Art
Written by Krista Worthington
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Here’s a vibrant summer art-reading list for 2025/26, perfect for lounging by the pool, sipping an iced coffee, or finding creative spark under the sun.
These 10 books span artist biographies, art movements, creativity in context, and fiction rooted in the art world, including some great Australian picks to enjoy this season.
The incredible true story of how a street-fighting petty criminal, who was kicked out of school at fourteen, became one of Australia’s most celebrated and successful portrait artists.
Sometimes tragic, often hilarious but always deeply moving, Unveiled is a paint-spattered, star-studded, white-knuckle ride from the Housing Commission ghettos of Australia to the art galleries of Hong Kong, through the back roads of India and into the nightclubs of New York as Vincent chases his dream with humility, humour and a boundless love for people and a life better lived.
The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph’s curiosity grows . . .
Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.
The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.
‘If you want to buy something that appreciates, buy stocks and shares. Buy art because you want to live with it. Your appreciation is its appreciation.’ – Ronan Sulich
This philosophy lies at the heart of Collecting: Living with Art. A visual feast and tribute to the personal journey of acquiring and curating art, it celebrates the enriching endeavour of bringing art into the home. Artists, curators, architects, designers, gallerists and philanthropists open their doors, offering fascinating insights and practical advice on their distinctive approach to integrating art into daily life.
The collectors’ stories demonstrate how art can transform a space and turn it into a sanctuary of self-expression. Featuring a diverse mix of bold abstract works, contemporary photography, sculpture and mid-century masterpieces, Collecting is a powerful testament to the beauty and individuality of creating a home filled with meaning and inspiration.
She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live?
If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do.
Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.
This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.
A deliciously entertaining, never-before-told history of a residence for American women artists in Paris from 1893 to 1914.
In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the town and gathering at a female-only Residence known as The American Girls’ Club in Paris. Opened in 1893, The Club was the center of expatriate living and of dedication to a calling in the fine arts, and singularly harbored a generation of independent, talented, and driven American women.
Now in The Club, curator, art historian, and podcast host Jennifer Dasal presents the never-before-told story of the Club, the philanthropists who created it, and the artists it housed. These women forged connections in the arts and letters with luminaries like Auguste Rodin and Gertrude Stein or became activists through their relationships with the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst. But just as importantly, these women’s lives revealed the power of the Club itself, and the way that having a safe home for single women of ambition allowed them to grow as teachers, artists, suffragists, and people.
In 1982, artist Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother’s birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage.
My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author’s mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.
Artists by Artists is contemporary art in the making – a dynamic and intimate exploration of Australia’s most engaging artists capturing each other in portraiture. In this ambitious creative endeavour, fifty artists are thoughtfully paired, offering a rare glimpse into their artistic processes and personal connections.
Through striking imagery and candid conversations, readers are invited into the shared creative space where each brushstroke, pencil line or camera click reveals not just a physical likeness, but the inspirations, histories and artistic philosophies that bind these visionaries together. Archival materials and personal reflections trace each artist’s journey – how they first came to art, what drives their practice and how their work continues to evolve.
As insightful as it is diverse, Artists by Artists is a conversation that unfolds from the sofa to the studio, from the spoken word to the painted canvas. It is an essential document of Australia’s contemporary art scene.
The gripping feminist retelling of a seventeenth century heroine forging her own destiny.
Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist. Motherless, she grows up among a family of painters – men and boys. She belongs to her father and will belong to a husband. As Artemisia perfects her craft, a mysterious tutor enters her life. But then the unthinkable happens. A violent act that threatens Artemisia’s honour, and her virtue.
In the eyes of her family, Artemisia should accept her fate. In the eyes of the law, she is the villain. But Artemisia is a survivor. And this is her story to tell.
In Vaginal Davis’ pioneering and incredibly diverse oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets racial justice and resistance meets joy. An icon of contemporary queer history, Vaginal Davis has made scenes for a living: through personas as diverse and outrageous as Rayvn Cymone McFarlane or John Dean Egg III, and as a part of bands including Cholita! The Female Menudo and the Afro Sisters.
An uproarious celebration of Davis’ work and cultural legacy, this bilingual English/Swedish catalog is Z-bound (English on one side, Swedish on the other) and takes readers on a whirlwind tour across the artist’s protean output spanning music, performance, installations, lectures and visual art: from her early punk shows to her recent “fantasy library” imagined as a teenager’s bedroom. A final section, “Dear Ms. Davis,” includes heartfelt tributes to the artist from fellow “colleagues, concubines and coconspirators.”
From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin
The Creative Act distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments, and lifetimes, of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
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