{"id":27156,"date":"2025-09-20T09:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/27156\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T09:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:09:09","slug":"12-art-books-to-read-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/27156\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Art Books to Read This Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Autumn, in all its crisp color, has long been a muse for artists and poets \u2014 and for good reason. The shorter days and early darkness often cast a spell, encouraging us to spend more time indoors and chip away at our to-be-read piles. These 12 new and forthcoming art books are well worth adding to that list, offering insights into the decades-long practice of Nayland Blake, the curatorial vision of the late Okwui Enwezor, the artistic life of Louise Bourgeois, and more topics we\u2019re eager to explore. We\u2019re also keeping an eye out for other upcoming releases, including Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance<\/a> (Dancing Foxes Press, November 11); Brandon Taylor\u2019s novel Minor Black Figures<\/a> (Riverhead Books, October 14); and innumerable others. Get your pre-orders and library holds in now \u2014 and happy reading! \u2014Lakshmi Rivera Amin<\/p>\n

Selected Writings: Toward a New African Art Discourse and Curating the Postcolonial Condition by Okwui Enwezor, edited by Terry Smith<\/p>\n

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A giant of 21st-century contemporary art, Okwui Enwezor\u2019s curation for the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Documenta 11, the 56th Venice Biennale, the epic Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945\u20131965, and many others are all landmark moments in the history of contemporary art. This anthology of his essays forms the foundations of understanding his complex ideas that shifted discourse to a more global perspective that has been slowly decentering the West to give a more accurate picture of art today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first volume focuses on his earlier writings that mark his desire to renew African art discourse to rewrite histories. The second volume of this two-volume set starts in 2006 and charts a time when his influence was at its zenith.<\/p>\n

Taken from us far too early, Enwezor\u2019s writings are indispensable tools for those who want to continue the important work of reformulating the world of art with justice and equity in mind. \u2014Hrag Vartanian<\/p>\n

Buy Volume 1<\/a> and Volume 1<\/a> on Bookshop | Duke University Press, August 5, 2025<\/p>\n

Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West by Michael Holloman<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m looking forward to finally getting my hands on Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West by Michael Holloman, editor, with portraits by and essays about the life and work of an early 20th-century Japanese photographer in a small western town. The spirited community captured by Matsura counters endless assumptions and misrepresentations propagated in American art and literature about the \u201creal\u201d West. I grew up in rural Montana, with Blackfeet siblings and a Japanese-American godfather who also grew up in Montana; finding out about Matsura felt both familiar and significant in rewriting tired Western tropes. Matsura came to Seattle from Japan in 1901 before settling in the small town of Okanogan, Washington, where he set up shop as a photographer of his friends and neighbors, many of whom were Sylix (Okanagan). Matsura\u2019s lively portraits offer an instructive counterpoint to Edward S. Curtis\u2019s better-known (for now) somber, ethnographic takes on Native life and people. \u2014Bridget Quinn<\/p>\n

Buy on Bookshop<\/a> | Princeton Architectural Press, September 9, 2025<\/p>\n

Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to understand the enduring fascination with the aristocratic Mitford sisters, six 20th-century British siblings who grew up to live starkly different lives. One became a fascist and befriended Adolf Hitler, while another joined the communist party, and still a third penned numerous novels. They were even the subject of a mediocre BritBox show<\/a> earlier this year. In Do Admit!: The Mitford Sisters and Me, however, cartoonist Mimi Pond illuminates their lives anew with her impeccable visual style and playful sensibility. A few pages in, I\u2019m already hooked. \u2014LA<\/p>\n

Buy on Bookshop<\/a> | Drawn & Quarterly, September 16, 2025<\/p>\n

Robert Rauschenberg\u2019s New York: Pictures from the Real World, edited by Sean Corcoran<\/p>\n

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While Robert Rauschenberg is best known for his \u201ccombine\u201d paintings that blend sculpture and painting, photography has always been central to the Pop artist\u2019s work. This small show brings together some of the photo-based work as well as their related paintings and larger format works, while highlighting for us that his eye for the overlooked and at first seemingly banal urbanscapes is central to his art making.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like his one-time partner, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg helped chart new realities for queer artists who were far more marginalized up until then. This book is a celebration of one part of an artist\u2019s practice that is finally getting the attention it deserves. \u2014HV<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Giles, September 30, 2025<\/p>\n

Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois by Marie-Laure Bernadac, translated by Lauren Elkin<\/p>\n

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Marie-Laure Bernadac started writing this biography of Louise Bourgeois as a way to mourn her passing in 2010. Not an easy task \u2014\u00a0the artist kept extensive journals, and threw absolutely nothing away. Translator Lauren Elkin points out that she wrote in a mix of French and English \u2014\u00a0sometimes in the same sentence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The result is a hefty, densely researched tome that quotes liberally from Bourgeois herself, as well as reproduces family photos and artworks, some in color. Bernadac conducted research at the Easton Foundation, which holds the artist\u2019s archive, even sleeping there on occasion. It\u2019s housed adjacent to the artist\u2019s townhouse, with a mirrored layout\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0which feels somehow fitting given Bourgeois\u2019s obsession with domestic space as psychic theater. \u2014Lisa Yin Zhang<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Yale University Press, October 14, 2025<\/p>\n

The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco<\/p>\n

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A pioneer in the field of comics journalism, Joe Sacco has the unique ability to drop readers directly into the most consequential political clashes of the past and present. His latest work takes on a series of 2013 riots between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, India. Though the events were not as monumental as many that Sacco has covered in previous books, they exemplify the kind of political violence that erupts among the people in a democracy. Based on his interviews with political officials, village chiefs, and civilians, most of them landless peasants, he creates a picture, literally, of anger and bloodshed, making it more imminent than any text ever could. The Once and Future Riot is an essential parable of political violence for our current moment and one that bespeaks the power of comics journalism. \u2014Natalie Haddad<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Metropolitan Books, October 14, 2025<\/p>\n

Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women\u2019s Art by Bimbola Akinbola<\/p>\n

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Bimbola Akinbola\u2019s Transatlantic Disbelonging is a world-tilting text that shines a light on the rigor of Nigerian women\u2019s art history. What Akinbola calls \u201cdisbelonging\u201d is a creative refusal of imposed belonging that becomes an ethic of unruliness, pleasure, and play through which Nigerian women artists reject the confines of \u201cproper\u2019 womanhood. Each chapter attends to a different aspect of Nigerian women\u2019s diasporic practices, highlighting: Wura-Natasha Ogunji\u2019s performance art, Njideka Akunyili Crosby\u2019s collaged paintings, Zina Saro-Wiwa\u2019s video works, ruby onyinyechi amanze\u2019s drawings, and Nnedi Okorafor\u2019s writing. Building on generations of Black feminist thought and praxis, Akinbola asserts that: \u201cA diasporic sensibility that allows for disbelonging is not only necessary but critical for our survival.\u201d These artists are central to the global contemporary art world, where Black women\u2019s experimental aesthetic practices are formative rather than marginal; Akinbola\u2019s book gives these practices the rigorous attention they merit. \u2014Alexandra M. Thomas\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Duke University Press, October 14, 2025<\/p>\n

My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983-2024 by Nayland Blake, edited by Jarrett Earnest<\/p>\n

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The words \u201cqueer\u201d and \u201ctransgressive\u201d are common in the art world these days, and all too often they\u2019ve become diluted shadows of their former selves. But once upon a time, they had real meaning, and they were (and are) embodied by Nayland Blake<\/a>, one of the OGs of queer and transgressive art. Blake\u2019s career has been crucial in bringing topics once on the margins of art to the center of conversations \u2014 not only queerness, but also BDSM, pornography, cosplay, the nuances of gender and race, and more. This collection of writings and interviews spanning 40 years offers valuable insight into the artist\u2019s processes and preoccupations. It also opens the door to subjects that many people are still hesitant to discuss. As the title declares, there\u2019s no separation between the studio and the dungeon here. If you\u2019re already a Blake fan, this book is a welcome opportunity to peek inside their mind. If you\u2019re new to their art, take it as an invitation (leather and latex optional).\u00a0\u2014NH<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Duke University Press, October 21, 2025<\/p>\n

