What is reality? Does it pre-exist us or is it a collective creation of the human imagination? The artists and thinkers featured in these books probe at this conundrum; for they are in the business of dismantling pre-existing realities and constructing new ones. Let us start with Dürer, the man who looked at himself in the mirror and painted the self like no-one had ever done before. Then there are the radical feminist collagists, who take the world, cut it up and remake it, so we see it afresh. And then we come to the microcosm and the macrocosm, the divine domestic interiors of Bunny Mellon and the celestial adventures of human beings in space. So, back to our initial question… My money is on the imagination.
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Space Journal: Art, Science and Cosmic Exploration
By Dallas Campbell, £35, Thames and Hudson
Dallas Campbell is a television presenter and podcaster who has written a book almost as fascinating and far-reaching as its subject: space. He weaves together the ways that humans have explored the cosmos — imaginatively, scientifically, politically and physically — in the past 500 years or so, from rocket launchers to Space Invaders, cosmonauts to the Clangers.
An abiding theme is the relationship between science and art. Campbell shows how the author Jules Verne inspired space explorations and examines the serendipity that resulted in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (based on a story by Arthur C Clarke) being released in 1968 — the same year as the Apollo 8 mission to the moon. There are familiar names — Kepler, Galileo, Laika — and less familiar ones, such as the Victorian telescope enthusiast Mary Ward. There are artistic renderings of the moon from the 1940s, Isaac Newton’s notebooks, the “earth rise” images of our blue planet from 1968, as well as transmission logs from the Seti listening post, which seeks evidence of alien life forms. If there is anybody out there, they would like this book.
To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
The Enchanting Interiors of Bunny Mellon
Paintings by Snowy Campbell, text by James Reginato, £45, Rizzoli
When Rachel Lowe Lambert — nicknamed Bunny by her mother — married the American banking heir Paul Mellon, one of her tasks was the creation of homes in which to showcase their phenomenal art collection. Her signature approach was “refined informality”, meaning mismatched textiles and ceramics, scuffed flooring and Shaker-style pieces alongside museum-quality antiques and artworks by Cezanne, Stubbs, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko and many more.
What makes this book particularly lovely is that it features charming watercolours by Snowy Campbell, who was commissioned by Bunny in the 1970s to depict her homes in New York, Washington and Virginia. Campbell made more than 100 paintings: rooms bright with flowers and decorative wallpaper, fancy place settings (the Mellons hosted many fabulous dinner parties; even Elizabeth II visited). Here James Reginato writes of the “deceptive simplicity achieved by a combination of taste and money”. In Paul Mellon’s memoir Reflections in a Silver Spoon (what a title!) he wrote that Bunny’s rooms always felt “lived in and loved”.
To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
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Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage
By Fiona Rogers, £40, V&A
The art of collage originated in about 1912, when Picasso and Braque began to experiment with cutting and pasting techniques. But this book tells a more interesting, subversive and feminine tale, starting with the Japanese poet Ise-shu and her collaged papers in 1112, via Victorian aristocratic ladies and their whimsical photomontages, through the “femmage” movement to contemporary artists reimagining identity and sexuality via chimerical assemblages.
Female artists used collage to utilise the “cherished scraps” of their domestic lives — it was disdained by some as hobbyism but here is shown to be radical, provocative, personal and political. There are essays on flourishings in Weimar Germany, England in the 19th century and 1970s New York, as well as sections focused on artists such as Lady Filmer, Toshiko Okanoue, Helen Chadwick and Dora Maar, with her “iconic contributions to the surrealist imagination”, such as the chiaroscuro image of an elegant hand emerging from a snail’s shell on a strangely lit beach. Where are my scissors?
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Albrecht Dürer: The Complete Paintings. Selected Drawings and Prints
By Christof Metzger, Karl Schütz and Julia Zaunbauer, £175, Taschen
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was a superstar in his day, but if anything his reputation has grown over the past 500 years. Born in Nuremberg, he was a painter, engraver, printmaker and theorist. He was a court artist for the Roman emperor Maximillian I, as well as travelling Europe, his notebook always with him. He is famous for so much, including self-portraits (sometimes depicted as Jesus), altarpieces, images of animals — hares, rhinos and lions — and even his resplendent hair.
Part of Taschen’s XXL series, this is 798 pages and weighs more than 7kg. It features 70 paintings, photographed and presented in chronological order, as plates, with additional close-up details and fold-outs. There are 500 of his drawings and watercolours: of plants, landscapes, babies, the lavish and sometimes outlandish outfits of noblewomen. The text covers biography, travels, influences, encounters. Each work has an exhaustive entry, but really the pleasure here is in looking, ideally with as much humanity and curiosity as Dürer appraised his subjects.
To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members