Top 10 Arts Books: 2009.
Seaman, Donna (author).
FEATURE.
First published November 1, 2009 (Booklist).
This year’s Top 10 list of the best arts books reviewed during the past year is supersized, showcasing 11 exceptional books about extraordinary painters, architects, photographers, and musicians.
The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism. By Nicholas Fox Weber. 2009. Knopf, $37.50 (9780307268365).
Best-selling Weber presents an incandescent group portrait of the immeasurably influential Bauhaus artists Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky, van der Rohe, and Anni and Josef Albers.
George Tooker. By Robert Cozzolino and others. 2008. Merrell, $60 (9781858944562).
Tooker’s exquisite and evocative paintings are unforgettable, his life little known until the release of this ravishing volume of lustrous reproductions and illuminating essays.
The History of Gardens in Painting. By Nils Büttner. Tr. by Russell Stockman. 2008. Abbeville, $95 (9780789209931).
Art historian Büttner presents a resplendent overview of the many-faceted tradition of garden painting in a capacious and engrossing treasury.
Man of Constant Sorrow: The Life and Times of a Music Legend. By Ralph Stanley and Eddie Dean. 2009. Gotham, $26 (9781592404254).
Bluegrass banjoist Ralph Stanley—made even more famous by the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?—tells his affecting story in this shining memoir.
Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America’s Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century. By Barry Mazor. 2009. Oxford, $27.95 (9780195327625).
Mazor portrays Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933), called the Father of Country Music but who was so much more, in a piquant and intelligent work of pop-music history.
Painting below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art. By James Rosenquist and David Dalton. 2009. Knopf, $50 (9780307263421).
Famous first as a pop painter, Rosenquist is as commanding on the page as he is on canvas as he shares his dramatic story in this frank, energetic, and richly illustrated autobiography.
The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year; New York, 1949–50. By Keith F. Davis. 2009. Yale, $50 (9780300154436).
A reintroduction of the wrongly overlooked photographer Homer Page (1918–85) and his vital and complex images of city life.
Regarding Heroes. By Yousuf Karsh. Ed. by David Travis. 2009. Godine, $50 (9781567923599).
A stunning collection of the masterful celebrity portraits of legendary photographer Karsh (1908–2002).
Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life, and Resistance under the Gun. By Bilal Wafaa and Kari Lydersen. 2008. City Lights, paper, $18.95 (9780872864917).
A staggering memoir by immigrant Iraqi artist Bilal, who staged a performance piece, during which online participants used a computer-controlled paintball gun to “shoot an Iraqi.”
Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. By James Gavin. 2009. Atria, $27 (9780743271431).
Gavin’s biography of singer Lena Horne, an American icon, is a revealing and mesmerizing portrait of a woman who struggled with driving ambition and personal insecurities.
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an Original. By Robin D. G. Kelley. 2009. Free Press, $30 (9780684831909).
This first full-dress biography of Thelonious Sphere Monk, fabled jazz pianist, prolific and vastly influential composer, is nothing short of a landmark in jazz literature.