Summer has a way of making room for the kind of reading that gets crowded out the rest of the year — not lighter reading, necessarily, but slower reading. A biography you can actually sink into, an exhibition catalogue that rewards attention. An argument about art and the mind that you can sit with over a few days rather than racing through during weeks of deadlines and meetings.
None of the books on this list are 'beach reads' in the usual sense (I can't see you lugging some of them to the beach or the pool). What follows is a short, deliberate list — books that are genuinely readable, genuinely good, and genuinely worth the time you'll give them.
EPISODE TIMESTAMPS
00:24 - Introduction
01:21 - "Anni Albers: A Life"
02:12 - "Vermeer's Afterlives"
03:07 - "Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World"
04:16 - "Cecily Brown: Picture Making"
05:19 - "Willem de Kooning Drawing"
06:58 - "Hidden Modernism: The Fascination with the Occult Around 1900"
PURCHASE THESE BOOKS
"Anni Albers: A Life" by Nicholas Fox Weber
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300269376/anni-albers/
"Vermeer’s Afterlives" by Ruth Bernard Yeazell
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691277820/vermeers-afterlives
"Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World" by Alyce Mahon
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300244601/dorothea-tanning/
"Cecily Brown: Picture Making"
https://shop.serpentinegalleries.org/products/cecily-brown-picture-making-catalogue
"Willem de Kooning Drawing" Edited by Kevin Salatino, Mel Becker Solomon, Charlotte Healy and Margaret Holben Ellis. Contributions by Stephen Mack, Christa Noel Robbins, Robert Storr and Ludo van Halem
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300288544/willem-de-kooning-drawing/
"Hidden Modernism: The Fascination with the Occult around 1900"
Edited by Matthias Dusini, Ivan Ristic, Hans-Peter Wipplinger. Text by Karl Baier, Matthias Dusini, Laura Feurle, Kira Kaufmann, Astrid Kury, Michaela Lindinger, Therese Muxeneder, Ivan Ristic.
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"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden
