This is the list of the books that listeners to this radio series of interviews are currently reading. Please use the comment box below to add your book(s) or comment if you wish on all these great suggestions!
Home Reading
This is the list of the books that listeners to this radio series of interviews are currently reading. Please use the comment box below to add your book(s) or comment if you wish on all these great suggestions!
I am reading, Ninth Street Women
Beyond Genius, The 12 Essential Traits of Today’s Renaissance Men – featuring Elon Musk, Yvon Chouinard, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Dave Stewart, and more. The first book to identify the 12 traits and examine the Renaissance Men throughout history culminating in interviews and chapters on today’s greatest
Reading guidebooks to Venice (aiming to write my own), plus Joseph Brodsky’s book about Venice, ‘Watermark’.
I’m about 1/2 way through “Anything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies” by Ted Chapin
A fascinating insider backstage view. It took a lot of moving parts and cooperation among strong personalities to create this groundbreaking musical.
I just finished to read a very interesting book :Ileana Sonnabend. «The Queen of Arts» by Manuela Gandini 2008 about the life of the wife of Leo Castelli. And just as Leo influenced the American Pop scene, she is considered the greatest inspiration for art movements in Europe.
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Enrique Martinez Celqaya Collected Writings & Interviews, 2010-2017
Both inspiring for the creative process.
“Side By Side, Building and Sustaining an Effective Community in the Music Studio” is by Wiff Rudd, Professor of Trumpet and Brass Division Music Coordinator at Baylor University’s School of Music since 2002.
I was introduced to Prof Rudd when he requested permission to use a music composition by my father for a trumpet competition and I have been an admirer of Prof Rudd’s leadership ever since. Prof Rudd’s book is a great resource for music students and teachers, offering supportive advice in navigating the musical performance world, entering the community and developing professional goals, relationships and skills for success. This book is a real inspiration and confidence builder for those intending to find a way forward in a musical career.
The exhibition of her art at the Guggenheim was absolutely beautiful and helped me focus on techniques.
This is an excellent list on Art History books by Art in America. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/product-recommendations/essential-art-history-books-1234580813/#recipient_hashed=25d48412fc7b3231737f3ece535c3179e5adfd6fcca0f7e4f98a243a5cb1002d&recipient_salt=5537b284234ac140be5c44dcbb40d962b0ca4818f6cdf56d6837f8b30dca9d01
Currently reading Walking the Bible by B. Freier. With the Old Testament in hand he and his archeologist friend visit Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, following in the steps of the Israelites. Interestingly, I learned that of the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert before entering Canaan, 38 of them were lived around the city of Petra in current day Jordan.
I am reading ‘Snakes and Ladders’ by Dirk Bogarde
Its part of his memoirs, and fascinating. Here he struggles to find himself, as a young man, after his involvement in WW2, as he emerges into the world of ‘show business.’
Interestingly, his book is followed in this list by Julia Wickes choice of book ‘Building a Character’ by Constatin Stanislavski.
Dirk Bogarde was deeply committed to doing this in his own acting work.
Building a Character by Constantin Stanislavski
“The Creative Act” byRick Rubin
Invisible women by Caroline Criado Perez
Exposing data bias in a world designed for men.
Revelatory, changes the way you see the world
Talking to strangers – Malcolm Gladwell.
Very provocative, a dark side of human nature
Eye and heart opening
Great writing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson interviews and conversations 1951-1998. Aperture. It’s a recent translation from the French
Currently reading ‘Watermark’, by Joseph Brodsky, his essay on Venice. Planning my own book/guidebook on that unique place.
Hilma af Klint: a biography by Julia Voss
Wow did I love this!
Greek Lessons Han Kang
I recently read Shards from
the Shoebox a captivating series of personal essays.
I listened to Trust by Hernan Diaz a remarkable work that won the Pulitzer Prize.
Finally- Stories from the Bipolar Region by Leda Rogers. She is one brave soul!
I revisited two of the books I’ve loved over the years:
Spell of the Sensuous by David Abrams
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
They always inspire
Just finished A Short Life of Trouble Written and about Marcia Tucker Really gives insight into the formation of the NEW MUSEUM
I just read that too, what an amazing person, right? Made me want to get the Tuttle catalog she put together for the infamous Whitney show!
Here we Go by Dick Polich, (founder of Polich Tallix foundry, which is now UAP)
His story of how he started working with artists and the issues foundry workers face in making a large metal cast from the artist’s maquette.
The Art Spirit by Robert Henri
Total Meditation by Deepak Chopra
Total Meditation just waiting by my bed.
A Season in Hell by Rimbaud translated by Louise Varese
Two books I finished this week that made a huge difference for me as an artist:
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
Art Is Life by Jerry Saltz
Wow! Such amazing contributions and insight!!
Winslow Homer, American artist: His world and his work
By Albert Ten Eyck Gardener, 1961.
Found it in a bookshelf at the Beer Sheva Artist house and requested to borrow it, which they gracefully agreed to.
I feel my art education centered on European art history, and I know too little about American artists.
This book is interesting because it places Homer in the context of his time.
Two current readings:
All the Beauty In The World–The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
and
Walking in Wonder, Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World by John O’Donohue in conversation with John Quinn
Penelope”s Loom
Poems of Turning Matter into Spirit
by Dorothy Walters 978-1-4797-0194-0
The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas
Leonardo da Vinci bio by Walter Isaacson
Beyond Genius – The 12 Essential Traits of Today’s Renaissance Men
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Genius-Essential-Traits-Renaissance/dp/1481702947/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37GL7FGRUS1GB&keywords=Beyond+Genius%2C+The+12+Essential+Traits+of+Todays+Renaissance+Men&qid=1688319585&sprefix=beyond+genius%2C+the+12+essential+traits+of+todays+renaissance+men%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-1
I missed all these dates I’d like to be connected
The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Remarkable stream on consciousness mesmerizing.
also
The best Hundred poems of Les Murray.
I love The Waves! It has been such a source of inspiration! Thanks for mentioning it.
The Art Of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee
insight into the human tales of Bacon/Freud Matisse Picasso Pollack de Kooning Manet Degas how they pushed each other into new ideas
Read that a few years back. Very interesting. Made me feel a bit lonely as an artist. I don’t know if we have this kind of connection with our colleagues today – rivalry or not.
This Is Happiness by Niall Williams
Loved that book, he is a wonderful writer. Also read The History of Rain and Love in Summer. Excellent.
Arthur Rimbaud
poems translated by Paul Schmidt
What My Bones Know
A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
—by Stephanie Foo
Definitely worth reading for anyone recovering from complex trauma. Foo is a writer and producer for This American Life and this is her personal story that’s gritty, honest, and ultimately full of upbeat enthusiasm and hope.
Both theoretical and practical:
Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998 Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Passionate Photographer Steve Simon
In the Garden of the Righteous by Richard Hurowitz
Arthur Rimbaud Complete Works
Translated by Paul Schmidt
I’m reading a great introduction to the science of clouds:
A sideways look at clouds – Maria Mudd Ruth
Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
Feline Philosophy cats & the meaning of life-John Gray
I’ve noted some great book recommendations from readers thanks.
I’ve just finished reading 3 related books, each with a very different tone but all strung together with Michelangelo at the center.
As an artist with a passion for history and culture I found each book fulfilled its promise.
“Michelangelo’s Mountain” Eric Scigliano
“From Marble to Flesh” A. Victor Coonin
“Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling”
Ross King
I’m reading “Night Fall” a collection of short stories by Issac Asimov, after falling in love with his “Robots and Empire”
Just got YOUR BRAIN ON ART, How The Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross and also reading The Adjacent Possible by Nancy Hillis.
I’m reading McSweeny’s #70 a quarterly of new fiction, short stories that I devour as soon as it arrives! This one is excellent.
I used to love McSweeny’s and then somehow drifted away. I just went to their website and am totally confused by the plethora of products with no real explanation of what is what. The old issues of the magazine had it all – stories, poems, essays, snarky and hilarious bits of whimsey. I’d like to start getting it again. Which product would that be now? Illustoria? Believer? Quarterly Concern? Any advice as to your favorites will be welcome!
The disappearance of rituals by Byung Chul Han
Culture Strike by Laura Raicovich
The Dragon Queen by Alice Borchardt in a series called The Tales of Guinevere, Bantam Books.
I am addicted to fantasies and sci-fi and have been since researching hundreds of this style to attempt a book of my own. Not only the story line but the characters are well constructed and the writing of descriptions of the lands and the creatures are so incredibly painted that it is nearly impossible to separate one’s mind from the story and the reality masterfully created. A vision of Guinevere that is unique and unforgettable.
This sounds great, I could use some great fantasy fiction!
Currently reading “Upstream” by Mary Oliver. The richness with which she dives into the beauty of the natural world around her is both stunning and refreshing. I love the way she honors the influence of Allan and Poe in her work.
Utopian Vistas by Lois Palken Rudnick. The story of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos NM. Where inter ethnic life,ongoing poverty, hippies, Chicano radicals, gifted artisans, doomed up geniuses, mystics and ghosts mingled together. American counter cultures in New Mexico from 1920’s to 1990’s.
Utopian Vistas by Lois Palken Rudnick. The story of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos NM. Where inter ethnic life,ongoing poverty, hippies, Chicano radicals, gifted artisans, doomed up geniuses, mystics and ghosts mingled together. American counter cultures in New Mexico from 1920’s to 1990’s.
The Community Cure by James Maskell. Since I work as an art psychotherapist I am keen on connecting people not isolating people as our current medical systems can do. And art has the potential to provide a safe space to grow deeper emotional connections, intimacies between strangers as part of a collective unconscious or transpersonal realm.
“The Tenants of Moonbloom” by Edgar Lewis Wallant. First published 1963 and currently available from New York Review of Books (Classics).
I read it shortly after its original publication and now find it as compelling and magic as it was then.
Wallant also wrote The Pawnbroker which was made into a powerful film which was adapted into an award-winning film directed by Sidney Lumet (1965) and starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Juano Hernandez, and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. And music by Quincy Jones.
I am currently reading
Degas A Strange New Beauty
MoMA
by Jodi Hauptman
I just finished the novel My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok about a Hasidic Jewish boy who is born into a distinguished Hasidic family and is obsessed with drawing and then painting. His passion is an enigma to his family, especially his father, and to others in the society to which he belongs. This book is a compelling read about the sacrifices one must make for the work and for one’s integrity.
Art is Life
—Jerry Saltz
Jerry shares his own story as a “failed artist” (his words) and how his many years of living the life of an outsider/self-taught artist formed him as an art critic who stands out from the rest. His insights into the art world, art history, and the drive to create are worth the dense read even though his over-the-top enthusiasm sometimes devolves into a word salad here and there. But his exuberant love of not only art but for the artists themselves make him somewhat of an outsider critic which affords him an outside-the-box view of the art world. With a searing clarity that many of those playing the game inside of it don’t have, he opens his heart and takes great risks to generously divulge with us the artist/reader what he’s learned. It’s no wonder he won the Pulitzer for Art Criticism. He deserves it.
yes. although i do not agree with all he says, the man can WRITE!
