Publishers Weekly - January 26, 2015

In the Mind of the Artist
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Let’s face it: art doesn’t always speak for itself. Luckily, this
season’s art books, which include memoirs, unpublished
notebooks, and personal narratives, give readers access to
artists’ creative processes.
Renowned photographer Sally Mann provides intimate access to her creative
process in her aptly titled memoir Hold Still. In it, she relies heavily on both
photography and prose to tell her life’s story.
Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, which accompanies a traveling
exhibition of the same name, gives readers a different type of access to the
creative process, with the first survey of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s
notebooks, which include handwritten notes, poems, and early iterations of
images—crowns, skeletons, teepees—that recur throughout his work.
Both Playing to the Gallery, by the English cross-dressing ceramicist
Grayson Perry, and Judge This, by publishing industry artist in residence
Chip Kidd, offer humorous accounts of what it’s like to be an artist in 2015.
Perry takes on the age-old question, “What is art?” in his personal tour
through the art world, while Kidd focuses on the importance of first impres-
sions in the everyday—both in terms of design and life.
In Listening to Stone, Hayden Herrera, who has written books on Arshile
Gorky, Frida Kahlo, and Matisse, takes on Isamu Noguchi as the subject of
her fourth artist biography, relying on Noguchi’s writings and letters to illu-
minate the Japanese-American sculptor’s evolving creative process, as well as
his contributions to the realm of public art.
Two titles explore the role of place and public in the cultural milieu. Coney
Island: Visions of An American Dreamland, 1861–2008 offers a historical
survey of “America’s playground” through artists’ renderings over the years.
Street Craft places a forward-facing lens on art history by examining a new
generation of artists whose use of diverse materials and techniques are rede-
fining street art.
Readers interested in art criticism should turn to Go Figure! New
Perspectives on Guston, edited by Peter Benson Miller, an illustrated
volume of essays on “Abstract Expressionism’s odd man out.” Those inter-
ested in literature will welcome Two, by photographer Melissa Ann Pinney,
which explores relationships, between, e.g., lovers, a teacher and a student,
a pet owner and pet. Pinney’s photos are accompanied by essays by several
writers including, Ann Patchett, who served as editor for the project.
Lastly, true crime sneaks into the category
toward the end of the season with The Art of the
Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and
Forgeries in the Art World, by Anthony M.
Amore, coauthor of Stealing Rembrandts.
ART,
ARCHITECTURE &
PHOTOGRAPHY
SPRING 2015 ADULT
ANNOUNCEMENTS

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