I was thinking about art this morning because I'm taking an art class next semester and I was driven to look at the art books I have under my coffee table and then write a post about the art books I own. To my surprise, I don't really own any art books. I have Hippie
, which is kind of an art book. I have several books about The Beatles with large photographs. Really the only art book I have is Masterpieces of Modern Architecture
, which isn't even mine, it belongs to my boyfriend. I also have my textbook from art history which has a ton of paintings in it, but they're very small and therefore not really what I think of when I say art book.
But why would I have a lot of art books? They're big. They're expensive. And most of the time they just end up on my coffee table where I look at them once in a blue moon. That being said, I've been perusing for art books this morning and have found some I think I'd like to have.
The 20th Century Art Book is part of a collection published by Phaidon. This collection has other books that span wider times periods and also a book on photography. All of these books look like great overviews and I think I would really enjoy have one or two just for the information and to learn about other artists.
50 Women Artists You Should Know this is the cheapest book I found about women artists (about $9 in paperback) and from the reviews I saw it looks like the authors provide a good amount of information for each artist. What really interested me in this book (besides the price) is that it includes a timeline of the artists, which I would find useful to see how he chain of influence might have worked. A more expensive book on women artists is Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art
, which I'm also lusting after.
Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction (Whitney Museum of American Art)
is an example of a single artist book I think I would really enjoy. From the reviews I read this book appears to be extremely well made and durable with a lot of images. It also includes essays about O'Keefe and someone even commented in their review to say the writing was interesting, which isn't true in a lot of art books.
Do you have any art books? Which ones do you enjoy? If you don't have any do you think you would ever buy one?
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