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act. A sweet, spacious and wise take on the Creative process as an ongoing meditation. Love this book. ❤️
me too, this book is great – I’ve given it as gifts to a few other artists.
the sea thea sea by iris murdoch,
Recently I was tempted into a nearby book club, however it would take an emergency far more serious than a book club to disturb my work at 10:00 AM. THE SEA, THE SEA, which title is in a neat trick of double meaning explicating as it does both the sea and the seeing which insights come with age and time. Iris Murdoch bills this as a RICH, CROWDED, MAGICAL LOVE STORY. It is about the transformations of love over time generated by theatrical artifice. acid flashbacks and twists of personal obsession.
Charles, the main character, is a well known theatre director enchanted by the idea of peace & solitude after a busy and materially successful life. He retires to a small stone fortress by and in some ways in the sea. Harboring the romantic idea of becoming monk like in his cell, he is both rejuvenated and tragically enlightened by his interactions with the sea.
The darkness we all grapple with adds authenticity to the characters with the camaraderie and depredations of friendship providing comic relief and color to the kaleidoscopic imagination of Murdoch’s tale. A collage of asian mysticism, class explication and the seemingly cold inevitabilities of the natural world, this is not a crowded story so much as a rich one.
As one may do in difficulty, metaphors expanding meanings into the so called real world might be made in the larger world. Must we wait for the depredations of old age to achieve wisdom? As for the living sea, which has so much in the way of healing, knowledge and awe to offer our species, might we be better caretakers of this living entity instead of poisoning its irreplaceable magic and raiding the life it supports through our greed and ignorance? Nature may seem a rough taskmaster, something to be conquered and dominated, however this way of doing things no longer works, if in fact it ever did.
A voracious reader always, I read Murdoch when I was young and had difficulty with her complexity, which works here as a spur to interest and a flowering of sensual enjoyment.
Loved this book and Iris Murdoch’s strange twists of plot.
11 by Paul Hanley, 2014 … ‘eleven billion people will share this planet by century’s end. Adding 4 billion to an already overburdened world will force everyone to change everything’
” Every concerned citizen of this planet needs to read this book” – Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
I highly recommend The Inconvenient Indian. Informative, historical accounting with a witty, casual style including engaging pop culture references. Shines a bright light on issues of the past and today. If you read only one book on Indigenous relations, let this be it. From the write-up, “Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King’s critical and personal meditation on what it means to be “Indian” in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/93028/the-inconvenient-indian-by-thomas-king/9780385664226
Not a new book (published in 2006) but a must to read: Imperial Life in the Emerald City – inside Iraq’s green zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post journalist. To understand how things went so badly in Iraq…and why our foreign policies fail.
Mary Angela Schroth
Sala 1 Rome
I would recommend Yve-Alain Bois book “An Obilique Autobiography” He was a partner with Rosiland Krausse in “October”. To run alongside Bois in this book is uplifting.
I went through every page of “Great Female Painters” by Phaidon, reading pages of artists that caught my eye. Placed post-it notes on artists I’d like to investigate further, and am now researching each post-it marked one. Love finding and learning about these influential artists. Starting with Hilda AF Klint.
I’m reading “Bodies of Subversion” which is a history of women and tattoo..and also a history of tattooing and John Irving’s “The Last ChairLift”
The Adjacent Possible, Book 2, Nancy Hillis
“Jean-Luc Godard, ” by Douglas Morrey. Manchester University Press, 2005.
I am just began reading Deepak Chopra’s, “Life After Death”. I have been researching time, other dimensions and find myself contemplating “cosmic” spiritual questions intensively most of my life which emerges in my art. This book parallels with my work in progress, with a working title, Timeline of the Cosmos.
Check out The Center for Contemporary Mysticism
Rereading “The Good Earth”, by Pearl Buck, written in 1931, for which she won the Pulitzer. Love this book about a family in China around 1920, and all the trials and tribulations and joys they endure. Pearl Buck is remarkably sensitive and articulate about the actions, passions, deeds (good and bad), that are human beings. So much respect for Pearl Buck.
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thomson
Super interesting book really. Describes how things really work in art world business. I recommend it, it is a must.
I will not make a spoiler because it is worth the discovery through the pages.
just finished “night & day” by virginia woolfe- She is such a rich writer, the mannerisms are victorian, which i sort of like, but also her penetration of how peoples minds work and a very dry sense of humor made this a delightful read. also her first volume of essays is good for the history.
“authority and freedom” by jed perl. Named after the first chapter which is rich and i will probably reread.
“internet for the people: the fight for our digital future” by ben turnoff
“the shadow of god:Kant, Hegel and the PASSAGE from HEAVEN to HISTORY” by Michael Rosen. intense and heavy, not easy, but the title was irresistable to me.
“another world: the transcendental painting group” exhibit catalogue- definitely these are my lineage painters
“In The Dark Places Of Wisdom” Peter Kingsley
“Conscious Luck” Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline
“Radical Curiosity” One man’s search for cosmic magic and a purposeful life. Ken Dychtwald Ph. D
Grace Purpura
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alaine de Botton
Alaine de Botton writes a lively and funny book by dipping deeply into Proust’s life and work–giving hilarious Proustarian advice on keeping friendships, why prostitutes do not inspire love, the art of suffering successfully, when you should write a letter and not send it, and recognizing love when you see it. Proust, who describes artists as “creatures who talk of precisely the things one shouldn’t mention,” then wrote a novel of several volumes, giving him the chance to mention them all.
Thank you, Brainard, for this new format for Books We Read. I like the addition of a Reply to voice our thoughts and begin a dialogue. Just naming a book does not motivate me to read it. Adding a comment on how the book resonates to you makes me interested and motivated, and I am more likely to read it.
Great column.
Currently reading:
“The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Built It”. by Tilar J. Mazzeo
and finishing up:
“Moth” by Melody Razak The book takes place during Partition-era Delhi.
Art is Life, by Jerry Saltz. Especially fascinating we’re the opening chapter about The Raft of the Medusa, and the one about Caravaggio.
this book is an oldy but a Goodie. “On The New” by Boris Groys. I pretty simple formula of what are the mechanics of innovation.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Boris-Groys/dp/1781682925
Burning Questions, Margaret Atwood
README.txt, Chelea Manning
The Essays of Virginia Woolf, edited by Andrew McNeillie
Regenerate, Sayer Ji
Burning Questions was a great read! Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood is in my stack to read.
The Science of Business
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large of Time magazine, and Emmy-nominated host of CNN, writes a well-researched, intelligent, easy-to-read book on the growth and development of China, India, Brazil, and other countries posing a challenge for America–emerging markets that have surged ahead, coupling their economic growth with pride, nationalism, and a determination to form their own future. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, Zakaria draws on lessons from the past 500 years–the rise of the West, and the rise of the United States–to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, “the rise of the rest.”
I have just finished How to Speak Whale by Tom Mustill. It was very good and passionate about the esistance of whales and how they communicate.
“A Year With Rumi” Daily readings
“American Midnight-The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis” by Adam Hochschild. A reminder that our country’s history has had other troubled times.
“Portraits” by John Berger
Am Re-reading “The Ending of Time” A conversation between physicist David Bohm and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. I carried this book with me everywhere in the late 60s to savor the thought given in highly focused remarks during their intense and profound discussions. This book will always be important ..
reading “the first and last freedom” by K- great stuff!
will try this one too!
I like this thread! It reminded me of a couple of books I meant to read, especially “Women in abstract Expressionism,” because that’s what I am.
I recently read “All About Love, A love Song to a Nation”, by Bell Hooks — inspiring and healing
And I read “The Redneck Riviera” a local history book.
I am a third to half way through Madeline Albright’s autobiography (I take breaks) — her family came to the US via UK from Czechoslovakia as WW 2 refugees. If ever there was an antifascist… she speaks from experience.
A book on mixed generation leadership in academia assigned to college directors by work because for one of the first times, four or five generations of people are working together in the workforce.
Curation: “Drawing the Line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists from Museums to the Movies” is on my next pile, in my bag. Also for work, a textbook on museum registration.
Pleasure: I just downloaded “Where the Crawdads Sing.”
Thank you for sharing. Sounds good. Grace Purpura
love bell hooks. one of my most favorite new paradigm authors!
RISE AND SHINE by pedram shojai
ONENESS vs the 1%, by Vandana Shiva
Bhudda, by Karen Armstrong
Reluctant Saint, by Donald Spoto
The Master and His Emissary (The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) by Ian McGilchrist
And
The Velveteen Daughter (about the early 20th century child prodigy artist Pamela Bianco) by Laurel Davis Huber
Just finished Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland: A Deep Time Journey,” reading its 496 pages very slowly over several months to absorb the magnitude of his piercing insights. Its philosophical implications are vast.
Yes! One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.
I am currently reading two books, one in the studio and one at home. In the studio I am re-reading Norman Mailer’s great WW2 opus “The Naked and the Dead”, first published in 1948 (the year before my birth). I first read this in college during the late sixties, when Mr. Mailer was better known for “Armies of the Night” a novel based on the 1967 march on the pentagon. “The Naked and the Dead” was published one hundred years after “Moby Dick” and might be just as great a tale of man’s obsessions.
At home I am reading a very recently published book titled “Strangers to Ourselves” by Rachel Aviv, subtitled “Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us”. This is a collection of case studies of metal illness and the evolution of treatment and outcome.
You Are a Bad Ass by Jen Sincero
Book Review
How Georgia became O’Keeffe, by Karen Karbo
and
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky
I did not know there were others who read more than one book at the same time, according to their mood, feelings, or whim. I have just finished reading Wassily Kandinsky’s, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, together with How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, Lessons in the Art of Living, by Karen Karbo. Two very different works in period, style, and delivery—one by a serious introverted Russian aristocrat of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the other by a quirky American humorist and feminist of the twenty-first. And yet, surprise! They were on the same wavelength. Both books spoke of the pioneering movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, allowing the artist to express his own inner life in abstract, non-material terms. Kandinsky believed that just as musicians did not depend on the material world for their music, so artists should not have to copy nature in their paintings. A spiritual revolution in painting, his book is one of the important documents in the history of modern art. As it turns out, Kandinsky’s, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, was one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s influences as an artist. Kandinsky gave O’Keeffe the “get out of jail card” she needed to break free of the artistic tradition of copying nature and the plaster casts in art school that stifled her. “What about the heart, the feelings?” she asked, and echoing Kandinsky, added. . . “the true subject of any painting is the artist’s inner world.”
I loved how Georgia Became O’Keeffe…I had felt a connection to Georgia but I didn’t know why—until I read this book…
I know not many would agree, however I find Kandinsky far more radical than Picasso!
I am currently reading We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker – for discussion with my literary group and Why Jazz Happened by Marc Myers
I am reading
The Master and Margarita by Milhail Bulgakov
The Literary Ladies/Lads Book Tour of African American Authors is now visible. HIPHOP BEFORE THE BLING is now archived in the Universal Hip Hop Museum
I would love to add my book to your list it’s called “What If”
https://www.amazon.com/dp/057880753X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_Y5yUFbZFHPADP
Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric
…it’s a good subject resource by an insightful author.
