Book Reports

Building on the success of its predecessor, The Art Museum—a 2017 compendium of world art history for adults—The Ultimate Art Museum guides younger readers along a virtual tour of human creativity that stretches from cave paintings and Greek pottery to Renaissance masterpieces and contemporary sculpture. Color-coded galleries with maps and pop-out facts offer an accessible introduction to eons of cultures and movements.

Featuring a diverse collection of media, backgrounds, and messages, African Artists showcases 316 creators who’ve called the continent home over the past 140 years. More than fifty experts collaborated to profile artists such as Nigerian nineteenth-century painter Aina Onabolu, who gives the book its starting year, along with internationally known names and up-and-comers.

From paints made from the remains of humans and animals (mummy brown) to famous hues named for German goblins (cobalt), the history of pigments is fascinating, frequently toxic, and sometimes repulsive. David Coles, founder of Langridge Artist Colours in Melbourne, delves into the origins of more than fifty pigments in a beautifully photographed volume that includes recipes to create your own.

New York City photographer Charles H. Traub’s compilation of more than 200 smartphone photos is a reminder of the beauty—and the weight—hidden in mundane scenes of everyday life. Shot over the course of four years, the images may seem random at first glance. However, as they progress through each series, they reveal an interconnectedness that is often funny and sometimes unnerving.

With a social-media world fixated on selfies, a history of portraiture feels especially pertinent to our time. Plenty of famous photographers and faces populate the pages of this book, but striking compositions of ordinary people, historic studio poses, and a section exploring digital portraits—including unnervingly realistic synthetic creations of human faces and, of course, selfies—round out the topic in this expansive overview.

Over six years, Magnum photographer Matt Black traveled 100,000 miles across the United States, documenting some of its poorest areas. The result is a visual and textual diary equal parts beautiful and gut-wrenching. Visceral black-and-white photos, collages of found objects like homeless signs and crushed cigarette packs, and Black’s notes from the road cast doubt on the reality of the American Dream.

Whether sampling the varying shades of blue and yellow John James Audubon used to illustrate bird beaks or scrutinizing the tones of Prince’s concert outfits and Tonya Harding’s skating costumes, Edith Young presents a unique study of the uses of color in art history, contemporary art, and pop culture. Forty palettes representing a range of subjects will have readers reconsidering the world around them through Pantone-colored glasses.

Following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the country endeavored to reinvent itself. Over the next fifty years, this hopeful spirit was reflected in the bright, idealized imagery that prevailed in its advertisements and printed materials, from brochures to postage stamps—more than 400 of which are cataloged in this testament to Mexico’s influence on the world of graphic design.

The Kitchen Studio is both a cookbook and an art book, as Italian chef and restaurateur Massimo Bottura explains in his compilation of recipes shared and illustrated by more than seventy artists. Drawings, photos, collages, and other visuals from the likes of Studio Olafur Eliasson, Jimmie Durham, and Ghada Amer accompany culinary creations that range from straightforward to strange.

“If design can be thought of as an evolving vocabulary, Woman Made seeks to position women as key orators,” Jane Hall writes in her introduction to this ode that gives long-overdue recognition to the impact female designers have had on the field and in daily life. Photos of critical works—from textiles and cutlery to lighting and furniture—accompany short biographies of 200 creators.

Accompanying an exhibition of the same name on view at the Dallas Museum of Art this spring, this book explores the influence of Islamic art on French luxury house Maison Cartier. Intricate Islamic designs from manuscripts, mosque walls, jewelry, and more—alongside descriptions tracing their history and the inspiration they invoked—share pages with the opulent jewelry and accessories that made Cartier famous.

A self-described abstract expressionist and contemporary of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, Agnes Martin created pieces that were “meditations on innocence, beauty, happiness, and love.” This life and career retrospective, written by art dealer and longtime friend Arne Glimcher, intersperses essays, lectures, and Martin’s own poetic writings on notebook paper about topics like inspiration and perception among an extensive gallery of her work.