Best summer books of 2023: Visual arts
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Chronorama: Photographic Treasures of the 20th Century by The Pinault Collection and Condé Nast Archive (Abrams)
A wildly glamorous decade-by-decade compilation from the archive of publisher Condé Nast (Vogue, Vanity Fair) of the people, places and fashions which, fixed by the gaze of great photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, Edward Steichen and many more, distilled the essence of an era. Hugely enjoyable.
Immortal Thoughts: Late Style in a Time of Plague by Christopher Neve (Thames & Hudson)
During the pandemic Neve, a painter in his 80s, returned alone to his rural childhood home and wrote about ageing artists. Spanning Titian, Rembrandt and Chardin to Pissarro, Rouault and Soutine, this is an exquisite, moving, highly original exploration of late style, “that odd compound of thought beyond reason . . . part death, part memoir, part intuition”.
Renaissance Secrets: A Lifetime Working with Wall Paintings by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Others at the Vatican by Maurizio De Luca (Getty Publications)
The rarest voice in art history is the restorer’s, yet no one comes closer to the hand of the painter. De Luca’s account of 60 years conserving paintings thata seemed like “the frescoes of old friends” — Michelangelo’s “technical turmoil”, Raphael’s youthful mastery, Botticelli’s refinement — is charming and revelatory.
Tell us what you think
What are your favourites from this list — and what books have we missed? Tell us in the comments below
Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death by Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)
Carel Fabritius, born 1622, and James Cumming, born 1922, are the painters at the heart of this lustrous meditation on the lives and after-lives of artists, how they work and how their paintings work on us. Cumming interweaves myriad stories — Golden Age Delft, postwar Edinburgh, London today — with a novelist’s pace, a critic’s eye, a daughter’s heart.
Vermeer edited by Pieter Roelofs and Gregor Weber (Thames & Hudson)
For those who went, and those who didn’t. The catalogue to the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer exhibition, designed by the innovative Irma Boom to the dimensions of “The Lacemaker”, and printed on uncoated paper (truer colour, less glare), is a gorgeous object, a scholarly landmark, and an engrossing, accessible read.
Summer Books 2023
All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:
Monday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Tuesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Thursday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Friday: Critics’ picks
Saturday: History by Tony Barber
Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café
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