Thank you for this amazing book list from Yale. I see some old favorites and the inclusion of many I am not familiar with. I can see I have my work cut out for me! New to Praxis, but not new to the art world, I have appreciated receiving Brainard Carey’s book, “Making It in the Art World,” which includes not only strategies for navigating the art world, but interesting personal stories for achieving success–like not taking no for an answer, or his personal story for proposing a solo show to Whitney without any completed work, only an idea, and to his surprise, pulling it off! The use of sub-titles makes the book easy to read and to refer back to–topics like writing the artist statement; the necessity for good health, diet , exercise, and discipline; practicing visualization to achieve your goals and having a positive mind-set. Good motivation!
I totally agree Grace, I just finished this book and it was brilliant and so motivating. I highly recommend this one
Geof Huth, The Anarchivist.
Books on drought tolerant plants
And manuscripts submitted to AC Books.
I’m reading –
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Edited by Joan Marter
Denver Art Museum
Yale University Press
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Edited by Joan Marter
Denver Art Museum
Yale University Press
“American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal”
Kerri is the founder of CTZNWELL, a movement that is democratizing wellbeing for all. A descendant of generations of firemen and first responders, Kerri has dedicated her life to kicking down doors and fighting for justice. She’s been teaching yoga for over 20 years and is known for making waves in the wellness industry by challenging norms, disrupting systems and mobilizing people to act.
A community organizer, wellness activist and author of the forthcoming book American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal, Kerri is recognized across communities for her inspired work to bridge transformational practice with social justice. She’s been instrumental in translating the practices of wellbeing into social and political action, working in collaboration with community organizers, spiritual leaders and policy makers to transform our systems from the inside out. Her leadership has inspired a movement that is actively organizing around issues of racial and economic justice, healthcare as a human right, civic engagement and more.
The Cathedral is Dying
Auguste Rodin
The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Monk of Mocha, Dave Eggers
Bittersweet, how sorrow & longing make us whole, Susan Cain
Vincent van gogh, ever yours- the essential letters
Scorced Earth, Jonathan Crary (a true diagnostic masterpiece of the society &culture now)
The Story of my Teeth by Valeria Luiselli interesting way of inserting history into fiction
I am reading Blood and Bronze The British Empire and the Sack of Benin.
By Paddy Docherty
It is a very interesting read filled with great details that brings one of the hottest topics in art today into perspective.
I’m reading—
Bright Earth, Art and the Invention of Color
—by Philip Ball
Highly recommended in a definite yes! especially for painters
this is yet another great reading tip i have from these pages! THNX!
What is art? by Leo Tolstoy- I like much of this author’s point of view, however was surprised at the conservatism of his opinions on the art of his time in the latter part of the book.
SO MUCH LONGING IN SO LITTLE SPACE, THE ART OF EDVARD MUNCH by Ove Knausgaard
“Fundamental to all creation is that it is not about transferring something one possesses and wishes to express, but about what is expressed emerging as something in itself. Only then can it come alive.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard from “So Much Longing In So Little Space”
The Art of Edvard Munch
“Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” about Robert Irwin, by Lawrence Weschler
“Douglass- Autobiographies”
“Oh to Be a Painter” Virginia Woolfe – not as fabulous as most pf her work, but good from an art historical view.
of. oops
How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci Seven Steps to Genius Every Day by Michael J. Gelb is an exploration of the genius potential we all have.
I know probably everyone read this a while back, but i just finished “Where the Crawdads Sing” a rare dip into fiction for me. I’m halfway through a bio of Henri Toulouse Lautrec.
I read it as well, was a great read.
Breaking the Age Code by Becca Levy. She is an expert on how our society’s ageism has negative effects on health.
“The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller. A beautiful story of love, hubris, pain, and forgivenes.
Essential reading: Cal Flyn’s “Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape.”
Flyn examines the destruction wreaked by humanity in and on nature and especially in and on cities. Her research throughout the world, but especially in the USA, is remarkable, sobering and absorbing. The The “Washington Post” described the book rightly as “Vital”. I agree with Will McCallum, Head of Oceans Greenpeace, UK, who wrote: “At times desperately sad and in others desperately hopeful – but nowhere losing faith in this beautiful world. Perfect reading for the crisis.”
Art + Religion in the 21st Century
The Power of Ritual
Strangers : Essays on the Human and Nonhuman
Rebecca Tamás
The war of art
“The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh
“HOT – Living Through the Next 50 years on Earth” by Mark Hertsgaard
“Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell
“Yin: Completing the Leadership Journey” by Lisa Marshall, https://yincompletingtheleadershipjourney.com/ Looking at Joseph Campbell’s Heroes Journey from a Yin perspective.
Hogg by Samuel R Delany, The Complete Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray, Scott Burton/Collected Writings on Art & Performance edited by David Getsy, Written in Invisible Ink/selected stories by Harve Guibert
Vilém Flusser & Louis Bec – Vampyroteuthis Infernalis; Nicolas Bourriaud – Planet B, Climate Change and the New Sublime; Hans Belting – Hieronymus Bosch, Garten der Lüste; Jean Baret – Life TM; Homer – The Odyssey
I am currently reading , “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nahisi Coates and “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Just finished “On Writing” by Stephen King.
Robin Wall Kimmerer – tremendous
Robin Wall Kimmerer – tremendous A wonderful book about the cross discipline inquiries of Botany and Native American philosophy
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by Ted Orland and David Bayles
I am currently reading “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking in my lifelong quest to understand the mysteries that surround us. While my brain can’t grasp his brilliant mathematical mind, I have enjoyed the front seat he gave us into his thinking process.
Beyond that, I would like to strongly recommend the podcast (I listen on Amazon Prime Music Unlimited while I am painting), called “The History of Rome.” Even if ancient history doesn’t interest you one bit, as this detailed series unfolds, you will be amazed at how parallel our current political reality is with the events of Ancient Rome. Seeing how their version of democracy became eroded and ultimately descended into one-man rule has resolved the incredulity I experienced everyday over political maneuverings that fly in the face of American democracy. I have begun to think that the former president is well-versed in Roman political tactics, or at least the people surrounding him were. This podcast has helped me understand now more than ever that history does indeed repeat itself.
Thanks for this. History does indeed repeat itself. We are connected to one another through time and space. The Romans are our ancestors. They were humans and we are are humans too, so it doesn’t seem too far fetched that we would follow in their footsteps. I keep thinking that right before big changes, the old thoughts don’t want to let go, just like a child doesn’t want to give up their toy.
A Photographers Life and Afterlife
Vivian Maier by Pamela Bannos
A Not-So-Still Life by Jimmy Ernst, son of Max Ernst. Growing up as a half-Jewish boy before and during Hitler’s regime. Please don’t miss reading this sensitive and easy to read story of Jimmy Ernst who grew up in the artistic ferment of the times in Germany eventually making his way to the new country.
Beautifully written with stories about the artists of the era and their connectedness.
The Mansion, the third book in the Snopes trilogy by William Faulkner
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman
I’m reading “The Soul of a Woman” by Isabel Allende. She’s one of my favorite authors. she follows in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but her own unique voice is present in her books. I would also recommend “House of the Spirits” for those who have not read it. It’s an amazing novel.
Hi, Carole,
I have read House of Spirits and loved it, so I need to get a copy of “The Soul of a Woman”! Thank you for the recommendation.
loved this book
Violeta by Isabel Allende
Daybook, The Journal of An Artist
by Anne Truitt
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
by Deepak Chopra
Allende never disappoints. Her newest works are topical and typical of her excellent writing. Eben Alexander, Dr. and neurologic cardiogist describes his coma and what he encountered this period. Very fascinating.
Listening to Brene Brown’s “Dare to Lead” – all her work is so useful
Gabby Bernstein’s “Happy Days” – spiritual and practical guide
The Little Book of Police Youth Dialogue by Dr. Micah Johnson and Jeffrey Weisberg – I incorporate Circle dialogue in creating collaborative Singing Tree murals and am interested in bring my mural making methodology to Police-Youth dialogue.
Sun Magazine – great black and white photos and content
Destiny Of The Republic by Candace Millard
The Greater Journey by David McCauley
The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch
The Great Influenza by John M Barry
Entangled Life ~ Merlin Sheldrake I am an audiobook addict. This one was packed with information, I bought the book so I could use it to research the different names of the mushrooms for my next series.
I Am Malala ~ Malala Yousafzai I just got it, excited to start, it will be my reward after I get ‘some’ of my PRAXIS homework done. I drew Malala in a painting of 7 young activists for a juried show “Politik” in Portland, Oregon. It was during the pandemic. I only know the internet information about Malala, I am excited to hear it in her own words.
The Island of Missing Trees ~ Elif Shafak, A great love story told by a fig tree
Circe ~ Madeline Miller Mythology ~Gotta love it when the woman solves ways to concur obstacles in her way. WOWmyn Spirit Rules!
I Live in Japan and regularly read a favourite book, Kamakura: Fact and Legend.
Kamakura is a small city one hour south of tokyo. It is where the first Shogun of Japan established his base in about 1185CE. Thus began the KAMAKURA PERIOD.
The book is written beautifully in eloquent English by Itsu Mutsu. (her adopted Japanese name). And English woman who married a Japanese diplomat. They settled in Kamakura and she visited the 48 shrines and temples covered in the book numerous times recording the founding, traditions, facts and legends of that particular place. She also described scenes such as thatched roofs, lotus on ponds, and tranquil valleys.
The book has inspired and informed me.
Kamakura is one of Japans favourite towns. It is a valley opening to a crescent shaped beach with views of Mt Fuji from the headland.
I’d recommend it for connecting with the ancient vibes of Japan or, inspiring a visit. And don’t hesitate to get in touch if here.
Best regards,
Paul
Sounds beautiful and so interesting! I read the book of tea by kakuzo okakura which was one of the most elegantly written books I’ve come across, and the writer was also a curator responsible for some major American collections of Asian art, but your book sounds excellent.
Thank you for the synopsis that makes me want to read the book.
Hi, Paul,
Thank you for this recommendation. I studied for a month in Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto), and was able to return with my daughter for a second visit. I love all things Japanese and will definitely get a copy of this book. I completed “The Tale of Genji” a few months ago and also Liza Dalby’s “Tale of Murasaki.”
I am currently reading The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. It honors the spiritual path that shows us how to embrace what life brings our way instead of resisting it. Letting go in this way stimulates our creativity and invites miracle after miracle into our lives
This sounds like a must-read!
Listening to Against Interpretation by Sontag. Have to take in small chunks. Like it. Read On Photography in the late 70s when in Jack Welpott’s photo program at SFSU. Was a great book to help photography find a footing in the fine art world back then.
I’d love to hear people’s favorite books on art interpretation and art criticism.
‘Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid – the Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change (Thor Hanson), ‘Finite & Infinite Games – A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility’ (James P. Carse)
Forgotten Reader, E. McHenry
The Magician, by Colm Tóibín is well written and a complex book. In this historical novel Tóibínl portrays the complex personality of Thomas Mann–the German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Excellent read!
Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum.
