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The art books I gravitated to this season are all over the map: From subtle insights into aesthetics to the heaviest book I've ever hoisted - and I'm talking pounds, not ideas. Read on to find a book about the most famous artworks ever stolen; one on that humble and exalted piece of furniture upon which we park our tushes; and a book on Andy Warhol that will dominate your coffee table.
"The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton (Pantheon, $25). Be it a simple, unadorned ranch house or the most baroque mansion, the buildings and furnishings we love express our sense of who we are. That much is obvious. But novelist and philosopher Alain de Botton (the guy who wrote "How Proust Can Change Your Life") looks deeper and transforms his musing on the subject into a page-turner about why certain buildings, furnishings and artworks hold special appeal. Believe it or not, it's both a primer on aesthetics and a thoroughly delightful piece of writing.
"Destination Art" by Amy Dempsey (University of California Press, $39.95). In earlier centuries, well-to-do people got their art education taking the "grand tour" of Europe to visit the great museums and cathedrals. Now that air travel has opened that world to the masses, more people are getting away from the big museums to encounter artworks one-on-one. Besides, with the advent of the earth art movement in the 1970s, there's a lot more out there to be seen. This book is essentially an art travel guide to pilgrimage sites as obvious as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and as obscure as the Brancusi Ensemble in Targu-Jiu, Romania. It's well-illustrated with color photographs, so makes a wonderful resource for armchair travelers, too.
"Museum of the Missing" by Simon Houpt (Sterling Publishing, $24.95). This is, quite simply, a history of art theft, with all its sordid twists. The book describes the mass thievery practiced by the Nazis and the less-talked-about slippery fingers of U.S. servicemen, who shipped home precious illuminated manuscripts and reliquaries picked up in German churches. The famous 1911 heist of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre is here, of course, as is the still-unsolved 1990 theft of a rare Vermeer, three Rembrandts and several other artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Perhaps most disturbing is a reminder of the thousands of priceless artifacts that were taken from the unguarded Iraq National Museum in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Foreword by Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of stolen artworks.
"Lola Alvarez Bravo" by Elizabeth Ferrer (Aperture, $50). My favorite photography book this year is a survey of the gorgeously composed images of early 20th-century Mexican artist Lola Alvarez Bravo. From the gripping clarity of her portraits of friends (including painters Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros and the young novelist Carlos Fuentes) to the magic realism that came with her turf, Bravo's pictures stop you in your tracks, page after page.
"Chairs: A History" by Florence de Dampierre (Abrams, $65). The earliest existing chairs date back more than 4,000 years to the Egyptian Old Kingdom. It's possible the Chinese or somebody else made them earlier, but we don't have the proof. What's for sure is that function remains only a sliver of the motivation for crafting a chair, and that shifting ideas of beauty and prestige often trump it. Pictured here are seats of gilded oak, Murano glass, bent bamboo, purple velvet, wire mesh, plywood, aluminum and zebra skin, to name a few. I'm betting if you plunk "Chairs" on your coffee table, it will stop the conversation. A good gift for anybody hooked on fine furniture.
"Art of the Northwest Coast" by Aldona Jonaitis (University of Washington Press, $26.95). The author, an anthropology professor and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, re-examines old notions that Native art and culture were lost after white settlers invaded their land. Jonaitis begins her well-illustrated survey with pre-historic artifacts and concludes with contemporary-glass sculpture by Marvin Oliver.
"Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock" by Kirk Varnedoe (Princeton University Press, $45). Crowds lined up to listen to the admired curator and art historian deliver six encompassing lectures at the National Gallery of Art in 2003. His purpose, he said, was to confront skeptics who dismiss abstract art as "pictures of nothing." He begins by pointing out that the development of abstract art coincided with the cataclysm of World War I, which jarred artists into revolutionary forms. Just three months after delivering this extraordinary series of lectures in 2003, Varnedoe succumbed to cancer.
"Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery in the Art of Emily Carr" by Gerta Moray (University of British Columbia/University of Washington Press, $75). Early 20th-century Canadian artist Emily Carr once remarked that the hundreds of pictures she made of Northwest Coast natives in British Columbia were "wonderful records of a passing people." Art historian Moray probes Carr's complex relationship with the First Nations people she admired. The book is well-illustrated with color reproductions of Carr's paintings as well as photo documentation of the villages and totem poles she depicted.
"Tom Kundig: Houses" edited by Dung Ngo (Princeton Architectural Press, $40). The Seattle architectural firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen is known for making buildings that are friendly to art, so it's no surprise that partner Tom Kundig's houses are geared to promoting creativity and serenity. Intriguing pictures of artist Carol Bobo's "Studio House" and the lofty "Brain Studio" Kundig put together for film director David Wild are highlights of the book, not to mention Michal Friedrich's succinct little "Delta Shelter" weekend getaway. The book is confusing to navigate, with essays interspersed with sections on individual houses, and the writing feels homespun. Still, it's a welcome resource on a local architect.
"Andy Warhol Giant' Size" introduction by Dave Hickey (Phaidon, $125). I usually steer clear of books with gimmicks, like the gargantuan size of this weighty tome. But in this case, after dipping in, I changed my mind. "Andy WarholGiant' Size" is packed with great stuff, from photographs of the artist growing up and his early Cocteauesque drawings of dreamy young men, through the years of glitter and star-schmoozing. (Who but Warhol, while shaking hands with Pope John Paul II, would be simultaneously shooting his picture?) By the end, you come face to face with the gaunt, scarred, sordid post-shooting Andy, with fear in his eyes. Warhol once said: "Don't pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches." This book measures about 13 by 17 inches and is 624 pages long, which no doubt would have made him happy. And because it is mostly pictures, it made me happy, too.
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(c) 2006, The Seattle Times. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
