Tim’s Personal Top-10 Books on Art
In anticipation for my upcoming book repair class (see Classes), I’ve prepared a list of the art books that have most influenced me in developing “an aesthetic”. What are your favourites? Feel free to read and reply to my blog with your own suggestions!
I was 26 before I saw a real-life VanGogh painting. While nothing prepared me for the experience, I had grown up with ample access to art books which tilled the soil of my mind to appreciate it more fully. Books gave me a context to position ideas and responses, sketched out in hundreds of well-reproduced images from history.
While we learn basic value systems from our parents and caregivers, books help us move toward a more balanced and nuanced set of values. Even though we all live in a cultural context with inherent biases, reading widely can mitigate this.
Books have been the primary way the majority of average westerners experience art for the last 150 years. Laying aside the fact that these were reproductions of originals, the quality of images in books is still, I believe, better than a digital version. Generations of people have common visual art vocabulary thanks to books.
For the purposes of this list, I’m not including books on philosophy, science, and cooking, which have formed a large part of my normal reading.
- The Art of Japanese Prints, by Richard Illing: this introduced me to the beauty and astounding design of woodblocks.
- William Kurelek: the Messenger, compiled by WAG: a great collection of essays about, and images by, this “outsider” artist.
- The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn: required reading in my university course, it was an eye-opening book to the artist’s process.
- Castles, by Alan Lee: stunning fantasy art by a master who influenced the Lord of the Rings films.
- Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud: a brilliant survey of the power and art of graphic novels, given to me by Rhonda Abrams.
- The Book of Kells, by Blanche Cirker: as a 20-something I sometimes imagined myself as a scribe/illuminator in a medieval monastery.
- The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, ed Richard de Leeuw: an amazing window into the daily life of the brilliant Dutch painter.
- Symbolists and Decandents, by John Christian: a lesser-known movement from Europe that opened the door to fantastical and archetypal imagery, including my pastel-hero, Odilon Redon.
- Paddle and Palette: the Story of Tom Thomson, by Blodwen Davies: one of the first surveys of his life and work.
• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards: a landmark text on drawing principles.