The Humans, Matt Haig – fasicnating – I’d’ not thought I’d like it – someone from outer space coming to Earth – but its marvelous – a great read and full of wise philosophy on the human condition. Touching – really.
Dear Brainard,
The best book I read for many many years, not only because it is well-researched and very well-written is “Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art by Michael C. FitzGerald.
Whether you study Art History or you do a BA in Arts as an artist, a curator, a dealer, a museum director et al, we have no idea of the making of the modern art market. And this is a weak spot because most of the strategies today and most of the museological displays respond to commercial decisions taken by art dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel, Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henry Kanhweiler and Leo Castelli in close cooperation with artists like Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne and collectors like the Steins, Wilhelm Ude, Havemeyer.
Art history is the result of the close collaboration of the artist-as-entrepreneur, the dealer and the collector.
The rest of the artistic agents like the art critic, curator, museum director, art historians west al have traditionally been anti-modern and anti-contemporary art and have obstinately obstructed the progress of modern and contemporary art. I would say that this negative attitude changes sometime beginning of the 1970s. So, while today we think that most artistic agents push in the same direction, for centuries this hasn’t been this way.
This book is also mandatory for artists to understand the kind of contracts that Picasso and the like were able to impose and what kind of strategies both artists and dealers applied for the creation of the market for modern art, which was always very difficult and fragile as it had a very tiny collector’s base and art critics were against modern art and manipulated the public against artists.
this incredible but oh so relevant story for the art market and all its agents is told magnificently by FitzGerald, whose book was published back in 1996, almost 30 years ago, but it’s still one of the major books in my long library.
Paco Barragán, Int. PhD, curator and cultural theorist
(Madrid, Spain)
Thanks so much, this sounds fascinating Paco, the making of the very odd global art market system is so important to understanding its future!
Hi, Paco,
This book sounds fascinating. Your description makes me think of how commercialized exhibitions in major museums have become over the last forty years or so. That point was driven home to me by the title of Banksy’s film, “Exit through the Gift Shop.” I avoid them now like the plague!
“The Offer,” the dramatized TV series about the making of movie “The Godfather,” demonstrates through the clashes of financial managers and artistic directors, how art can degenerate into merely entertainment, rather than art that moves people.
I’m on Book 3 of My Struggle, from a 6 volume set by the sensation Carl Ove Knausgaard, and it’s a remarkable book, autobiographical, much set in Norway (where he is from) and Sweden, where he lives. A masterpiece, and those are not just my words! If you get into it, it is very rewarding.
i have to agree. this series is a wonderland of images and thought.
I am continually amazed at the images and also the detail of gestures and communication and misunderstandings…
Between Two Kingdoms
by Suleika Jaouad
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
art in the after culture, by ben davis
room to dream, by david lynch and christine mckenna
pictures of nothing, by kirk varnadoe
of course this is brilliant, though i disagree with much of it.
art is too big for authoritarian statements!
the brilliant history of color in art, by victoria finley
you mean kirk vanderoe making grand statements? i have that book but haven’t read it yet!
I think what really irked me was his insistence on abstraction as a whole having no connection to freedom.
Currently reading Soundtrack of a Revolution: the politics of music in Iran by Nahid Siamdoust.
Eye-opening!
“Lives of the Artists” by Calvin Tomkins, 2008.
Anecdotes about D Hirst, J Johns, C Sherman, J Koons, … and CM Cattelan (author of the taped banana.) Ten contemporary artists in all.
I have that but haven’t read it it, four volumes, right? Or is this a digest?
Revisiting Marquez’s fiction. “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “100 Years of Solitude” I think he may have been the first to use magical realism as a device in his novels. Isabel Allende used it in “House of the Spirits.”
Yes, I think you might be right, I recently reread Love in the time of cholera and was thinking about his structure and approach.
All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
I loved Cloud Cuckoo Land. Will look up the other one.
Underland: A Deep Time Journey, Robert MacFarlane
Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968, Alexandre Skirda
Frances Bacon, Revelations, Mark Steven and Annalyn Swan
The Loft Generation, Edith Schloss
Florine Stettheimer a Biography, Barbara Bloemink
Excited to add the Schloss book to my list…what’s your opinion; buy or loan?
I haven’t read it but want to, I’d suggest buying 🙂
I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going by Peetr McGough, a bittersweet memoir of the artist Peter McGough of his life with David McDermott. Set in New York’s lover east side of the 1980’s. A candid look on struggling artists, aids, and the dysfunction that would create and destroy both their lives.
Death of the Artist is another truth telling book that helps you to think outside of the box so as to stop doling out money and art into places that will go nowhere. Extremely reaffirming read that forces you to think differently about yourself, the art world and how you broach it.
Reading this now. An amazing eye opener.
Hi which author please? There are a couple of books with this title…
Ripper is good, too…very different for Allende..
Thank you, this looks excellent…available to rent on Hoopla digital library!
Author please?
Can you please tell us the author of the one you’re reading? Multiple books with this title. Thanks!
Thank you for the recommendation. I like the description of it.
Thanks for asking. I am currently reading a new publication by Paul Hunter, Mr. Brick & the Boys. It is so fine, I feel grateful while reading it, like miraculous healing as the world burns, because of it’s simple gentle way and wisdom. (also reading 3 others but this one is sticking out in a very good way).
‘Against Our Will, Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970’ by Vivien Green Fryd
‘The Song of Bernadette’ by Franz Werfel
Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt
Warhol by Blake Gopnik
I am reading The Plague by Albert Camus. Intereast ing how history repeats itself. The scenario in Algeria during the plague reads much like today with Covid.
yes, so true! I reread that also, and I thought that when they were saying “the government is doing too little” as well as “the government is doing too much” is just like today! The truth being questioned too… Great book.
Thank you, Brainard, for this new format for Books We Read. I like the addition of a Reply to voice our thoughts and begin a dialogue. Just naming a book does not motivate me to read it. Adding a comment on how the book resonates to you makes me interested and motivated, and I am more likely to read it.
Great column.
Rashomon, Ryunosake Akutagawa
Neurodiversity, the birth of an idea, Judy Singer
Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics, the view from eternity, B R Tilghman
I am currently reading Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as part of my research for my doctoral dissertation on the necessity of enhancing creativity to thrive and evolve humanity.
That’s one of my favorites along with “Flow,” by the same other with the difficult to spell and pronounce name!
The White Album, Joan Didion
Book of the Heart, Meister Eckhart, translated (into poetry) by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. burrows
Ninth Street Women, Mary Gabriel
Great to listen to while working.
Quiet by Susan Cain
A must-read for all introverts!
“World Ending Fire” – Wendell Berry
The stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy.
Blind Spot, White Fragility, Whistling Vivaldi, The Wine Bible, Go Tell It On the Mountain.
I’m currently reading 3 books:
Aldous Huxley essays “The Human Situation”-in which he amazingly foresees our current
situation in ‘The Population Explosion’
“The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats”
‘The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats”
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
It was because I came across this poem that I purchased Yeats complete poems (and his autobiography)
I hear you! I fell in love with Yeats’ poetry when I discovered a recording by Sioban McKenna, the Irish actress, reading William Butler Yeats. Simple, beautiful language. So elegant!
I hear you! I fell in love with Yeats’ poetry when I discovered a recording by Siobhan McKenna, the Irish actress, reading William Butler Yeats. Simple, beautiful language. So elegant! (see eBay)
Three Things
W.B. Yeats
“O cruel death give three things back,”
Sang a bone upon the shore;
“A child found all a child can lack
Whether of pleasure or of rest
Upon the abundance of my breast”;
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
“Three dear things that women know”
Sang a bone upon the shore
“A man if I but held him so
When my body was alive
Found all the pleasure that life gave”;
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
“The third thing that I think of yet”
Sang a bone upon the shore,
“Is that morning when I met
Face to face my rightful man
And did after stretch and yawn”;
A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.
‘Abstracts in acrylic & ink by Jodi Ohl – A playful painting workshop.’ – A very nice book for someone who has just started the adventure with abstracts. Beautiful photographs accompany the text. A number of techniques presented. Very interesting piece of work that tell a lot about abstracts.
The Passion, by Jeannette Winterson. A story about Napoleon, the war, but really about life itself. Beautifully written.
The Little Book, by Selden Edwards. Gripping story about the individual, set mainly in turn of the century Vienna. Great story!
Nature’s Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World Hardcover –
Illustrated, May 18, 2021
by Patrick Baty (Author), Elaine Charwat (Contributor), & 3 more
Princeton University Press
Entangled Life How Fungi Make our World Change our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
homo dues by harari
Art and Instinct: Selected Writings by Roy Oxlaide, Marcus Reichert, editor
The 4th Dimension and Non-Euclidian Geometry in Modern Art
by
Linda Dalrymple Henderson
How do you like this? I found it slow. going but interesting.
Great science fiction, so carefully written
To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars-
Christopher Paolini
A look into the lives of Korean women divers, their culture, their lives from before WWII up through the present
The Island of Sea Women-
Lisa See
Also a story of Korean and Japanese mesh of culture from before WWII through recent history though individual stories.
Pachinko-
Min Jin Lee
Mostly I like to read was art books specially about different story behind some local artists in my country Philippines.
And these 2…
Both by David Hinton
“Hunger Mountain” and “Existence/ A Story
Hinton is in his 70s and is perhaps our best translator of early and classic Chinese texts. Over the course of a lifetime he has learned to see/ live in the world with the consciousness of those early sages. He applies this to walking the small New England mountain out his back door – Hunger Mountain.
Existence, A Story is a book length meditation on one Chinese landscape painting – both books just fabulous – for these sages and for all indigenous ‘shamanic’ cultures, we and the land are both ‘conscious’ … needless to say in the modern Western materialist view of nature that’s not an idea with much currency – fortunately that’s changing on many fronts…
“Wetiko: Healing the Mind Virus That Plagues Our World” Paul Levy The Epilogue itself is such a poignant eloquent and profound statement about the crucial importance of art and artists – especially in these most remarkable times…
“More than Allegory: On Myth Truth and Belief” Bernardo Kastrup – a physicist takes on the big questions and reveals the important acne of myth – and even how science itself is an unacknowledge myth …Jung, Alchemy et all..
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wild
Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai
The Hamlet by William Faulkner
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
My Brilliant Friend, The Story of the Lost Child, The Story of a New Name, The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferante
Midnight in the Whitehouse by Adam Schiff
I loved I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart. It’s published by a very small press: Two Dollar Radio.
Sorry…forgot to put my name – Eileen Cowin
Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat. I got this book from my partner as a christmas present and it’s been a wonderful read so far. I like the personal touch with which it’s written, you can see the artistic path the author took.
If you like the kitchen or, if you’d like to get into cooking, this is a great book for you.
Cheers and happy holidays.
The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow
Straw Dogs by John Gray
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
Hi for a good Read buy the spy novel Cj confidential the 4 x 25 files it’s on Amazon.com
Healing Anger, the Power of Patience from a Buddhist Prospective. The Dalai Lama.
A Bref History of Thought, a philosophical guide to living. Luc Perry
Havana Real, one woman fights to tell the truth about Cuba today. Yoani Sanchez
Dylan’s Vision of Sin. Christopher Ricks
Design for Dying. Timothy Leary
American Royals. Katherine McGee
Palahnuick.Chuck Rant
Being of the Sun (companion volume to Living on the Earth). Alicia Bay Laurel
Bekim Fehmiu ‘Brilliant and Terrifying’ 1 & 2: A short description from Amazon; “Bekim Fehmiu was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor of Albanian ethnicity. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War.”
While searching through a friends’ book collection I noticed a name that rang a bell. He was not an actor I remember well but I remembered some stories about him keeping his morale high during the war times, keeping himself clean off the illness that ravaged through people; Anger and Hate. His noble aims were not well accepted among his colleagues at the time, it was not popular to think, feel and shake hands, while the winds of hatred were at their full force. As I took the book, a lot of new information opened in front of my eyes. Also, through his book I immediately found another great one to read;
Stefan Zweig ‘The world of yesterday’. My parents luckily had it on their shelves already – a truly fantastic read about intelligent and peaceful people for whom nations are not borders but bridges.
Antun Vrgoc ‘My Memories of the World War’ is an autobiography of a Croatian chemist and pharmacognosist who ended up as a prisoner of war in Siberia. A person whose curiosity and courage kept him alive and well during the experience which would probably, drive most of the others to madness.
Josip Horvat ‘Survival in Zagreb’ (1943-1945) is a diary that literally describes everyday life of an intellectual living in Zagreb during the nazi puppet state regime.
Just finishing Simon Winder, Lotharingia. A personal history of France, Germany and the Counties in between, Picador, 2019. Next?
Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men. How two prisoners of war engineered he most remarkable escape in history, Profile Books, 2021, then Adrian Goldsworthy, Philip and Alexander. Kings and conquerors, Apollo, 2020;
https://www.amelie-paris.com/fr/actualites/490_officiel-de-la-maison.html demexyl giordano 6b11cea230
https://social.studentb.eu/vanlamerba rosangras schaune 4b1f4b8a67
https://bunkerbook.de/bolfeacomptors weylofern elleesia c94ff34b83
I am reading An Artful Path to Mindfulness by Janet Slom
https://wakelet.com/wake/a373r7o95FS_f7vAadDFG nannesar hector 074d687a94
I’m reading POTATOES NOT PROZAC. I’m currently searching for ways to help manage the side effects of cancer and chemotherapy. This book seems promising.
Oh, to be a painter! Virginia Woolf
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985
John Hoyland, The Last Paintings
Love in the Void, Simone Weil
The Secret of the Golden Flower, Wilhelm-Jung
Women’s Work The first 20,000 years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Maya Cosmos by Freidel, Schele and Parker. The theory of the Avant-Garde by Renato Poggioli. Holistic Medicine and the Extra Cellular Matrix by Matthew Wood.
1) Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Hate in the Homeland: The New GlobalFar Right” (2020)
2) “The Matter of Black Lives,” edited by Jelani Cobb and David Remnick (2021)
3) Gabrielle Selz, “Light on Fire:The Art and Life of Sam Francis” (2021)
4) Evan Osnos, “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury” (2021)
The Overstory by Richard Powers
I loved this book. I paint trees and nature, so this book was of great interest and meaning to me.
Loved it!
Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor
Abstractionist Aesthetics… Phillip E. Harper
Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks. A Journey into the World of the Deaf.
SFMOMA catelog on Joan Mitchell
One of the most incredible books that I have ever read. The writer is so articulate – such a pleasure – I even had to use my dictionary again!
“Gardens – An Essay on the Human Condition” by Robert Pogue Harrison, The University of Chicago Press.
SALT by Mark Kurlansky & MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM by Annemarie Schimmel
Foundation and Empire / Isaac Asimov
The Way of Beauty
Listening to Images, Tina M. Campt
A Black Gaze, Tina M. Campt
Black Paper, Teju Cole
What an interesting reading list this is!
Currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
The Sympathizer
Klamath and the Sun
Getting a lot to add to my list Thank You
The New Testament
The Adjacent Possibility Nancy Hillis
The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
Wilderness Tips and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
All of Henning Mankell’s books including Wallander Mystery Series and now the rest of his books. Rereading works by Doris Lessing and Barbara Pym.
All amazing.
“The Lady and the Little Fox Fur” by Violette Leduc
The great French feminist writer we need to remember. (1907 – 1972)
‘Leduc can capture the smells of a country….or make you feel the silky slither of her eel grey suit’
Violette Leduc is a fantastic writer and I’ve been reading her work also during this pandemic.
Does listening to books count?
My newest, and now favorite, author is Wilkie Collins.
“The Moonstone” and
“The Woman in White”
I love the way he writes and describes so perfectly that I can envision the people, places and feelings, et al.
I am about to finish “Tale of Murasaki” by Liza Dolby. This is a novel inspired by the world’s first novel, “Tale of Genji” written by Murasaki Shikibu in Heian period Japan (c. 1000).”Genji” is the first novel ever written and it was written by a woman. Liza Dolby imagines Murasaki’s life and inspiration for the events that take place in her novel. The Japanese aesthetic of transience…things are beautiful precisely because they do not last…is found throughout “Tale of Murasaki” as inspired by “Tale of Genji.”
Recently completed: “The Pope’s Ceiling” by Ross King. I used this book as a reference for a presentation on the Sistine Ceiling. It tells the background intrigue of the commission, the rivalries, and detailed descriptions of process and technique. For anyone who wants to get their head around the Sistine Ceiling frescoes.
“Time or the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy,” by Wolfram Eilenberger
“Reflections in the Waves: The Interdividual Observer in a Quantum Mechanical World” by Pablo Bandera
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, Moncrieff trans.
Did you finish it?
This is on the list of things I have not been able to finish!
You Are an Artist Assignments to Spark Creation -SARAH URIST GREEN
Also 101 Things to Learn in Art School (2013)
Grand Union stories by Zadie Smith
Economics of Visual arts. by Amy Witacker
“What is Painting?” Julian Bell
“what is painting?”Julian Bell
I am reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich and Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown. I have a huge pile of other books in my to-be-read pile. They’re waiting for winter hibernation time.
When I left my previous comment, I provided the wrong website address. I have corrected it here. Thank you.
I am reading How To Be A Successful Artist by Angus Resch. It has some material in it, which I wasn’t previously familiar with. I would recommend it to any aspiring artist. This book has some interesting case studies about successful artists as well as suggestions about career strategies. I think that many of the artists, whom I have met, haven’t come across a lot of the material, which is included in this book. Other artists often ask me career questions and I think that they might find some of the answers that they need in this book. I would say that this book has a different perspective than many art career books. I believe that many aspiring artists would find this career book to be helpful.
Thank you so much you turned your head on
I am currently experiencing the loss of two of my dearest and closest longtime friends. I miss them.
I am reading The Jewel Tree of Tibet -the enlightenment engine of Tibetan Buddhism by Robert Thurman
which I find very comforting informative and ‘down to earth’
also
Anxiety -the missing stage of Grief by Claire Bidwell Smith
After initially being resistant to the word ‘Anxiety’ I continued to read, stopping when I had a crying episode.
It hits the spot and I will continue to read it.
Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production, by Dave Beech. Brilliant and crystal. Also, Craig Staff’s Painting, History and Meaning.
I am reading several things at the minute. As research for a film I am working on I am reading Anne Nelson’s compelling “Red Orchestra” about the underground movement against fascism in Germany and Francis Stuart’s postwar novel “The Pillar of Cloud”. I’m intermittently dipping into Victor Klemperer’s “I Shall bear Witness”.
My evening reads are currently Igor Štiks’ and Krunoslav Stojaković’s concisely written “The New Balkan Left” which outlines the recent successes and failures of left-wing political movements and actions in the former Yugoslav republics. I’m also reading Georges Simenon’s The Snow Was Dirty. Written in post war Europe in the same year as Stuart’s book, it portrays the moral ambiguity, corruption and opportunism that was rife as the continent, and globe, recovered from its most devastating war. It has an air of Greene’s The Third Man to it, but it’s a more intimate and sinister book. I love Simenon’s writing – succinct and unadorned.
There are several stacks of books sitting around making me feel guilty for not having started them yet, but I’m too ashamed to list any.
The Last Things we Talk About, Your guide to End of Life Transitions, By Rev. Dr. Eliabeth T. Boatright. THings we all need to know whether young or old because we all lose imporant people in our lives.
Another book tht i read practically straight throug is Swimming Back to trout River by Linda Rui Feng. Covers the Cultural Revolution – as it hit a partciular group of people’s lives, the saving grace of music, something about disability, and immigration to the USA. Hugely engrossing and touching.
Just opening the cover (finally) … Karl Marlantes, MATTERHORN A Novel of the Vietnam War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010)
It was Marlantes who said: “When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn’t over for the veterans, or the family. It’s just starting.”
On the nightstand always:
David Finkel, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013)
Tim O’Brien, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (Houghton Mifflin, 1990)
Karl Marlantes, WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011)
These books provide insight on U.S. servicemembers’ experiences in war, the cost of war, the heartbreak for many on coming home, and the civilian-military divide.
And of another genre … Amy Hempel, SING TO IT (Scribner, 2019) whose short stories I never tire of reading and who donates time writing biographies for shelter dogs on death row with the hope they may be adopted.
‘The Magic Mountain’
-Thomas Mann
‘Manufacturing Consent’
-Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
‘In Cold Hell, In Thicket’
-Charles Olson
‘The Worm Ouroboros’
-E.R.Eddison
Theodor w Adorno – Aesthetic Theory. Published 1970- (Adorno’s radical re-thinking of Aesthetics in relation to Modern and contemporary art is so timely now. It makes me realise how so much thought about the making of art has left out a whole realm of Aesthetics.)
Jean Paul Satre – The Imaginary. ( So much of Lacan’s theory of Vision, the Gaze and Painting comes from this incredible work by Sartre.)
Flow – Philip Ball. (A scientist who thinks like an artist about patterns in nature, in this case liquids – it’s been an inspiration for the paintings i am currently making with liquid paint, using flow and gravity.
Merleau-Ponty ‘The Visible and the Invisible’ (This last unfinished work is the most radical re-thinking of vision and its relation to the world that I know)
1. SeokmunDobeob : the principle and rule of completion on Do(Tao) that makes human (beings) become the gods (2011)
2. Cheon-gwangCheolro : Hanzonim (the creator / the God)’s biography on training himself to achieve Do(Tao)
3. Through the Eyes of Joseon Painters (Real Scenery Landscapes of Korea) (2019)
4. 101 Things to Learn in Art School (2013)
5. SeokmunDodam edited by Seokmundomun (2012)
I am reading a book in French: Le Pays des Autres by Leïla Slimani.
In English Lumen Natura by Mathilde Marcolli.
Very important to understand the cultural collisions between east and west beginning several hundred years ago, in order to understand what might come out of it, politically, technologically, environmentally. So Two books by Chinese theorist Yuk Hui: Art and Cosmotechnics and The Question Concerning Technology in China. Essential, as well to return to the Dao and to Confucius.
