The year 2021 was a wild ride indeed! In addition to all the other media I consume, I am especially grateful for the books that helped me get through such a crazy year via a little escapism. Longtime followers of the blog know that I love to read and talk to people about books because of all the promotion I do for The Wandering Art Historian book club. You may even recall that I have written multiple reviews of books that were considered for the book club that were good, but didn’t quite make the final cut.

In this post I’ll share with you some really exceptional art books I read this year that you may want to consider adding to your “to be read” pile or your home library.

First of all, Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera (2018) was probably the most beautiful art book I have picked up in a long time. It is just exquisite! It is a thorough examination of the entire career of Laurie Simmons (thus far), so if you are a fan, you definitely need to own this book.

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future (2018) is the best museum exhibition catalogue I read this year and is probably one of my all-time favorites. I would absolutely put it on par with the companion catalogue to Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation, which I highlighted in a blog post last year. Both contain extremely good art reproductions combined with powerful essays that aren’t just academically interesting, but philosophically insightful. Both catalogues are a “must have.”

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa (2020) is one of the best artist biographies I have ever read and is the one I would recommend for anyone wanting to learn more about this inspiring artist. What sets this one apart for me is the inclusion of a multitude of “personal affects” in the form of dozens (hundreds?) of quotes from letters (both to Ruth and from Ruth) and candid photographs, including images of her family. We all tend to put the artists we most admire on pedestals (heck, you know I do it!), but this book reminds us that Ruth Asawa was a real person, not just an art historical hero. To me, that makes her story even more awesome!

Lastly, I will share this book – Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life (2002). I visited The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida this summer to see The Woman Who Broke Boundaries: Photographer Lee Miller exhibition. It was great and the museum’s educational team provided an immense amount of information in the form of museum didactics and labels. You may recall me sharing my experience in a past blog post.

Sadly, I could not find a book on Lee Miller that I liked among the offerings in the museum gift shop. Yes, they had a variety of titles, but I was looking for a book with more of her surrealist images, not just her portraits.

When I returned home, I ordered the book mentioned above and was pretty pleased. Miller created a variety of photographs – portraits, surreal images, an insane amount of Picasso portraits, photojournalistic images, fashion photos, etc. – and this book did a pretty good job of illustrating “a little bit of everything” when looking at her oeuvre.