Beyond Adornment explores what the depiction of jewelry in art says about adornment, artists, and their subjects, from Charlemagne to Frida Kahlo.
Book Review
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Why Are We Still Obsessed With Pompeii?
In The Buried City, the director of the archaeological park brings a more humane and soulful version of the site to life.
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Do We Need to Vindicate Paul Gauguin?
Sue Prideaux’s new biography of the artist reveals both a discomfort with his complex legacy and that, in 2025, redemption arcs sell.
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Unraveling the Imperial Impulses of Chinese Textiles
Like an art history detective, Mei Mei Rado mines textiles and techniques to reveal cross-cultural Chinese-European liaisons driven by nationalism and a keen interest in design.
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A Mystical, Obsessive Encounter With the Ginseng Root
Craig Thompson’s rhizomatic new graphic novel about the root’s farming industry exposes the paradoxes of Trump’s America.
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Internet Misinformation Is the New Medieval Magical Thinking
Readers might enjoy the gross and gory fairy-tale quality of this new book — or its parallels to the Trumpian internet.
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Eadweard Muybridge and the Making of the Motion Picture
A new comic book is as much a social history of photography and its relationship to culture during the 19th century as it is one man’s life story.
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The Small Magazines That Birthed Surrealism
Surrealism through Its Journals reminds us that the movement began with, and cannot be understood without, the written word.
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The Story of Surrealism Isn’t Whole Without Gala Dalí
In Surreal, Michèle Gerber Klein asks us to confront the unjust eclipse of Gala’s legacy by that of her husband, Salvador, whose career she brought to fruition.
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Reading Georgia O’Keeffe Along Lines of Class and Race
A new book sets its sights on the artist’s lesser-known post-war career and her negotiations of identity.
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Adventures in the Louvre Is the Guidebook Nobody Asked For
Rife with descriptions of “seductive” works, the former “New York Times” Paris bureau chief’s book reads more like a travel guide than the impartial reporting of a journalist.
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An Artist’s Thirty-Year Affair With Copper
No Man’s Land, Pakistani artist Amin Gulgee’s first comprehensive monograph, maps his interest in exploring ritual, science, grief, and healing in a visual language all his own.