In addition: Rilke, New Poems (1 and 2), Duino Elegies; Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Map Drawn by a Spy; Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes; Hagi Kenaan, Photography and Its Shadow; Coco Fusco et al Only Skin Deep. These are all ongoing.
Horst Stowasser – Anarchie (Nautilus Verlag)
Yoshiharu Tsuge – The Man Without Talent (NYR Comics)
I am devouring Kim Stanley Robinson’s books – I’m so happy he has many. I have finished New York 2040, Ministry of the Future, and am now in the Red Mars series. I always promise myself I will read only one book at a time – but as usual I am reading four plus random poetry – this week by Jorie Graham. Also reading Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, and Wisdom is Bliss by Robert Thurman.
Deep Adaptation, Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (2021)
Edited by Jem Bendell & Rupert Read
Deep adaptation is a concept and social movement based on the view that humanity needs to prepare for the possibility of societal collapse, as environmental change increasingly disrupts social, economic, and political systems.
‘This book is the “red pill” of our times, offering neither certainty nor confirmation of any story you may be holding about where we are heading in the face of so many colliding crises. What it does offer is togetherness in our insecurity and frameworks in our unknowing for coming to terms with and making sense of these times. I look forward to both “deep adaptation” and “collapsology” entering mainstream discourse so that we might then imagine creating together, as our current paradigm crumbles.’
Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion
King: A Street Story by John Berger. By chance I found a used copy of this book in Massolit Bookstore in Budapest. I have been working on both a project relating and viewing the world through the eyes of other creatures and a project relating in depth on a daily basis with the homeless. This book is a perfect fit, viewing homeless individuals and their existence through the eyes of dogs. It seems rather serendipitous that it both exists and that I would come across it randomly in a used English books bookstore in Budapest, where I have been living during the pandemic. I only knew John Berger through his book, Ways of Seeing, but of course, this fits the theme. I also read Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, during the pandemic, which is a fascinating book by Peter Godfrey-Smith. My mind opened up to the way an octopus can experience and take in knowledge through its arms, which have, in simple terms, brain-like matter within them. I also would like to say, if you like poetry, perhaps you want to read my first published book of poetry, which is a collaboration with myself (Anne Murray) and a Hungarian artist (Zolt Asta- Zsolt Asztalos) with poems I created to go with his photographs. It is called Battlefields and published by AC Books and available on Amazon, SPD Books, John Rule Art Book Distribution. I created it with the intention that the poems can be seen and read in any order carving different paths per the individual’s own intuition, much like in this photographer’s work, where modular sections are moved around. It was recently reviewed under Harriet Books by the Poetry Foundation, which has been such a lovely validation of this unusual modular style of syntax and symbol, which I included. This poetry is my little gift to the world during these challenging times.
I can’t speak more highly of “Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing” by TJ Demos
(Duke University Press 2020) It is a powerful look at how contemporary artists are addressing the urgent themes of these times, while imagining what comes after the end of the world.
I’m currently reading for research and pleasure the following:
Life to Those Shadows by Noel Burch
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
The Secret Life of Plant by P. Tomkins & C. Bird
Speaking with Nature by S. Ingerman & L. Roberts
‘Paper: Paging Through History’ by Mark Kurlansky
–
From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.
“That Hair,” by Djaimilia Pereira, “The Council of Animals” by Nick McDonell, “The Fate of Place” by Edward Casey
I am currently reading “The Road to Unfreedom: Europe, Russia, America” by Timothy Snyder
which charts the course of authoritarianism as it as has coursed through Eastern, Western Europe and Russia post WW2 and its political effects on the U.S. And “The Cost of Living” by Deborah Levy, a collection autobiographical essays by a writer of pithy prose, and a two-time Man-Booker Prize nominee.
‘Primeval And Other Times’ by Olga Tokarczuk
An imaginative (and close to actual) chronicle of ”the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
Qu’est-ce qui va changer en 2021
My latest reading self-assignment is Michael Pollan’s “This is Your Mind on Plants”, Penguin, NY (2021). During the pandemic, I have done a lot of technical reading & writing in my capacity as an astrophysicist. I have also reread Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Leonard Cohen’s poetry is for me a great consolation during this period of self-enforced semi-confinement. I play with the idea of a near-future re-read of Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.
I am currently reading “Picasso’s Las Meninas” by Claustre Rafart i Planas which I purchased while visiting Museo Picasso in Barcelona. The museum has the complete series of Picasso’s works inspired by Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” painting and it was the first time I saw the whole series ‘in the flesh’. I have been working on a number of art lessons (for my YT channel “Rob the Art Teacher”) on the subject of how and why artists and art students study other artists, and I plan to add a lesson based on Picasso’s approach to “Las Meninas”.
I am also ‘in the middle of’ Wiesław Myśliwski’s “Stone upon Stone”, an outstanding example of post-war Polish literature – a semi-autobiographical epic tale, at times poignant, liberally laced with rural wit and irreverence.
My pile now:
My MeteoriteHarry Dodge
On Freedom, Maggie Nelson
The Flowering The Autobiography of Judy Chicago
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard. I am reading again all his visionary books as well as What is Power by Byung-Chil Han
Greek plays for a story I want to do:
‘Lysistrata and Other Plays’ by Aristohanes (Penguin Ckassics)
The Acharians, The Clouds, Lysistrata
‘Medea and other plays by Euripides’ (Penguin Classics)
Medea, Hecabe, Electra, Heracles
and for the depressing stuff
‘In defense of Julian Assange’ Edited by Tariq Ali and Margaret Kunstler (OR books)
I did not know about the book “In defense of Julian Assange” Will buy it! Thanks
FÉLIX GUATTARI, The Three Ecologies, 1989
DONNA J. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, 2016
( a bit difficult to follow her jump cuts of academic references, her own lack of viewpoints and my real opposition towards her Cyborg chapter )…
URSULA K. LE GUIN, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986
I’m reading:
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom
Sanford Schwartz, On Edward Hicks
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace
Kateb Yacine, Nedjma
I am reading The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald and am finding it fascinating.
Forgot to add my name to above post re: The Rings of Saturn.
Judith Page
judith.page@gmail.com
http://www.judithpage.com
Hello,
I’m reading:
Andrea Lee – Lost Hearts in Italy
Avni Doshji – Brown Sugar
Ben Okri – The Freedom Artist.
I’m currently reading:
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, W.E.B. DuBois
Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, Vincent Brown
I just finished:
The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, Catherine Clinton
Next up:
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Nicole Fleetwood
Hello… I’m reading a number of books. Nine by Gwen Strauss (9 women escape from Nazi prison camps); Paleofantasy by Marlene Zuk (what evolution relaly tells us about Sex, Die and how we live); and still putting my own book, Coronaville (Blurb) out there, as well as a brand new art and literary magazine called TROUBLE (Blurb). This is vol 1 number 2, The Drug Issue. 180 pages. Free PDF download.
http://concretewheels.com/trouble/trouble.htm
Andy Grundberg and his new book:
“How Photography Became Contemporary Art: From Pop to Digital” is an excellent read – a great story that is both illuminating and concise, from a first-witness account by the author, whereby these (now) legendary pioneers and their incredible art making become fully alive, now heroic, in the context of the past-to-present art world. To truth and beauty at 1/125 of a second – the book echoes the apt phrase of Polaroid – “See What Develops”.
Yale University Press, excellent book! A must-read!
1. The Writings of Robert Smithson
I am revisiting this after many years.
2. Slide Show – Projected Images on Contemporary Art by Darcie Alexander
3. Machine in the Studio by Caroline Jones
Mostly interested in the Smithson essay but the others are good as well.
4. Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles
The body keeps the score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk (it’s so good!)
Strange weather in Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami (filled with Japanese food, it made me very hungry while reading…)
The Waves, by Virgina Woolf
The drowned World, JJ Ballard
Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel
This is interesting. I have long thought it strange that yin is denigrated by some taoist writers. I think this is part of the larger propensity to denigrate the feminine generally.
Entangled life by Merlin Sheldrake
I am currently reading Speaking East: The Strange and Enchanted Life of Isidore Isou by Andrew Hussey
Caliban and Witch ; Silvia Federici , Crucifying the Orient ,Kaplan’s Sahni
Just finished Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Currently reading Inland by Tea Obreht
Up next is Underland by Robert McFarlane
Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (Joan Mitchell groupie, btw half way through and it’s still about the men(oye))
The Essential Cy Twombly (Kurt Varnedoe devotee)
In the Shadow of the American Dream by David Wojnarowicz
coming up –
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
The SFMoMA Joan Mitchell Retrospective catalog
Navigating The Art World: Professional Practices For Early Career Artist
Give me the Now
Everything you wanted to know about contemporary art but were afraid to ask: talk ART
A Room with a View
The Magazine
I’m reading NAKED LUNCH by William Burroughs – I’ve never read it before!
I am reading BEYOND WORDS, What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina.
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
Kin Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Miranda Fricker’s Epistemical Injustice
Just read George Orwell “ 1984 “ Sadly the political lies a falsehood are with us still .
Am just about to reread “ A Canticle for Leibovitz “ by Walter M Miller JR . It traces a monks journey as he tries to to understand the previous20 th. D try civilization and what happened after “ The atomic Flame Deluge was over. The earth was dead and all knowledge was lost “ First published 1929
I just finished The Rock Eaters, a tremendous and moving book of short stories by Brenda Peynado. I devoured it, laughing and crying my way through every story. Now I am about a third of the way through the massive biography of Alice Neel – The Art of Not Sitting Pretty by Phoebe Hoban. It’s an excellent and thorough account of her life. A must read after seeing the show at The Met.
I have just finished “Culture Strike: Art and Museums in the Age of Protest,” by Laura Raicovich
Before that, “Science and Wonder,” by Mary Baine Campbell
Reading the Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill a murder mystery and John James Audubon The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes
rereading a novel by John Mcgahern,That they may face the rising sun,a exquisite piece of writing on rural Ireland by the late novelist,and struggling with a large rather ambiguous novel by martin Amis for the last few months,my instincts are to bin it.
I recently read the autobio The Life of Lazarillo De Tormes; and just read several graphic novels by Garth Ennis/Goran Parlov and by R Kikuo Johnson, including his upcoming No One Else; as well, I carry Chip Delany’s Nova around in my bag for whenever I get a moment.
Currently reading the Bible: Genesis. Certainly appropriate. Interesting if one considers human imperatives and the attitudes that have shaped our society. Also read Hannah Arendt: “The Human Condition”, and reading “Crises of the Republic”. Brilliant.
Facing the Extreme; Moral Life in the Concentration Camps by Tzvetan Todorov.
Before that, Austerlitz, before that The Rings of Saturn both by Sebald.
Before that, Locus Solus and Impressions of Africa, both by Roussel.
The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland by Vicki Cummings
I just started reading “The Importance of Being Ernest”, by Oscar Wilde.
My favorite book this summer? Reza Aslan’s “ZEALOT” >> upon which I’m clearly discovering that I’m far more Pauline Hellenist than James’ Zionist if our New Jerusalem’s constantly in the offing.