Lessons in Drag: A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties by Kareem Khubchandani<\/p>\n

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Arriving two years after scholar Kareem Khubchandani published Decolonize Drag, featuring chapters by his drag persona LaWhore Vagistan, Lessons in Drag could not have come at a better time, as the Trump administration\u2019s attacks<\/a> on queer and trans people and the arts escalate every day. The \u201cqueer manual for academics, artists, and aunties\u201d alike consists of a dialogue between Khubchandani and Vagistan via chapters written from each of their perspectives, and considers the interplay between scholarship, fashion, and music. Shrewdly defying the conventions that often keep academic texts dry and sequestered \u2014 jargon-filled and depersonalized prose \u2014\u00a0 Khubchandani and Vagistan model a way to integrate research and performance. I can\u2019t wait to delve into what I\u2019m hopeful will be a wellspring of insights into criticism, creativity, and drag as a tool for personal and communal expression. \u2014LA<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Brandeis University Press, October 29, 2025<\/p>\n

Painting Writing Texting by Chantal Joffe and Olivia Laing<\/p>\n

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You know when you meet someone who is just perfectly aligned with you? At a party or a dinner, the two of you, recent strangers, find somewhere private to gush intimate confessions to each other. Maybe you exchange numbers. It\u2019s a platonic version of being in love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of kinship I\u2019m expecting to find in Chantal Joffe and Olivia Laing\u2019s upcoming book, which follows the pair\u2019s friendship since its beginning in 2016, when the latter sat for a portrait by the former. Painting Writing Textbook consists of 10 essays by Laing, a lyrical, curious, and empathetic cultural critic and personal writer, and paintings by Joffe, whose rough, slapdash brushwork produces haunting, oddly seductive portraits that I adore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As someone who straddles the worlds of visual art and writing, ugh, what a dream. I can\u2019t wait to drop in on the conversations between these two, to see how a creative life becomes a totality, shaped by friendships and community.\u00a0\u2014LZ<\/p>\n

Pre-order the Book<\/a> | MACK, November 2025<\/p>\n

Grandma Moses: A Good Day\u2019s Work, edited by Leslie Umberger and Randall R. Griffey<\/p>\n

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Recalling my early encounters with the paintings of Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as \u201cGrandma Moses,\u201d conjures hazy scenes of snow-covered landscapes, storybook towns, bucolic landscapes of Upstate New York and West Virginia. The self-taught artist has been the subject of numerous biographies and documentaries charting her journey to becoming a pioneer of American folk art, despite the institutional art world\u2019s early dismissal of her work. But underneath her now-canonical place in art history is a more complex story about the way she saw her practice as part of her life; or, as the title of this book reminds us, \u201ca good day\u2019s work.\u201d Though far from the first to tackle the subject, this catalog offers a crucial opportunity to reconsider the story of her life and art by beginning, well, at the beginning. \u2014LA<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Princeton University Press and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, November 4, 2025<\/p>\n

Wifredo Lam: When I Don\u2019t Sleep, I Dream, edited by Beverly Adams and Christophe Cherix<\/p>\n

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It takes a special kind of person to meet Picasso and decide he\u2019s got the wrong idea, but that\u2019s just who Wifredo Lam was. While European artists were \u201cdiscovering\u201d primitivism, he engaged with African and Afro-Cuban aesthetic traditions with cultural specificity, challenging and inverting stereotypes. He\u2019s the opposite of an academic holed up in an ivory tower writing theory; he was having those conversations on the ground and in his work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I\u2019m so excited for a new catalog about Lam. It features more than 150 works, including paintings, drawings, books, and even ceramics \u2014\u00a0as well as a conservation analysis of the iconic \u201cThe Jungle\u201d (1942\u201343), which I can\u2019t wait to devour. Releasing in November, it\u2019ll accompany his largest retrospective in New York City. It\u2019s one of the exhibitions I\u2019m most excited about this fall,\u00a0if not the most. \u2014LZ<\/p>\n

Pre-order on Bookshop<\/a> | Museum of Modern Art, November 18, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Autumn, in all its crisp color, has long been a muse for artists and poets \u2014 and for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,412,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-27156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-books","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}