September

Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World, Jed Perl (September 2008, Knopf, $25, 9780307266620). Biography/History. "Weaving together historical fact and personal reflections, the influential art critic Jed Perl reconstructs the amazing story of this pioneering bohemian artist who, although he died in 1721, when he was only thirty-six, has influenced innumerable painters and writers in the centuries since." In its full description, the book sounds like an interesting approach to Watteau, and it has gotten some good early reviews. The success of Perl's last book, New Art City, doesn't hurt either.

The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story, Susan Hill (September 2008, Overlook Press, $15, 9781590200919). Fiction. "In the apartment of Oliver's old professor, there's a painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. On this cold winter's night, the professor has decided to reveal the painting’s eerie secret. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it."

October

All the King's Horses, Michèle Bernstein (October 2008, Semiotext(e), $14.95, 9781584350651). Fiction. "[O]ne of the odder and more elusive, entertaining, and revealing documents of the Situationist International. At the instigation of her first husband, Guy Debord, Bernstein agreed to write a potboiler to help swell the Situationist International's coffers." Translation and introduction by John Kelsey. This weird connection between high art and trash fiction is too irresistable. For a different take on the Situationist International, see Correspondence: The Foundation of the Situationist International, being published by Semiotext(e) in December (listed below).

A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World, Marcia Tucker (October 2008, University of California Press, $27.50, 9780520257009). Memoir. "This engrossing memoir brings to vivid life the behind-the-scenes struggles of Marcia Tucker, the first woman to be hired as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City." Edited and with an Afterword by artist Liza Lou. Marcia Tucker, who died in 2006, has also just had a volume of her short stories published through the Acadia Summer Arts Program in Maine, Marcia Tucker: Three Stories.

A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, John Yau (October 2008, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, $39.95, 9781933045627). Essay. "This beautifully illustrated and profoundly original volume of essays by the New York poet and critic John Yau mounts one of the most eloquent defenses of the art and vision of Jasper Johns ever written--going well past tired and traditional Formalist readings of the artist's work to propose a completely new way of reading them: One that is intensely human." Yau's first book on Johns, The United States of Jasper Johns (1996, Zoland Books), was generally well-regarded but for me didn't live up to expectations. Perhaps though, Yau was just warming up.

Caravaggio's Angel, Ruth Brandon (October 2008, Soho Constable, $25, 9781569475195). Mystery. "Dr. Reggie Lee, new at London's National Gallery, is planning a small exhibition of three almost identical Caravaggio paintings when she discovers a fourth. One must be a forgery. That discovery detonates multiple murders. Like Flavia di Stefano in Iain Pears' art history mysteries, Reggie is attractive, knowledgeable when it comes to art, and percipient when it comes to people with motives to defraud." I reviewed a numer of art mysteries in a previous Hol Bulletin, and am happy, even if guiltily, to see a new one published.

Chagall: A Biography, Jackie Wullschlager (October 2008, Knopf, $40, 9780375414558). Biography. "Wullschlager explores in detail Chagall’s complex relationship with Russia and makes clear the Russian dimension he brought to Western modernism. She shows how, as André Breton put it, “under his sole impulse, metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting,” and helped shape the new surrealist movement." THe publisher is comparing Wullschlager's Chagall biography to Hilary Spurling's acclaimed Matisse, and John Richardson's eqaully vaunted Picasso -- they just might be right.

Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait, Michael Peppiatt (October 2008, Yale University Press, $35.00, 9780300142556). Biography. "In this invaluable book Michael Peppiatt, a major art critic and close friend of Bacon’s, offers an entertaining and uniquely well-informed portrait of this complex artist. Peppiatt’s collection of interviews and essays spans more than forty years—from 1963, when the two men met, to 2007, when Peppiatt wrote an essay explaining Bacon’s passionate involvement with Van Gogh."

