Book Reports

Founded in 2013 by art collector Eugenio López Alonso, the heir to the Jumex fruit juice fortune, Museo Jumex helped cement Mexico City as an international center for contemporary art. 10 Years recalls the first decade of incredible exhibitions mounted in the museum featuring global superstar artists like James Turrell, Gonzalo Lebrija, and Cy Twombly.

Twenty years ago, Phaidon first published The Art Book for Children, a colorful, lively, and easy-to-read volume that looks just as good on a coffee table as it does in a nursery. This year welcomes an update to the now classic book for budding art historians. The Art Book for Children remains a perfect gift for a new parent or for the kiddo with many follow up questions after a trip to the museum.

Pioneering designer and art director Herb Lubalin gets his due in a sweeping monograph of his work in developing typefaces, advertising, and publication design. A feast for the eyes, this book spans a storied career and looks back at the quintessential style of 1970s design spearheaded by Lubalin.

David Hockney is one of the most important artists in contemporary art. These forty-eight acrylic on canvas portraits are a departure from the more recent landscapes drawn on his iPad. Self-portraits and odes to Hockney’s partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, abound but one of the standout works is a notable cameo from fellow-Brit Harry Styles in a striped sweater, cross-legged in a rattan chair.

Art market expert Magnus Resch pulls back the curtain on collecting—and investing in—fine art. The novice and the expert can both benefit from Resch’s guidance for navigating art fairs, galleries, and auctions. The book is peppered with case studies and anecdotes from noted collectors such as Howard E. Rachofsky, Jeffrey Deitch, and a foreword by Pamela Joyner.

Since the beginning of human civilization clay has served as a useful material to create vessels like cups and pots. Even in creating these vital tools, humans cannot resist expressing themselves in the process. Ceramics explores sculpture from wheel-thrown and hand-built forms through the centuries revealing how a simple bowl has the power to teach us so much about the past.

Known for his visceral figurative paintings in postwar art, Francis Bacon was a monumental figure in the mid-twentieth century art world. This book is a compilation of his letters and notes sometimes literally illustrating the artist’s innermost thoughts. A prolific letter-writer, with a distinct handwriting style, Bacon enjoyed using clever words and powerful phrasing to illicit a response from his recipients.

Though he was born more than 130 years after Vincent Van Gogh, Matthew Wong felt a strong connection to the master of impressionism. Wong’s painting techniques and career arc are similar to that of Van Gogh, including his untimely death in 2019 at age thirty-five. Published in tandem with an exhibition of the same name at Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, this is a powerful volume that explores the painful yet enduring themes of self-doubt, isolation, and sadness.

Artists Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich were instrumental in transforming their cities after the Russian Revolution. As their influence on the western art world grew, they faced hunger, torture, and civil war in their home country. The Avant-Gardists is a rollicking history of the persistence of the Russian avant-garde.

After World War II, early photography giants Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger, and David Seymour created Magnum Photos, a cooperative that chronicling events and making images available for licensing to a wide range of media, corporations, or nonprofit organizations. At more than 700 pages, Magnum Magnum is a compendium of the best of the best in contemporary photography.

On April 30, 2024, Christian Keesee, the Brett Weston Archive, and ArtDesk co-hosted a book release party with Austin-based author Karen Valby and her newest book, The Swans of Harlem, a beautiful account of the incredible career that Lydia Abarca, Gayle McKinney-Griffith, Sheila Rohan, Karlya Shelton, and Marcia Sells had with The Dance Theatre of Harlem. While the Swans had a storied career dancing for dignitaries, icons like Josephine Baker and Stevie Wonder, and at the White House, there is virtually no record of their accomplishments—until now.