Summer Reads. Books that take you somewhere magical
It’s all good. OK, you may not be getting on a plane or a train this summer. Little lizards could be the only things scampering over the paved area round the pool of your rented villa. Hermit crabs the only things scuttling across your favourite bit of beach.
Perfect eye let slip on gym shoes from Brora
But it doesn’t matter. Because with books you can travel anywhere in the world or in the universe, you want to go. You can go there in your head. So, there are no queues, no jostling, no have-your-passports-ready, no customs, no air con necessary.
Fabulous.
Just you and the best company you could ask for: your imagination. Enjoy a world tour of 500 must-see artworks.
Discover the Vienna Klimt, Schiele and their contemporaries would have been familiar with. Roam through ancient cities, gaze at ancient monuments.
You can go even further: into the minds of the artists who created all these wondrous, mystical, magical pieces throughout the ages. And you can experience all these transports of delight from the comfort of your own favourite chair. Just plump up the cushions and you’re off.
Destination Art: 500 Artworks Worth the Trip
Phaidon Editors (author)
A global guide to the 500 works of permanently installed modern and contemporary art worth traveling to experience.
“It’s a clever person who can pinpoint the art world’s geographical tours-de-force of the future and an even smarter one who pens a book on the subject. Such is the prescience behind Art Cities of the Future.”
Vanity Fair on Art
Enjoy a world tour from the comfort of your reading chair or plan a detailed and engaging art itinerary for your next trip with Destination Art, the essential guide to 500 must-see examples of permanently installed art from the last 100 years. With the book’s geographical organisation and logistical details – including GPS coordinates, addresses, websites, and symbols indicating the degree of possible access, travel planning is made easy.
Discover hidden gems in big cities, explore art in nature, and trek to remote locales for one-of-a-kind experiences of art in unique locations. The artists featured in this global selection are among the world’s best and most beloved from the past century, including Marina Abramovic, Alexander Calder, Jenny Holzer, Yayoi Kusama, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Richard Serra, and many more.
SHOP NOW→
Art in Vienna 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their contemporaries
Peter Vergo (author)
The artistic stagnation of Vienna at the end of the 19th century was rudely shaken by the artists of the Vienna Secession. Their work shocked a conservative public, but their successive exhibitions, their magazine Ver Sacrum, and their application to the applied arts and architecture soon brought them an enthusiastic following and wealthy patronage. Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their Contemporaries, now published in its 4th edition, brilliantly traces the course of this development. Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele were the leading figures in the fine arts; Wagner, Olbrich, Loos and Hoffmann in architecture and the applied arts. In other fields, Mahler, Freud and Schnitzler were influencing the avant-garde.
SHOP NOW→
Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Avant-Gardes
Geeta Kapur (author), Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (author), Reid Shier (author)
Today the art world is more of a world in every sense, with a larger population, a wider territory and a greater number of nationalities. Its prevailing conversation, however, has yet to catch up. Art Cities of the Future: 21st Century Avant-Gardes uncovers twelve distinct avant-gardes that have emerged around the world in recent decades. Twelve curators each selected eight artists to represent the avant-garde of a specific city. These artists are senior figures or newer faces, artists working in familiar mediums or inventing their own, but they all share two qualities: a commitment to experimental art and a dedication to their local milieu. In dialogue with larger concerns, their unique sensibility can be found nowhere else. Lively, thought-provoking, comprehensive, and packed with more than 500 images, this book widens the expected historical narrative, allowing us to imagine a future of diverse aesthetics and shared concerns in the common language of contemporary art.
SHOP NOW→
frieze A to Z of Contemporary Art
Phaidon (author)
The ultimate guide to 25 years of contemporary art, as seen through the filter of the world’s leading contemporary art magazine
frieze A to Z of Contemporary Art charts the dynamic, changing landscape of the contemporary art and culture of the past quarter century. Drawing on frieze magazine’s exceptional back catalogue of articles, this book brings together a curated collection of over fifty engaging highlights. It features artist interviews; essays on subjects as varied as museums, photography, pre-historic art and television; and think pieces on broader cultural topics, such as fame, gentrification, nostalgia, and style. The book’s content – selected from throughout the magazine’s history – offers a guide to this dynamic era of visual culture, revealing the increasing internationalism, popularity, and market dominance of contemporary art.
SHOP NOW→
Yayoi Kusama: All About My Love
Kusama Yayoi (author)
Avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s matchless creativity and originality have been captivating the world since she moved from Matsumoto, her hometown in Nagano, Japan, to the USA in 1958. In the last ten years alone, her retrospective exhibitions in four major European and American museums, including Tate Modern, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, have seen record attendance.
Kusama has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known as ‘Accumulations’, to her ‘Infinity Net’ paintings, made up of carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. This comprehensive publication, originally published to accompany a sell-out exhibition at Matsumoto City Museum of Art, offers a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s entire career, including works from her youth, when she indulged in drawing in order to escape from her hallucinations; paintings made when she was based in New York, including ‘Infinity Nets’ and ‘Polka Dots’; works from the1980s and 1990s, when she participated in the Venice Biennale; and last but not least, the ongoing large-scale series ‘My Eternal Soul’. The plates are in chronological order and followed by detailed captions.
SHOP NOW→
Main Image ©Ameen Fahmy
