kantrowitz shows us. Just pick up a pencil and draw!

Art shows were back in full force this year after several years of discontinuous viewing. Publishing kept pace, with many a new beautiful volume and rafts of revisionist art history to delve into. Here, Five Books art editor Romas Viesulas offers an overview of the best art and design books of 2022.

Which art, architecture, design and photography books have we added to our library in 2021? Romas Viesulas, art & architecture editor at Five Books, takes us through his personal choice of beautiful reference books to add visual and conceptual interest to any well-appointed bookshelf.

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.

Which art, architecture and photography books have we added to our library in 2020? Romas Viesulas, art & architecture editor at Five Books, takes us through his personal choice of beautiful reference books and biographies to add visual and conceptual interest to any well-appointed bookshelf.

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.

Every generation has its own Leonardo, and for many he remains a man of mystery. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor in Art History at Oxford and the author of Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, helps us identify the non-mythical Leonardo. What might Leonardo be doing were he alive today, in our own digital age?