Reading list

This indispensable manual is a delightful and unique exploration of the art of making mistakes. Erik Kessels celebrates imperfection and failure, demonstrating their crucial role in the creative process. The book showcases the most remarkable and amusing instances of failure in photography, art, design, and architecture.

This inspiring and beautifully illustrated book is a must-read for artists, students, and young professionals. It will help you overcome your fear of failure and encourage you to experiment.

The book features over 100 visual examples, including Kessels’ own collection of found photographs, as well as work by international artists, photographers, and designers who have been inspired by failure.

Find out more about Failed it!: How to turn mistakes into ideas and other advice for successfully screwing up by Erik Kessels →

A global compilation of must-known artists.

For the last couple of years, Steven Heller and Julius Wiedemann have traced the latest developments in illustration around the globe—and for all those who thought digital heralded the end of an era, they’re here to set the record straight.

There were extraordinary eras before mass media changed our viewing habits, back in the day when illustration was the primary means of illuminating the word on paper—all the way to today, when we get our words and images on screens as small as a watch face. In this environment, today’s designers and artists are holding their own brilliantly. Illustration is more free and varied than ever, and it is ubiquitous in all kinds of media, from paper to screen to books, packages, clothing, cars, and restaurants.

This book celebrates the sheer quality, diversity, intensity, comedy, vivacity, and exceptionality of the work being created by illustrators right now. The artists in this collection are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but they represent a compelling snapshot of the styles, techniques, and use of color by artists around the world. We dare you to pick your favorites.

Find out more about The Illustrator. The Best from around the World by Steven Heller, Julius Wiedemann →

A visual atlas with information graphics that explain our vast and fragile world

Dazzling in scale, diversity and detail, the world never ceases to open our eyes and captivate our curiosity. Ever since the earliest cave paintings, humans have looked at this Earth that is our home and endeavored to understand it.

This expansive visual atlas presents the most exciting, creative and inspiring ways of explaining the world in information graphics. Divided into five chapters, the book covers the environment, technology, economics, society, and culture to reveal some of the Earth’s greatest intricacies in accessible visual form. Featuring more than 280 graphics, reproduced in large scale including seven fold-out spreads, the collection focuses on the 21st century, but also includes historical masterpieces to put our current situation into perspective.

Nigel Holmes introduces the book with an exclusive infographic of his own, while Sandra Rendgen provides an illustrated historical essay to explore how we have studied and interpreted our world over the centuries. With graphics drawn from such sources as Fortune, National Geographic, and The Guardian, this is not only a showcase of outstanding data design, but also a fascinating digest of where and how we live.

Find out more about Understanding the World: The Atlas of Infographics by Sandra Rendgen, Julius Wiedemann →

Through the turbulent passage of time, graphic design with its vivid, neat synthesis of image and idea has distilled the spirit of each age. Surrounding us every minute of every day, from minimalist packaging to colorful adverts, smart environmental graphics to sleek interfaces: graphic design is as much about transmitting information as it is about reflecting society’s cultural aspirations and values.

This second volume rounds off our in-depth exploration of graphic design, spanning from the 1960s until today. About 3,500 seminal designs from across the globe guide us in this visual map through contemporary history, from the establishment of the International Style to the rise of the groundbreaking digital age. Around 80 key pieces go under the microscope in detailed analyses besides 118 biographies of the era’s most important designers, including Massimo Vignelli (New York subway wayfinding system), Otl Aicher (Lufthansa identity), Paula Scher (Citibank brand identity), Neville Brody (The Face magazine), Kashiwa Sato (Uniqlo brand identity), and Stefan Sagmeister (handwriting posters).

This collection of important graphic works represents a long-overdue reflection on the development of a creative field constantly changing and challenging itself. These key pieces act as coordinates through contemporary history, helping us trace the sheer influence of graphic design on our daily lives.

Find out more about The History of Graphic Design 1960-Today by Jens Müller, Julius Wiedemann →

This book is an in-depth history of graphic design from the end of the 19th century to the ’50s. It traces the evolution of this creative field from its beginning as poster design to its further development into advertising, corporate identity, packaging, and editorial design. Organized chronologically, the volume features over 2,500 seminal designs from all over the world, 71 of which are profiled in detail besides 61 leaders in the field, including Alphonse Mucha (chocolate advertisements), Edward Johnston (London Underground logo and typeface), El Lissitzky (constructivist graphics), Herbert Matter (photomontage travel posters from Switzerland), Saul Bass (animated opening titles), and A. M. Cassandre (art deco posters).

Author Jens Müller curates the standout designs for each year alongside a running sequence of design milestones. Meanwhile, in his introductory essay, David Jury situates graphic design from its point of origin in early printing, engraving, and lithography to striking creative developments in the 19th century. Each consecutive decade is then prefaced by a succinct overview as well as a visual timeline, offering a vivid display of the variety of graphic production in each decade as well as the global landscape which it at once described and defined.