My take? If, after all, the empirical nature of our due BEING has to postpone the timeless destiny of our true BECOMING, it’s ALL Constitutionally upheld in #MorePerfectUnionFormation via a perfection only mattering — squared to light’s speed — MOVING FORWARD. Meanwhile, should many of our ancestors somehow need to be posthumously saved BEFORE the Cross 2000yrs ago compels the need for a thermodynamic time to provide relativist resolve via absolute rewinds. That our destined singularity CAN, for example, retroactively CAUSE the very creation whence we’ve come in the first place to procreate till we’re at the last place is our feared-stay hope’s only happiness.
I am reading “Frank Bowling” by Mel Gooding.
Just finished the Short Stories of Breece D’J Pancake. Amazing prose, brilliant, wish I could could write this way.
Just started Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides, it’s a bout Kit Carson and America’s conquest of the West during the early and mid 1800’s.
Outside of several poets for my upcoming workshops, I recently finished Southern History across the Color Line by Nell Painter and Just Kids by Patti Smith.
Am finishing up The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley
The Harlem Reader, ed by Herb Boyd
Openings: A Memoir from the Women’s Arts Movement, New York City, 1970-1992 by Sabra Moore
The Firebrand and The First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship by Patricia Bell-Scott
In different ways, these memoirs, essays and poetry explore American culture, political change, artistic expression, and attempt to make visible what is often erased.
Kin: A Memoir
Shawna Kay Rodenberg
The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist
by Dorothy Day
Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family
Amanda Jette Knox
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I’m a few pages away from finishing “Evening in the Palace of Reason,” by James Gaines (2005). It’s about the night Bach and Frederick the Great met at the latter’s palace in Potsdam. An astonishing, mesmerizing tale about art and political power. It’s definitely one of my top ten books!
OnCurating Issue 51
Fluxus Perspectives
eds Martin Patrick and Dorothee Richter
Although the Fluxus art (non-)movement is often read as a historical phenomenon, the breadth of its innovations and complexities actively thwarts linear and circumscribed viewpoints. The notion of Fluxus incorporates contradiction in challenging and enduringly generative ways. More than five decades after its emergence, this special issue of OnCurating entitled Fluxus Perspectives seeks to re-examine the influence, roles, and effects of Fluxus via a wide range of scholarly perspectives. The editors Martin Patrick and Dorothee Richter asked notable writers from different locations, generations, and viewpoints, all of whom having written about Fluxus before, to offer their thoughts on its significance, particularly in relation to contemporary art. With its emphasis upon events, festivals, and exhibitions, Fluxus may also be interpreted as an important, prescient forerunner of contemporary strategies of curating.
Contributions by Simon Anderson, Jordan Carter, Kevin Concannon, Ken Friedman, Natilee Harren, John Held, Jr., Hannah B Higgins, Hanna B. Hölling, Natasha Lushetich, Billie Maciunas, Peter van der Meijden, Ann Noël, Martin Patrick, Dorothee Richter, Henar Rivière, Julia Robinson, Owen F. Smith, Weronika Trojanska, and Emmett Williams.
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
What is Art? by Ernst Billgren
I Can Cook Vegan by Isa Chandra Moskowitz
I taught that book in an Honors College program at Hofstra University, and my students loved it. It’s a brilliant “unreliable narrator” story. I’m only sorry the book (and the author) isn’t better known.
Do you mean Clarice Lispector? Yes, amazing writer, I just finished the volume “complete short stories” beautiful writing
I enjoy this question that you ask in every interview.
Currently I am reading on visionary art- The first manifest of visionary art by L. Caruana/ and Women of visionary art by DJBrown & RAHill; in conjunction with CGJung- The psychology of kundalini yoga ; Latino art-artists, markets, and politics.
Gore Vidal’s “Creation”. Given to me by Elena Sisto. Fascinating account in novel form about the Persians around 2-300 BC and their travails with the Greeks and ventures into India and China. Includes a view into all the religions that were forming and competing with one another in the Middle East and in Asia at that time. Wry contemporary writing.
I just finished Severance by Ling Ma and I am just about to start To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine.
POOR QUEER STUDIES by Matt Brim, MEMORIAL DRIVE by Natasha Tretheway, VANGUARD by Martha S Jone.
At the beginning of the pandemic I became deeply engrossed in the Cixin Liu’s trilogy – the first volume is called The Three Body Problem – recently I read a newer work of his called Ball Lightning – While not a regular reader of science fiction these held my attention and I recommend them highly. These also called to mind something I read and loved several years ago- Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy. Having a hard time concentrating with all tht is going on in the world and my normal reading quota is severely diminished
I’m in the midst of: The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Also enjoyed: The Arrest, by Jonathan Lethem
I’m reading The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins and Rose by Li-Young Lee.
As always there are a couple of plays on the go (Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs, Spring Awakening by Weekend) and a motley crew of sailing books.
Recently I’ve been dipping in and out of the Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.
Its such a moving tale of brotherly love and the volumes were given to me over 20 years ago by Lucian Freud when I was sitting for him. Lucian was obsessed with these letters, he talked about them often, and reading them takes me back to those days a lifetime ago, in his Notting Hill studio.
what a story, that is so col to hear! In what way was Lucien obsessed with these letters? Historically or as a contemporary paradigm? Or something else, just the writing itself?
He saw something familiar in Van Gogh
I am about to launch a re-read of Anna Karenina.
Here’s a list of a few books from this year…
“24/7”
Jonathan Crary
“Digital Uncanny”
Ravetto Biaglioli
“Glitch Feminism”
Legacy Russell
“Tactics of Interfacing”
Ksenia Fedorava
“Cultural Analytics”
Lev Manovich
“Call Me Burroughs”
Barry Miles
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
I’m just about to start reading “ Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations.” In the studio I’m making slow progress on “Art/Work” by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber. It’s an excellent review (I’m learning some new tips, too) of how to run a professional art practice.
“Grit – The power of passion and perseverance” by Angela Duckworth
“You are the brand” by Michael Kim
I’m rereading Crack Wars by Avital Ronell. Unlike crack itself, the second hit is even better than the first.
Landscape and Memory by Simon Shama
SPQR by Mary Beard
Turtle Diaries by Russel Hoban
Hi there,
just re-reading after a really long time since the first Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and a very interesting book in German that I do not know if it has been translated into English entitled 1913 by Florian Illies. A book that tells only what happened in that year and I wonder how much really happened in art, society and politics: Duchamp’s ready made, Malewitch’s Black/White Square just to mention a few….
I just finished my first book by Thomas Bernhard, “ja” -wow what a writer!
I follow Karl Ove Knausgårds all books and now read Summer & for my next to follow is obviously his Autumn.
This summer I have read the 1940s Swedish working class writers, all translated to English which was a mind-blowing experience. For example Harry Martinson (The Road/ Aniara) & Jan Fridegård.
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Benjamin M Friedman
Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith
Satires by Horace
Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant which I am slowly reading with my pal Loren Britton ( they’ve read it before)
Anais Duplan, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture
Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI
Joanna Page, Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art
“My Second Work” by Bridget Lowe; Gwendolyn Brooks: Collected Poems; “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead; “The News,” by Jeffrey Brown.
Stuart Cosgrove: Harlem 69. The Future of Soul.
This is the third book (Detroit 67, Memphis 68) in a groundbreaking series that is eye-opening and a fantastic read. Right up there with the Peter Guralnik trilogy (Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music).
Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviews.
Brilliant book paying homage to a brilliant force in 20th Century music.
Das Jahr 1990 freilegen, ed. Jan Wenzel a.o.
Quite a tomp dissecting the German year 1990, very very beautiful and a gripping read.
Lots of biographies and autobiographies and also about mindfulness:
https://www.amazon.com/Kin-Memoir-Shawna-Kay-Rodenberg/dp/1635574552/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kin+%2B+shawna&qid=1632412778&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Loneliness-Autobiography-Legendary-Catholic/dp/0060617519/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=long+loneliness&qid=1632412798&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Race-Transforming-Racism-Inside/dp/1683640810/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=ruth+king&qid=1632412831&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Maria-Chaos-South-Bronx/dp/0545621852/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=sonia+%2B+bronx+stories&qid=1632412925&sr=8-3
Upper Bohemia by Hayden Herrera
A memoir about how two little girls, Hayden and her sister Blair, survived a childhood of neglect, written through the eyes of a child. It is told with an enormous sensitivity to place and to the people who passed through those places.
The Jewel Tree of Tibet – the enlightenment engine of Tibetan Buddhism by Robert Thurman
Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit;
The Song of the Trees, David George Haskell;
The Mother Tree, Suzanne Simmard;
The Price of the Ticket, James Balwin;
Jackson Pollock, Kirk Varnedoe.
States of Mind: Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness (a collection of literature, science, philosophy and art, published by the Wellcome Collection)
I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s Peter McGough a glorious deep and tragic in depth tour of a period in the art world
Reading these books simultaneously:
The Life of Forms in Art – Henri Focillon
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto – Legacy Russell
Albert & the Whale by Philip Hoare. The sea is not made of water by Adam Nicholson.
Read it over the summer – great!
Life Death by Jacques Derrida and The Probiotic Planet by Jamie Lorimer
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
The age of Wood. By Roland Ennos
We think of the past in terms of stone, bronze and steel but that is not a true picture. People have mostly used those technologies to make things out of wood. A history of humankind all the way back to primates through their use of wood.
Imitations, Zadie Smith. 2020. Early reflections on the Pandemic living in NYC.
All The Light We Cannot See
–Anthony Doerr
Pulitzer Prize winner, stunning and poetic language in a totally convincing story that takes place in Europe during WW2
Human, Sean Scully
Images of Scully’s solo exhibition “Human” at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice with essays by art historians, art critics, and curators about his work. My friend went to this exhibition on my recommendation after I saw Scully’s exhibition “Landline” at the Wadsworth Atheneum the year before. I fell in love with his work and couldn’t get to Italy to see “Human,” but my friend loved it so much she brought me back this huge book that weighs about 20 lbs. Not the same as in person, of course, but good art reproductions and some damn good writing.
Watson, Lyall. Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind. 1984. New York Review Book, NYC, NY.
Wulf, Andrea, editor. Alexander von Humboldt: Selected Writings. 2018. Knopf, NYC, NY.
Helferich, Gerard. Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Homboldt and The Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See the World. 2004. Penguin Group, NYC, NY.
Lawrence, Beull, editor. The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings. 2006. Random House, NYC, NY.
Allende, Isabel. In the Midst of Winter. 2017. Atria Books, NYC, NY.
Allende, Isabel. A Long Petal of the Sea. 2020. Ballantine Books, NYC, NY.
Wild By Nature by Sarah Marquis
Epic endurance, focus, dedication to her goal to walk across Asia … alone … And she had no idea that her journey would take 3 years, but she persisted against all challenges and threats and made it. Inspiring book if you have an epic or even small goal.
How Forest Think: Toward An Anthropology Beyond The Human by Eduardo Kohn. Eduardo is a linguistic anthropology and I believe since writing this book critics it as weighted down a bit by the academics he imposes. It’s interesting to read while considering that tension. After all it’s a unique writer who covers our relation to nature without the bs.
Re-reading: The Quantum Revolution – a radical synthesis of art and science” by Paul Levy.
