Art & Design Books

Browse art & design books recommendations from people with great taste on Rec League.

Tell Them I Said No

I got my MFA during the cultural tipping point when the late-90s attitude against “selling out” shifted into the early 2010s hyperactivity of “the market.” Enter Martin Herbert’s just-published Tell Them I Said No, a collection of essays on artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an “antagonistic position toward its mechanisms.” “A large part of the artist’s role in today’s professionalized art system is being present. Providing a counterargument to this concept of self-marketing, Herbert examines the nature of retreat, whether in protest, as a deliberate conceptual act, or out of necessity.” Published by the excellent Sternberg Press in London.

Talia

quitting pinterest!!!

i quit pinterest the year of my wedding, and instead found gloriously weird, textured, and beautiful inspiration in books i found on ebay

Ginny Branch

A Dictionary of Color Combinations

Such a charming book that I often reference for color palette ideas for sketchbook paintings and outfit color combos (but I usually default to neutrals 99% of the time). So Pleasing to flip through. I also have the pt 2!

Julianna Strickland

Making Things

This book is such a gem. It has lots of projects that are both useful and beautiful. I especially love the origami boxes.

Lily

The Cultured Collector

My powerhouse friend Sarah Harrelson, founder of Cultured Magazine, wrote a book on the interiors she’s snooped over the past twenty years, and I’ve already preordered it. Featuring artist Jack Pierson s eccentric, magical Wonder Valley cabin on the cover. This is gonna be good!

cole

The Non-Designer's Design Book

a goal of mine this year is to teach myself graphic design. a simple search led me here for my first lesson, but i’d greatly appreciate any additional resources to help kick off the journey!

Good Thing Going by Lena Dunham

Julia Fox PTSD Art Book (Extremely Rare)

Some people need to own ancient archaeological treasures or noteworthy royal diamonds- to be part of history! It’s a human desire, and this is mine.

Chris Mueller

Matisse in Morocco

Enjoyed this book, thanks Lily!

Lily

Helen Frankenthaler The Moment and the Distance

At the top of my wish list for art books is this tome of Helen Frankenthaler’s largest scaled paintings, which hung together for the first time in decades at Gagosian New York earlier this summer. The title comes from a 1975 review by poet and critic Barbara Guest, where she remarks on Frankenthaler’s “astonishing combination of freedom with restraint, extravagance with discipline, suggestion and definition,” concluding, “the moment becomes the distance.”

Practica

Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible [I]

A solid overview from the goat of industrial design. An essential if you're professionally involved in product design or are just an enthusiast of any level.

David Coggins

Fairfield Porter

Fairfield is a favorite and his painting was on the cover of the current issue of The Print Edition.

Louise Buckley

How to See - David Salle

David Salle, giant of the Pictures Generation, is a fantastic writer. In How to See, he writes with discernment, insight, and real enthusiasm about other artists’ art. Like any great teacher, he never makes you feel like you already need to know everything to engage with what he’s saying. So much writing about art can feel unapproachable, overly academic and weighed down by jargon for the sake of it. This is an incredibly refreshing and encouraging book that I recommend for people who have or have never read art criticism / theory. “Art is mute, but we want to talk. How to talk about art in a useful way, in a way that is relevant to both the viewer and the art.”

Lily

Helen Molesworth: Open Questions

I often turn to the wonderful curator, thinker, and writer Helen Molesworth to help me understand the present moment, and her recent collection of essays and art criticism from the past 30 years shows that she’s been asking the right questions this whole time.

Geren

Going for a walk with a line a step into the world of modern art (Douglas and Elizabeth MacAgy)

This was one of my first books as a kid decades vintage by the time I was given it decades ago and it’s still in my world. As the kid of a painter they started the indoctrination early and it’s one of the gifts I’ll never be able to thank him for. If you have or will have kiddos start them young.

Hannah Harvey

Character Study by Carly Kuhn

i looooove Carly Kuhn's illustrations as well as her Substack, The Cartelier, where she writes about the creative life and interviews other artists about their workspaces. her book comes out Sept. 8 and i preordered SO fast!

How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness

Darby English is one of the few art historians I’ve read who really deals with the materiality of art in a way that I appreciate. The writing is engrossing and the ideas have stayed with me for years—the chapter on William Pope L., especially.

Leslie

Peter Schjeldahl: Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2018

Peter Schjeldahl was the long time art critic at The New Yorker (technically, crazily, I can call him a former coworker for a 3 year overlap). I picked up this book at a Topos Bookstore in Ridgewood last year, in an effort to learn more about the language of art and boy was I in for a good lesson. This book compiles a bunch of reviews from Schjeldahl's time at the Village Voice and Seven Days as well as TNY. His way of writing is deliberate yet poetic. He masterfully weaves together broader cultural and historical context with the personal experience of standing in a room with a piece of art. And his use of analogies. Probably my most highlighted book because there are so many sentences that I read thrice to fully appreciate the artful use of language.

Practica

Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Works [BI]

As close to a complete collection from the king of Early Netherlandish and one of our favorite artists ever. Endlessly inspiring, endlessly ahead of its time and it will always force you to ask yourself 'what on earth was in the water in Den Bosch circa 1500???

Shin Ko

The Symbols of Art (Susie Hodge)

Recently bought this book and it was very interesting to discover the little details I've dismissed in some paintings.

Louise Buckley

UCLA Arts Library

Home to a truly amazing collection of books on art/photo/design/architecture/costume/film as well as rare artist books, dreams come true at the UCLA Arts Library. I got to unfold and view in full a Ed Ruscha's Every Building on The Sunset Strip. I spent incredible amounts of time here while I could as a student, it was closed during COVID and then closed for renovations my last year at school. Quite annoying, but guess what - UC Alumni still get access to all UC libraries! Would be here allllll the time if I lived closer. Such a resource for artists and other curious people.

Eda

Japanese color combinations book

There are many nice color combinations in this book for your clothes (for each month), home decoration or art projects. Would make such a nice gift;)

"FOR SCALE"

WINDOW'S AT TIFFANY'S: THE ART OF GENE MOORE (1980)

rec'd to us by KARL FOURNIER of STUDIO KO, where u see the wildly inventive, sort of even subversive work of GENE MOORE for the window displays of T*FFANY'S, with hints of MAGRITTE and DALÍ and other surrealist stuff. Karl F. says he refs this book all the d*mn time, and these are the people that built the YSL Museum and refurbed the Chateau Marmont et cetera

Traci Fleming

Servilletas (Felipe Hernández)

A book of scanned Spanish napkins. Such a brilliant idea. Now I want to save and scan napkins.

even*cleveland

One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art

'One Day at a Time explores Farber's concept of "Termite Art" and argues for the vital importance of art drawn from the everyday. Born from observing and acknowledging the transitory nature of daily life, "Termite Art" is the key antidote to "White Elephant" art - big "masterpiece" works consciously striving for greatness. In this catalogue, artists, historians and critics dive into art that omits such ambition in an effort to tend to the pleasures and problems of the everyday.'

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