Romas Viesulas

Interviews by Romas Viesulas

The best books on Modern British Painting, recommended by Chris Stephens

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.

The best books on Surfing, recommended by Gerry Lopez

The second best thing about surfing is talking about it afterward. Surf legend Gerry ‘Mr Pipeline’ Lopez’s collection of surfing stories Surf is Where You Find It, now out in its third edition, relates some of the epic waves he’s encountered, and the legendary individuals he met along the way in a lifetime’s pursuit of the glide on the ocean and on the land. Here, he picks five books on surfing by friends and heroes who have found lessons in surfing about what it means to live life well.

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 Wanderlust, recommended by Matthew Brookes & Zack Raffin

What does it mean to live wild and young and free? We asked the authors of a photography book on surf van culture along the California coast—”a story of youth choosing to follow their dreams, living out of vans, existing for surf and travel and freedom, and always chasing the best waves”—for references that help answer this question. Wanderlust can be a philosophy for life, as these books illustrate beautifully.

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 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.

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 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.

The best books on Punk Rock (in 80s America), recommended by Kevin Mattson

Punk is more than just a musical genre. It is an ethos. Channelling one’s anger against the triteness of the culture industry’s offerings can be a spontaneous and creative act of resistance and rebellion. Moreover, as Kevin Mattson shows in this selection of books about punk in the 1980s in America, attending a rock concert by a band like the Dead Kennedys was a formative political experience for a generation of citizens, akin to attending a rally or a party convention. It was a spirit of constructive anarchy that can still channel the political anger of the alienated in the 21st century.

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, 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, 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 Literary Letter Collections, recommended by Lucas Zwirner

The next release in the ekphrasis series from David Zwirner Books is Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, including an introduction by Michael Bracewell and a colour portrait of Wilde by Marlene Dumas. Head of Content Lucas Zwirner talks to Five Books about the inspiration he’s drawn from literary letters and how they inform the editorial direction of the publishing house.

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.

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, 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.