This book brings an in-depth analysis of the Quantum Theory with quotes from the major physicists in the world. Paul Levy “translates” every concept in everyday words for the lay person, often more than once. The book is brilliant and truly life-changing. The main take away: What is the real Reality? What and Who are we in that context? What we acquire with this book: brand new eyes – outer and inner.
Life? or Theatre?
by Charlotte Salomon
Laura Shabott is reading Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel.
I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, lyrical accounts of various fictional characters and their relationship to trees.I am also reading Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, an excellent account of the women artists during the “abstract expressionist years” I was struck, again, by how incredibly good Lee Krassner was and how she seems to have deferred her career so that she could promote her husband, Jackson Pollack’s career.
I’ve been recommending The Overstory to everyone and bought it for everyone on my Christmas list. It’s indelibly imprinted into my consciousness now.
Flannery O’Connor
The Complete Stories
Phenomenal writer. I started this collection a while ago and am just returning to it now.
David Arora’s ‘Mushrooms Demystified’ is all you could ever imagine knowing about the magical kingdom. Encyclopedic and almost overwhelming with its small font of nearly 1000 pages but the skillfully collected details are layered with such quirky humour it lures you in.
Surely it must be the result of a lifelong passion!
I would love to have my books included in your list. here is my link to my Amazon:
http://www.Amazon.com/author/annguerra
Kindertotenwald
Prose Poems by Franz Wright
Reading this now in hardcover. Franz sent it to me when it was still in manuscript form to read and for safe keeping while he was battling cancer, in case he didn’t make it. He gave a reading from it at Amherst College which was so powerful it blew some people out the door.
He’s gone now, and I miss him.
Milkman by Anna Burns-so incredibly well written about the troubles in Ireland and how oppressive social control permeates every interaction among the protagonists.
My absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent-a new American novel.
Gun Love by Jennifer Clement also contemporary Americana.
David Sedares: When you are engulfed in flames.
Thinking Like A Mountain, Towards a Council if All Beings
–by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess
I’m reading this again for probably the fifth time since I first read it in a cultural anthropology class 30 years ago. It’s an anthology of essays on Deep Ecology that changed my life when I first read it many years ago. It begins with Introduction: “To Hear Within Ourselves the Sound of the Earth Crying”
Typo: Toward a Council of All Beings
BLASTED ALLEGORIES
an anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists
edited by Brian Wallis, foreword by Marcia Tucker
published 1989, purchased 1993
revealed an inner truth and necessary power of artists for me, that due to the art markets system of wealth, and the political system in general, slowly has faded up till now….what remains are the writings by artists….one of the most important books for me, in my archive
Blue, The History of a Color
–Michel Pastoureau
Perfect antidote to the overload of red and green throughout this holiday season
my book is on Amazon check it it out Color or Die
my name is Erik Anthony Totten its the book with black n white cover tnere is a few similar books with the same title mines most recent and check out my two insragram profiles #selftote & #MrTotten79
thank-you
for love and creation we are quantum baby
E.Totten
A NOT-SO-STILL LIFE by Jimmy Ernst. Sensitive story about the son of
Max Ernst and his European childhood.
TRANSMORPHING UTOPIA
So many books, so little time, right?
I’ve been wanting to read Truman Capote for years so I’m starting with this collection of some of his works–
Breakfast At Tiffany’s,
A Short Novel and Three Stories
I am reading Austin ‘s books “Steal Like an Artist” and “Blackout Poem” &”Show Your Work”
A Sense of the Mysterious by Alan Lightman.
Some Memories of Drawings
–Edited by Doris Bry, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art in colaboration with Georgia O’Keefe
A collection of Georgia O’Keefe’s drawings in various media with each drawing accompanied by the artist’s comments on how, why, when, and/or where she made each drawing.
Excerpt:
“Drawing No. 13. 1915. Charcoal. 24 3/4 x 18 7/8 inches
This is a drawing of something I never saw except in the drawing. When one begins to wander around in one’s own thoughts and half-thoughts what one sees is often surprising.”
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
Street Fighting Years; An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali
Well written and engaging story of Ali’s progress growing up as a Marxist in the fledgling country of Pakistan and then becoming a key player in the politics of revolution in Britain during the 1960s and his activism during the Vietnam War. Tells the less publicised side of that struggle.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (a conversation between the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu). Deep, wise, quite humorous at times.
La femme du Blanc by Muriel Diallo
Im reading
Anne of Green Gables
by L.M. Montgomery
My first time reading this classic. Anne has now become my favorite charachter in literature.
“I would very much love to be good at something astonishing”
Anne Shirley
TRUE LOVE IS MY COUNTRY
by Insa Rose Vermeeren, self imposed exile from democracy
A story of transition between declining democracy and a new world.
I keep coming back to this one, so perhaps it will be intersting to others. Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton
I’m reading:
Leonardo Da Vinci
-by Walter Isaacson
I am reading The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Have also been reading the Memoirs of Casanova. Super long, but parts are very interesting. To understand Casanova’s beginning as a young priest turned over sexed libertine is worth the one or two dollars in the kindle shop. Also anything by Mary Carr
Reading “Single, Gay, and Christian.” An interesting take and look into what it means to live in these worlds simultaneously, while maintaining your identity in such a way that makes the majority of each group uncomfortable.
In Indian Mexico
A Narrative of Travel and Labor
Frederick Starr
Published in 1908
The book relates the travels by Frederick Starr visiting the Mexican natives of The Southern part of Mexico. His work was to study the physical type of south Mexican indians but it also relates his adventures , the customs of the people and the friendship he enjoyed with some of them.
The Ravenous Raven by Midji Stephenson, illustration by Steve Gray. While preparing for Women As Birds show in January and working on first ever graphic novel, I needed something energetic and fun. The story is a romp through gluttony featuring a smart bird with a big appetite.
Sounds like s fun read. I’ll have to check that out
“James Wright:A Life in Poetry” by Jonathan Blunk This is a striking biography of Wright, his life, his creative trajectory, and his passionate commitment to his craft. Anyone working in a creative discipline will find deep veins of rich material about living, creating, and devotion to “the work” in these pages. I highly recommend!
Thank you
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
I love that book too!
The Word, The Book and The Spaces They Inhabit
This is a first of a series of short books by story-teller and intellectual lawyer Mari Shaw on “The Noble Art of Collecting”.
The Rebirth of Painting in the Late Twentieth Century
by Donald Kuspit
Kuspit is an art critic who “examines the continued validity and variety of painting in the postmodern era…”
Eckhart Tolle: “New Earth” and Lynne McTaggart “The Field”
Eckhart Tolle: “New Earth”
The Red Tent
–by Anita Diamant
I missed this book when it came out 20 years ago but after recently reading Diamant’s “Day After Night,” I wanted more. While not literary fiction, it is lush and full in its poetic use of all the senses–the sounds, sights, touch, tastes, and scents inherent in ancient nomadic desert life–which is enriching my work in the studio each day.
Agreed, good summer reading!
Generosity by Richard Powers
Day After Night
–by Anita Diamant
I am reading “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman, “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein,” and re-reading “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire” by Rafe Esquith. Also memorizing “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” by Neil Gaiman (which involves reading and rereading a lot :-D).
The Hole In The Universe:
How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything
–K.C. Cole
Currently reading Freedom, the end of the human condition by Jeremy Griffith.
The Hidden Life of Trees:
What They Feel, How They Communicate
–by Peter Wohlleben
My Current list:
Great book for old masters recipes in all media. I am intrigued by the process behind the paint. Esp the making of the pigments.
The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting: With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters, by Doerner, Max
I also am reading this book, to see what I can do myself with materials from my own land.
The Organic Artist: Make Your Own Paint, Paper, Pigments, Prints and More from Nature
Neddo, Nick
Art from my yard is my current focus, and so a book about birch bark plaiting has led the way to some experiments with vessels.
Plaited Basketry with Birch Bark
Yarish, Vladimir
In seeking to understand more about Matriarch vs Patriarch culture and the art that comes from both I am reading this book
The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization
Gimbutas, Marija Alseikaite
Finally and most intriguing is the study of Object oriented Ontology, with thanks to Bjork and Tim Morton
Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics
by Timothy Morton
For me, I am currently looking at all processes of creating art and any and all avenues to deliver that expression. My main body of concern is the intuitive process in creation, not allowing so much my thinking mind to control, but to let the right brain be free to stumble upon what ever it is that it wants to say. I am always surprised.
I am at one time reading many different books on many subjects, primarily non fiction, nature, animals, history, plants, herbs, healing. This is one that I think is quite interesting at the moment.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Written by: Daniel H. Pink
Julie ,
is Gimbautus by M. Alseikaite in Lithuanian or English?
4321 by Paul Auster
&
Art of the Haiku by Stephen Addis
(& watching TV for letting my shadow slip through)
I’m reading The Emmigrants by W G Sebald.
I’m currently promoting a fantasy love story – “Silent Love”
Available on Amazon.
I have six books that I have had published. “Cowboy Cartoons by Daryl Talbot”, “Cowboy Cartoons #2”, “Cowboy Cartoons #3”. “Oklahoma Cowboy Cartoons”, “Laughing in Cadence” and “Laughing in Rank and File”. Available at Amazon.
I’m enjoying “The Silent History”, a story about a new way of communicating, and being, by Eli Horowitz, et al.
I am leaving the book I wrote, Public Private Relationships and the New Owners of the Means of Production,
The foundation research for this book is years of studying the economic development statutes put into place in Maine since the Longley Doctrine was institutionalized in the late seventies. My book tells many stories of Maine communities ruthlessly exploited by this doctrine which is stated in a nutshell as ” Centrally managing the economy is an essential government function which must be done by public private relationships”
Most of my current reading is a continuation of this research, not exactly books- reading statutes and ordinances, and following through with expanded research into articles, written by others. That takes up a lot of time.
On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century – Timothy Snyder
A must read!
Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Theft By Finding
David Sedaris
A House by the Sea, journal of May Sarton
Dessert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.
Currently reading “Georgia, a novel of Georgia O’Keefe” by Dawn Tripp and
“The Dream Colony, A Life in Art”, be Walter Hopps with Deborah Treisman and Anne Doran
Lillian de Jong, Janet Benton
WWWj.janetbentonauthor.com
True literature and an unforgettable character, deepening your understanding of the mother-child bond and a punishing society whose roots have still not gone away. Enlightening and superbly written.
Cabinet Magazine has a series, Twenty-Four-Hour Book,in ” which an author or artist is “incarcerated in its gallery space to complete a project from start to finish within twenty-four hours.”In this latest, Jeff Dolvin was given a source-text to use one day before-hand:the 1986 catalogue for Braintree Scientific, a company that provides lab equipment for experiments on rats and mice. What resulted is the indelible “Take Take.”
I am also reading Sharon Cameron’s brilliant meditation on creators such as Robert Bresson and Dostoevsky whose orientation challenges and stands apart from the false constrictures of categorization, “The Bond of the Furthest Apart”.
And I’m re-reading Bruno Schulz’s “Sanitorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.”
All 3 are amazing books.
disn
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar