Literature for Artists and Art Enthusiasts – 16 Essential Books on Modern Art 2024

Why read about art history?

The act of making art is one of humanity’s most ubiquitous activities and every piece of art tells its own story from the perspective of the artist and the corresponding cultural circle. Consequently, when learning about the history behind art through great art history books, we acquire knowledge about various factors of the society, including cultural, political, economic, artistic, and religious ones. Dealing with pictures from different time periods trains both the eyes and the brain in the skills of looking critically and understanding where we come from and where we are going, it shows how the world is perceived by a certain culture and its individuals and how they wanted to present their world to others. While the average eye just appreciates the aesthetic of a piece of art, art history will provide knowledge about the essence of and the stories behind it.

Art history shows cultural diversity, discloses the bizarre sides of humankind, and makes character traits and oddities of different cultural circles accessible. Knowledge beyond the visual in the form of best books on art discloses how people dealt with historical and personal events and the entire spectrum of emotions from fear to joy, which we can learn from.

In the following, we introduce Pigment Pool’s treasure trove of the best art history books of the modernist era. During this period, extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, artists overcame canonical traditions of the past and experimented with new styles and fresh ideas with a tendency away from the narrative in favour of freer and abstracted approaches. These essential books on modern art demystify the many movements, artists, their stories, and styles, making art history attainable and enjoyable. Whether you are an experienced art lover or are looking to learn more about the story behind your wall art, or simply curious about the evolution of modernist art, these popular art books will be indispensable on your shelf.

Amy Dempsey (2011): Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art

Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art by art historian Amy Dempsey is a lively guide to the movements of modern art starting with the history of Impressionism and concluding with the onset of the contemporary art period. The book opens with a visual map of the modern art history eras in the shape of an eight-page fold-out to give an overview of the 19th and 20th-century art movements timeline. The compilation of essays following the map highlights 300 of the most significant art history movements of the 150 years spanning period, outlining correlations and patterns of influence. Dempsey gives crisp insights into each art history era including the impact of the respective styles, the historical circumstances, central figures, their manifestos, and the most important exhibitions, illustrated by the most significant pieces of art.

As a bonus, each main article is supplemented with literature recommendations and plentiful cross-references for further in-depth reading.

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Charles Harrison (Editor), Paul J. Wood (Editor) (2002): Art in Theory 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas

 

With Art in Theory 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Charles Harrison and Paul J. Wood offer an extensive collection of the 20th century’s copious art theory texts underpinning the development of art in the modern period. These include significant contributions made by a wide array of theorists since the 1990s, among them artists, philosophers, art critics, literary figures, and politicians, providing commentary and discussions on topics such as contemporary performance and installation art, globalization, Bauhaus, gender studies, and the globalization of culture.

Clearly structured in chronological order of the events in art history, starting with the movement of symbolism and concluding with the debates about the postmodern, each of the 371 essays is accompanied by a crisp contextual introduction by the editors indicating interrelation, background, and context to the theories. Both suitable for beginners in the field of art history and the advance art history connoisseur, the book provides comprehensive contents about the art theories of the modern period.

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John Berger (1990): Ways of Seeing. Based on the BBC Television Series

The seminal book Ways of Seeing is based on the 1972 television series of 30-minute films created by writer John Berger, broadcasted on the BBC in the same year. The series and the book criticize the conventional Western cultural aesthetics and raise the question about ideologies underlying visual images, this way revealing social and political systems in which art was created. It focused on the relation between what we see and what we know to be.

The book strongly influenced the theoretical concepts about art and cultural aesthetics at that time, especially about the male gaze as part of the analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting and became popular among feminists.

For many people in the 1970es and still today, the book serves as an eye opener in how we look at art, culture and aesthetics. It will be precious reference for art lovers, providing a new way of appreciating artwork.

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Herschel B. Chipp (1992): Theories of Modern Art. A Source Book by Artists and Critics

Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art. A Source Book by Artists and Critics gathers a wide array of interviews, articles, letters, manifestos, and other texts dealing with art movements such as Postimpressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism regarding painting and sculpture. The articles are carefully searched and methodically selected, giving the study of modern periods in art history a sound ideological basis. Citing individuals such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Guillaume Apollinaire, Piet Mondrian and Clement Greenberg, and even less expected ones like Leon Trotsky and Adolf Hitler in the section on Art and Politics, the book gives deep insights into the way artists and critics think and work.

This book is an authoritative anthology for every student of art history and art lovers who want to gain a solid understanding about the theories behind the many art movements in the last 150 years.

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Will Gompertz (2013): What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye

What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye entertains and arms readers who want to understand and enjoy their explorations to museums and galleries with modern art at display. The question “Is this art?” is taken seriously but with a pinch of humour by the author Will Gompertz – former director at London’s Tate Gallery and now the BBC arts director.

