The decade's great books on art

When I first started thinking about the past decade in books on art, I had grand visions of coming up with a top ten or top fifteen books of the decade. The master list. The list to end lists. What I ended up with was a longer, looser, more personal collection of great books on art. Nonetheless, it's a nice group. It was a nice decade. One worth sharing and remembering even as we find ourselves knee-deep in the next....

IN PAIRS

• Siri Hustevedt: What I Loved (2003) and Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting (2005)
• Geoff Dyer: The Ongoing Moment (2005) and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2009)
• Lawrence Weschler: Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982/2009) and True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney (2009), and not to forget Vermeer in Bosnia (2004)
• Picabia: The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris (2007) by George Baker, and I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation (2007) by Francis Picabia, translated by Marc Lowenthal.
• Goya: Goya (2003) by Robert Hughes, and Old Man Goya (2002) by Julia Blackburn
• Rembrant's body parts: Rembrandt's Eyes (2000) by Simon Schama, and Rembrandt's Nose (2007) by Michael Taylor
• 19th-century male photographers, creatively approached by 21st-centrury women writers: River Of Shadows Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (2003) by Rebecca Solnit, and The Shadow Catcher (2007) by Marianne Wiggins
• James Cuno's critical examination of museums, from the inside out: Whose Muse?: Art Museums and the Public Trust (2004) and Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities (2009) edited by Cuno, and Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage (2008) written by him.

BIG BIOGRAPHY

• Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954 (2005) by Hilary Spurling [the second and final volume of the biography. The first, The Unknown Matisse, was published in 1998]
• Picasso: A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (2007) by John Richardson [the third volume of the biography, following A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881-1906 (1991) and A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916 (1996)]
• Gorky: Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work (2003) by Hayden Herrera
• de Kooning: de Kooning: An American Master (2004) by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

ARTISTS WRITINGS

• Rothko: Writings on Art (2006) and The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art (2006)
• Ruscha: Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages (2002)
• Weiner: Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner 1968-2003 (2004) edited by Gerti Fietzek and Gregor Stemmrich
• Richter: Gerhard Richter: Writings, 1961-2007 (2009)

SINGULAR ACHIEVEMENTS

• Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) by Susan Sontag
• The Undressed Art: Why We Draw (2004) by Peter Steinhart
• The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006) by T. J. Clark
• Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property (2006) by Susan M. Bielstein
• Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper (2001) by Leo Steinberg
• The Invisible Masterpiece (2001) by Hans Belting
• This Is Not It (2002) by Lynne Tillman
• The Lost Painting (2005) by Jonathan Harr
• The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006) by Ross King
• Ambition and Love in Modern American Art (2000) by Jonathan Weinberg

Update on Monday, February 1, 2010 at 09:00PM by Hol Art Books

I didn't include these on the main list, but they perhaps deserve a list of their own, "The Warhol Decade"?

• Andy Warhol (2001) by Wayne Koestenbaum
• I Bought Andy Warhol (2001) and I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) (2009) by Richard Polsky
• POPism: The Warhol Sixties (2006) by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett
• Warhol's Dream (2007) by Saul Anton
• Andy Warhol: Blow Job (2008) by Peter Gidal
• Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol (2009) by Tony Scherman and David Dalton
• Andy Warhol (2009) by Arthur C. Danto