Best Gift List for Readers – Art Lovers

Bring some Art into your World

This Fall, Keith and I have spent our Wednesday date nights attending an art history class at UCLA.  Our professor, Maria Di Pasquale, Ph.D., was informative and a hoot.  We’re very excited that she is offering art history experiences throughout Los Angeles (we had thousands of ‘university’ date nights during college and law school, our interest in re-visiting that experience is limited).  Maria offers private tours at all of the major museums in Los Angeles–tours of the permanent collection, or selected temporary collections (the tour for the Huntington exhibit on Greene and Greene looks terrific), or customized tours such as American Art at the Los Angele County Museum.  What a great way to spend an afternoon!  I’m ready to sign up for her touring classes, a visit a month at a different museum for six months, it feels like a traveling book club but the focus is on art.  Maria gives lectures to groups and hosts art trips, I’m pushing for a trip to see Maya Lin the second week of January, feel free to help me convince her.

Ten Books for People who Enjoy Art

I asked Maria to recommend ten books for people who love art, books that have an engaging message or story to tell without being pretentious.  I can’t wait to start reading them.  Some the books are non-fiction and some are fiction, in fact one of my all time favorites books made the list at number seven. 

The Judgment of Paris, Ross King (2006) This is a riveting, novel-like telling of the history of Eduard Manet and the politics of the Parisian Salon in the mid-19^th century.

Anthony Blunt: His Lives, Miranda Carter (2001) Carter tells the wrenching story of the dichotomous life of Anthony Blunt, one of the 20^th century’s most important art historians and a notorious spy.

Devil in the White City, Erik Larson (2003) Larson contextualizes the history of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in a thrilling way by juxtaposing the work of architect Daniel Burnham with the true story of a serial killer who used the fair to mask his deeds.

A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Christopher de Hamel (1994) Don’t let the banal title fool you. This is a very entertaining description of the way early books were used, the people for whom those books were made, and how and why those books were decorated. The author allows his distinctive, personal voice to shine through, and it makes for very companionable reading. The illustrations in this book make it coffee-table worthy as well.

Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture, Suzanne Muchnic (1998) This biography of Hunt’s Foods founder Norton Simon chronicles an important chapter in the history of the arts in Southern California, and offers insight to the man who put together the phenomenal collection that resides in his museum in Pasadena.

From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe (1981) People either love Tom Wolfe or they hate him, and maybe the same can be said about International Style architecture. Either way, it is hard not to enjoy this witty reflection on modern architecture in the United States.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg (1967) This is the book that first made me dream of being an art historian.  It’s the story of two children who, in an attempt to make their lives less ordinary, run away from home and take up residence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read it aloud to younger children, but it’s perfect for a fourth-grader to read on his/her own.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Simon Schama (1987) This is a masterpiece of social art history. Schama describes a complete picture of Dutch life that is a necessity for full understanding of the art of 17th-century Holland.

Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Herschel B. Chipp, ed. (1984) There is no substitute for reading the writings of the artists themselves, and this classic anthology offers a broad selection of manifestoes, theory, and personal letters from Vincent van Gogh, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and many others. 

A Rebours (Against Nature), J.-K. Huysmans (1884) This strange, plotless novel captures the spirit of fin-de-siècle decadence and ennui in the story of a man who immerses himself in a private world of art, literature, and sensual excess. It will give you a new, visceral insight into the context of Symbolist art. Robert Baldick’s translation is best.