Sprinkled with extraordinary stories and anecdotes, the book follows Gompertz’ mission to bring the exciting history of modern art alive for everyone, also for the unexperienced art lover who wants to gain access to pieces of modern art and especially modern abstract art. The seemingly complicated pieces of art and the ideas of the periods in art history spanning the past 150 years are framed in a lively, witty way accounting for the major moments and art movements of the modern period. The layman’s fear of not understanding the world of modern art is dispelled in an enlightening, clever way.

Since the Kindle version lacks some images that are crucial for understanding, we strongly recommend purchasing the print version to fully enjoy your reading experience.

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Robert Hughes (1991): The Shock of the New

The book The Shock of the New relates to a television series broadcasted by the BBC in the 1980s, which addressed the development of modern art since the movement of the Impressionists. The book combines insight, wit, and accessibility to seemingly complex concepts of art, framed in an easy-to-understand way. In an unparalleled immediacy, Hughes presents how the development of technology and war influenced art in the 19th century, the relationship between modern art and authority, the artists’ relationship with nature and their visions of paradise, attempts to create art without restrictions, and the impact of commercialisation of modern art.

The beautifully illustrated book includes more than 250 photos from cubism to pop and avant-garde, making it an enormously enjoyable account of the state of play between art and society.

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Agnes Berecz (2019): 100 Years, 100 Artworks. A History of Modern and Contemporary Art

100 Years, 100 Artworks. A History of Modern and Contemporary Art is a rich compendium of what constitutes modern and contemporary art. Using one hundred of the most significant art works – one per year – of the past 100 years, the book offers a tour of the most iconic pieces of the modern period in the areas of painting, sculpture, photography, installations, and performance art from around the world. Each work is impeccably reproduced in double-page spreads alongside with crisp and witty texts. While enjoyable as little bits and pieces in single pages, the book as a whole serves as an ideal overview of stylistic trends, historical backgrounds, including technological innovations that had an impact on the world of art.

Berecz’ book is perfect for a living room coffee table in the homes of art enthusiasts.

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MoMA Now: Highlights from The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The large-format hardcover book celebrates the Museum of Modern Art collection after its historic expansion in 2019. The MoMA Highlights present a rich chronological overview of the modern and contemporary art period, selected from the Museum’s permanent collection, which encompasses around 200,000 pieces of art across 6 curatorial departments.

The reader is introduced to some of the most famous artworks of the museum’s collection of modern art, starting with a photograph from 1867 and concluding with a documentary film from 2017. While featuring most iconic pieces, including works by Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet, and Andy Warhol, as well as artwork by lesser-known artists, the book provides new and imaginative ways of understanding the collection. Furthermore, the book encompasses a larger number of works by artists of colour, different cultural backgrounds, and of modern art by women artists, which have not been shown in earlier editions.

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Grayson Perry (2014): Playing to the Gallery

Famous and award-winning artist Grayson Perry examines the art establishment asking all the question you might be embarrassed to ask when going to see an exhibition: Who decides what art is, what “good” and “bad” art constitutes, how much it is worth, how to approach modern and contemporary art, and what role curators, dealers, and museums play. Is today’s art still capable to shock and inspire us or has it all been here before?

It is easy to feel insecure around modern art if we do not possess academic and historical knowledge. However, Perry, answering these questions with insight and wittiness, proves that anybody can enjoy and appreciate art.

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Linda Nochlin (2021): Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? 50th Anniversary Edition

In January 1971, Art News published the pioneering essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by the distinguished professor of Art History and Feminist Linda Nochlin (1931–2017). Her essay was both a wake-up call for a new generation of female artists and an appeal for institutions which shaped the understanding of art. Nochlin did not write from the artist perspective, frustrated at the lack of being recognized. She rather gave a scathing analysis of why Caucasian men were considered to be great in the art world while people of colour and women were not.

50 years later, there have been major transformations within the structures that govern fame – in the arts and many other fields of society. Women are in leadership positions in major art galleries and museums, it is no longer a novelty to see women as art critics, and female artists have gained strong visibility. It appears, Nochlin’s original essay was much more a battle plan.

The 50th anniversary edition Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists, revisits Nochlin’s 1971 essay alongside its reappraisal “Thirty Years After”, which is a striking reflection on the emergence of a new canon regarding feminist theory, race, postcolonial studies, and queer theory. Referring to Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, Cindy Sherman, and many more female artists, Nochlin diagnoses the state of women and art with unmatched precision.

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Sue Rowe (2010): The Private Lives of the Impressionists

The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Rowe is a well-crafted group portrait of some of history’s most intriguing art geniuses. The artists who stuck together in shifting alliances known as Impressionists from 1860 on were ridiculed by their contemporaries and sharply condemned by art critics before finally triumphing in their first New York City exhibition. For over twenty years, famous Impressionist artists such as Édouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassat, and lesser-known names, worked together as a group.

Today we are all too familiar with the famous Impressionists artists’ dazzling pictures, but how well do we know them as people and how much about their everyday lives? Poet and novelist Rowe combines the significant biographies of the main and minor players and intrigues the reader with a frank account of the subjects’ personal struggles, their stories about love, loss, and financial difficulties. She puts the personal stories in the context of the political, military, and economic changes of the times, which all had an impact on the artists’ lives.

This colourful and excellently researched book takes us into the Impressionists’ homes and studios, it gives us insights into their unconventional lives and tells the stories behind their paintings.

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Vincent van Gogh (1997): The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Few artists’ letters are as self-revelatory as those written by Vincent van Gogh. Several hundred have survived, the large majority are letters from Vincent to his brother Theo. The new selection also includes letters the artist wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists Émile Bernard, Anthon van Rappard, and Paul Gauguin, together spanning the period of his artistic career. These put a human face on one of the most fascinating characters in modern Western art history. For the book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Ronald de Leeuw selected and edited the letters, while Arnold Pomerans did the translation.

The letters of van Gogh shed light onto every facet of his life and work, showing a man of great emotional and spiritual depths. They reveal his candid engagement with religion, his ill-fated search for love, and the severe attacks of mental illness.

Together with explanatory biographical passages about the outer facts, the letters of van Gogh paint a chronicle of the artist’s life. They can be read as his autobiography, covering the period when he lived in Brabant, Paris, London, The Hague, Arles, Saint-Remy, and Auvers. Van Gogh was an avid reader, his letters reflecting literary pursuits as well as his unique literary style. He highly valued authors such as Balzac, Zola, Voltaire, Flaubert, and Dickens, whose influences can be clearly seen in the fascinating writing style van Gogh adopted. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh further includes the numerous drawings that originally illustrated the letters, making it a feast for the eyes.

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Wassily Kandinsky (1977): Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Wassily Kandinsky’s seminal treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst) is a pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality. It ignited widespread interest in abstraction during the years leading up to the Second World War and elucidated the artist’s preference of expression of spirituality over naturalistic representation, de-emphasizing the importance of the recognizable subject matter by introducing pictorial categories derived from the field of music, so-called compositions, improvisations, and impressions.

The book is divided into two parts, the first part calling for a spiritual revolution in painting that will allow artists to express their inner lives in abstract terms; the second part discussing the psychology of colour, the language of form, and the responsibilities of the artist. Kandinsky illustrated his concepts visually on the cover of the book and in ten woodcuts in respective chapters, in which he reduced complex scenes of spiritual battle and redemption to simplified constructs of shape and line.

As one of the most important documents in the history of modern art Concerning the Spiritual in Art crystallized ideas that were impacting many other modern artists and the entire society of the period: Kandinsky considered abstraction to have the power of transforming what he considered to be a corrupt, materialist society.

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Anne-Marie O’Connor (2016): The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Anne-Marie O’Connor, journalist for the Washington Post, tells the inciting story of the “Lady in Gold”, Adele Bloch-Bauer, a dazzling Viennese Jewish society figure, and of the artist Gustav Klimt. Adele inspired the portrait for which Klimt made over a hundred sketches before finishing the golden portrait in 1907. Decades later, the Nazis confiscated the portrait, and changed the name from “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” to “The Lady in Gold” to erase all associations with its Jewish subject. The picture was proudly exhibited in Vienna’s Baroque Belvedere Palace, consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution. Some sixty years later, the ownership became the subject of a decade-long litigation between the Austrian government and the Bloch-Bauer family. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case and its decision had a profound impact on the art world.

The book paints the stunning story of the fin-de-siecle Vienna, of the Nazi war crimes, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the modern art world.

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H. Harvard Arnason, Elizabeth Mansfield: History of Modern Art: Painting Sculpture Architecture Photography

History of Modern Art by H. Havard Arnason and Elizabeth Mansfield traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Illustrated with numerous coloured pictures, the book is a comprehensive visual overview of the modern art field, ideal for art students and those who appreciate and want to learn more about the art in the 20th century. Encyclopaedic and chronological in nature, it offers refreshing analyses and a unified narrative.

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Frida Kahlo, Carlos Fuentes (Introduction), Sarah M. Lowe (Introduction) (2005): The Diary of Frida Kahlo. An Intimate Self-Portrait

Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo’s illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her unsettled life from 1944 to 1954. This intimate and surprising record was kept under lock and key in Mexico for some forty years. It reveals numerous new dimensions in the complex biography of this remarkable Mexican artist. The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait includes her thoughts, dreams, poems, and emotions, reflecting her intense relationship with her husband, Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican artist. 79 images, among them watercolour illustrations, lively sketches, self-portraits, and paintings, give insights into her creative work, since she frequently used the journal to develop pictural ideas for large scale canvases.

While many records have been written about the extraordinary artist, her life and work keep fascinating art enthusiasts. Her journal greatly adds to the understanding of her unique vision, just as her strength in facing around 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident when she was 18 years old.

The book is accompanied by an introduction by the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, as well as an essay and commentaries to images by Sarah M. Lowe.

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You might also be interested in the following posts by Pigment Pool:

The Stunning Lives of Modernist Artists

Impressionism and Japonisme: How Japan Has Inspired Western Artists

Yin-Yang Aesthetic: A Symbol Transcending Time and Culture

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