As we move on from and reflect upon the 20th century, this first volume examines the foundations of what would influence some of the fastest-changing creative fields. Combined with Volume Two—which spans from the 1960s until today—the tomes offer the most comprehensive exploration of graphic design to date and a long-overdue recognition of its enormous contribution to economics, politics, social causes, the arts, media, and the way we see the world.

Find out more about The History of Graphic Design: 1890-1959 by Jens Müller, Julius Wiedemann →

Volume 1: 1900 to 1944;
Volume 2: 1945 to the Present

By Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, David Joselit

Five of the most influential and provocative art historians of our time have come together to provide a comprehensive history of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Art Since 1900 introduces students to the key theoretical approaches to modern and contemporary art. A flexible year-by-year structure and extensive cross-referencing allow teachers and students to pursue a chronological approach and/or to study the currents of art since 1900 by medium, theme, country, or region. This completely updated and expanded third edition contains over 125 essays, each focusing on a crucial event in the history of art from 1900 to the present. Ten new essays cover subjects such as Moscow conceptualism, abstract film, postmodern architecture, and queer art, as well as artists from emerging economies and the impact of the market on current art practice.

Text boxes provide further information on key figures and issues. Five introductions explain the different methods of art history at work in the book. There are two roundtable discussions between the authors, and all reference material has been updated.

Find out more about Art Since 1900 By Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, David Joselit →

A comprehensive history and interpretation of the street art movement, featuring all of the key practitioners in a colorful combination of sharp images and insightful commentary.

Street art is a phenomenon and subculture movement that reaches from the darkest urban backstreets to the most glamorous international art fairs. Despite having earned a place in the canon of twentieth-century art history, its qualifications are often disputed by both the art establishment and practitioners themselves, all concerned with notions of authenticity.

This book examines how street art evolved from its origins in the 1970s New York graffiti scene to embrace many new materials, styles, and techniques. The once marginal art form has graduated into art galleries and the art market, while also heavily influencing design, fashion, advertising, and visual culture. Simon Armstrong walks readers through its controversial history, taking in the movement’s significant artists, artworks, and methods, and showcasing the works that have come to define it. He also discusses its close relationship to pop art and digital art, and explores possible futures for street art.

Packed with detail and written in an engaging, accessible style, this latest installment in the Art Essentials series is a must-read for lovers of street art and anyone interested in the way art movements gradually join the mainstream.

Find out more about Street Art by Simon Armstrong →

This groundbreaking study redefines the status of the beloved American artist Mary Cassatt, placing her work in the wider context of nineteenth- century feminism and art theory. Mary Cassatt looks at the artist’s work in light of her time as an advocate for women’s intellectual life and political emancipation. Esteemed by her contemporaries for her commitment to what she and her radical colleagues in Paris termed “the new art”—now called impressionism—Cassatt brought her discerning gaze and compositional inventiveness to the study of the subtle, often psychological, social interactions of women in public and private spaces.

Focusing on key moments of engagement and change over the artist’s long career, art historian Griselda Pollock discusses Cassatt’s artistic training across Europe, her profound study of the old masters, and places fresh emphasis on the artist’s interest in Manet and other contemporary French and Spanish painters as well as her influence on American collections of French modernism. Now revised with a new preface, updates to the bibliography, and color illustrations throughout, this book offers a reevaluation of the work of this important artist as seen through the frames of class, gender, space, and difference.

Find out more about Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Women by Griselda Pollock →

Richly illustrated volume exploring the inseparable histories of modernist abstraction and twentieth-century textiles.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Lynne Cooke, Woven Histories offers a fresh and authoritative look at textiles—particularly weaving—as a major force in the evolution of abstraction. This richly illustrated volume features more than fifty creators whose work crosses divisions and hierarchies formerly segregating the fine arts from the applied arts and handicrafts.

Woven Histories begins in the early twentieth century, rooting the abstract art of Sophie Taeuber-Arp in the applied arts and handicrafts, then features the interdisciplinary practices of Anni Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, and others who sought to effect social change through fabrics for furnishings and apparel. Over the century, the intersection of textiles and abstraction engaged artists from Ed Rossbach, Kay Sekimachi, Ruth Asawa, Lenore Tawney, and Sheila Hicks to Rosemarie Trockel, Ellen Lesperance, Jeffrey Gibson, Igshaan Adams, and Liz Collins, whose textile-based works continue to shape this discourse. Including essays by distinguished art historians as well as reflections from contemporary artists, this ambitious project traces the intertwined histories of textiles and abstraction as vehicles through which artists probe urgent issues of our time.

Find out more about Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction Hardcover by Lynne Cooke →

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you’ve never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast.

We’re all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh’s suicide, you may not be aware that there’s pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn’t die by his own hand but was accidentally killed–or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol’s most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy’s moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings?

ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world’s great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.

Find out more about ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History by Jennifer Dasal →