* The Lightning Field, Kenneth Baker (October 2008, Yale University Press, $35.00, 9780300138948). Essay. "Critic Kenneth Baker visited [Walter de Maria's] The Lightning Field numerous times over the course of the past 30 years in order to write this text. Inspired and challenged by this remarkable artwork, Baker speculates on the course of our contemporary human condition. But, rather than building on ideas in narrative sequence, he deploys quotation to effect multiple perspectives and points of view. Baker's citations and elegantly crafted prose are arrayed––in a metaphorical parallel to De Maria's choreographing of the vast landscape of the American Southwest––to create a compelling text." Preface by Lynne Cooke. This might be my favorite pick for the fall. Sounds like a great approach to a particularly interesting work.

The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe (October 2008, Picador, $14, 9780312427580). Essay. 1975 Reissue. "He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual.... '"If you have ever stared uncomprehendingly at an abstract painting that admired critics have said you ought to dig, take heart. Tom Wolfe . . . is on your side. The Painted Word may enrage you. It may confirm your darkest suspicions about Modern Art. In any case, it will amuse you.' --New York Sunday News"

Theanyspacewhatever (October 2007, Guggenheim Museum, $45, 9780892073771). Exhibition. "During the 1990s a number of artists claimed the exhibition as their medium. Working independently or in various collaborative constellations, they eschewed the individual object in favor of the exhibition environment as a dynamic arena, ever expanding its physical and temporal parameters." Essays by Michael Archer, Daniel Birnbaum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Xavier Douroux, Patricia Falguieres, Hal Foster, Massimiliano Gioni, Michael Govan, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and more.

True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney, Lawrence Wechler (October 2008, University of California Press, $24.95, 9780520258792). Biography. "Soon after its publication in 1982, artist David Hockney read Lawrence Weschler's Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin and invited Weschler to his studio to discuss it, initiating a series of engrossing dialogues, gathered here for the first time.... These conversations provide an astonishing record of what has been Hockney's grand endeavor, nothing less than an exploration of "the structure of seeing" itself." And don't miss University of California Press' November release of a greatly expanded version of Weschler's Seeing is Forgetting (listed below).

November

Envy, Alan Elkann (November 2008, Pushkin Press, $15.95, 9781901285819). Fiction. "...a writer falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about a famous artist Julian Sax...The narrator begins to fear that his wife Rossa might succumb to the charm of this seductive man who attracts women, paints them and then discards them." Translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwan. Creepy cover illustration by Hans Bellmer.

The Marriage of Love & Squalor, Jake Chapman (November 2008, FUEL Publishing, $32.95, 9780955862007). Fiction. "In his fiction debut, the notorious British artist Jake Chapman satirizes the standard paperback romance novel in his own inimitable way, slashing the genre down to bare bones and creating a disfigured version from the remains."

Me and Kaminski, Daniel Kehlmann (November 2008, Pantheon, $21.95, 9780307377449). Fiction. "Half road novel, half satire on the contemporary art scene, Kaminski and Me is a wryly humorous meditation on art, memory, and identity. It provides further compelling evidence of the exceptional talents of one of Europe's most exciting and gifted young novelists."

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler (November 2008, University of California Press, $24.95, 9780520256095). Biography. 1982 Reissue. "Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Robert Irwin... enhancing what many had already considered the best ever book on an artist." Some of my recent thoughts on Weschler and Irwin here.

Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton (November 2008, W. W. Norton, $24.95, 9780393067224). Essay. "[Sarah Thornton] reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture." Thanks to Megan for the tip.

December

Art in Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism 1935–1975, Fairfield Porter (December 2008, MFA Publications, $22.50,  9780878467433). Criticism. "Known as one of America's finest and most influential painters, Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) was also a prolific and highly insightful art critic. His writing not only reflects the independent, original mind that presided over his own visual works, but also covers an extraordinary period in American art, in which he played the double role of protagonist and witness." I might be biased for having worked a bit for MFA Publications, but I'm very glad to see their artWorks series continuing.

Correspondence: The Foundation of the Situationist International (June 1957–August 1960), Guy Debord (December 2008, Semiotext(e), $19.95, 9781584350552). Letters. "Debord's letters--published here for the first time in English--provide a fascinating insider's view of just how this seemingly disorganized group drifting around a newly consumerized Paris became one of the most defining cultural movements of the twentieth century." Translated by Stuart Kendall. Introduction by McKenzie Wark, a 2006 Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant winner.