Autumn books preview: a selection of forthcoming books on art and architecture

Apollo, August, 2004

To give even a brief survey of the highlights of art book publishing this autumn it is necessary to introduce some limitations, so no exhibition catalogues, or 'books of exhibitions', which are rapidly evolving as separate genres, and no books on museum collections.

If one had to choose just one highlight, it would not be an art book at all, but a reference work that historians of British art will consult for decades to come: the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, September, sixty volumes, 7,500 [pounds sterling]--or 6,500 [pounds sterling] if you order before 30 September; for details of on-line subscribing, consult www.oxforddnb.com).

Books on ancient art include The Sculpture of the Parthenon (Cambridge, September, c. 45 [pounds sterling]), edited by Michael Cosmopoulos, which promises 'a new interpretation', and Patrick Bowe's Gardens of the Roman World (Frances Lincoln, September, 35 [pounds sterling]). From the other side of the world comes Kenneth Nebenzahl's Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond: 2,000 years of exploring the East (Phaidon, September, 29.95 [pounds sterling]), on antique maps of Asia and the Middle Fast, from 334 BC to the nineteenth century.

There are two important books by medieval scholars who move across the boundaries between art and architectural history, Paul Binski's Becket's Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170-1300 (Yale, October, 40 [pounds sterling]) and Stephen Murray's A Gothic Sermon: Making a Contract with the Mother of God, Saint Mary of Amiens (University of California Press, November, 26.95 [pounds sterling]). Jean Givens's Observation and Image-making in Gothic Art (Cambridge, November, c. 45 [pounds sterling]) examines the working practices of medieval artists.

Two exciting books on renaissance artists are Martin Kemp's Leonardo (Oxford, October, 14.99 [pounds sterling]) and Susan Foister's Holbein and England (Yale, November, 45 [pounds sterling]). Baroque studies seem absent this autumn and so the clock jumps to two titles from Cambridge (which despite persistent rumours that it is abandoning art books fields a strong list this autumn): Emma Barker's Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment (December, c. 70 [pounds sterling]) and Ray Lambert's John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting (September, c. 50 [pounds sterling]).

Eighteenth-century British architecture makes a strong showing, with the late John Cornforth's Early Georgian Interiors (Yale, October, 60 [pounds sterling]) and David Watkin's The Architect King: George III and the Culture of the Enlightenment (Royal Collection Publications, September, [pounds sterling] 30). The British Stable: An Architectural and Social History (Yale, October, 45 [pounds sterling]) is a major study by Giles Worsley of a neglected subject.

The pace picks up with nineteenth-century art. Michael Freeman is publishing The Victorians and the Prehistoric: Tracks to a Lost World (Yale, August, 25 [pounds sterling]), which is more about art than it sounds, and Marcia Werner's Pre-Raphaelite Painting and Nineteenth Century Realism, published by Cambridge, appears in December (c. 50 [pounds sterling]). In October the J. Paul Getty Museum publishes Neoclassical Architecture in Greece by Maro Kardamitsi-Adamai and Manos Biris (c. 53 [pounds sterling]). Notably original and attractive are Sandra Berresford's Italian Memorial Sculpture 1820-1940 (Frances Lincoln, October, 40 [pounds sterling]) and Gauvin Alexander Bailey's Art of Colonial Latin America (Phaidon, October, 14.95 [pounds sterling]).

Clare A.P. Willsdon's In the Gardens of Impressionism (Thames and Hudson, November, 29.95 [pounds sterling]) is a scholarly account of a popular subject. From the same publisher comes Oleg Neverov's glamorous Great Private Collections of Imperial Russia (September, 36 [pounds sterling]). This is the year of Watts, who died a hundred years ago, hence Veronica Franklin Gould's G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian (Yale, September, 40 [pounds sterling]).

For the twentieth century, the choice is rich. Highlights include Susan Alberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries, October, 35 [pounds sterling]); Olivier Widmaier Picasso's Picasso: The Real Family Story (Prestel, October, 19.99 [pounds sterling]); Dawn Ades, Dali: A Centenary Retrospective (Thames and Hudson, October, 45 [pounds sterling]); Julius Bryant, Anthony Caro: A Life in Sculpture (Merrell, August, 14.95 [pounds sterling]); David Hockney, Hockney's Pictures (Thames and Hudson, November, 19.95 [pounds sterling])--a complete retrospective; and Chris Townsend's The Art of Rachel Whiteread (Thames and Hudson, November, 12.95 [pounds sterling]).

The always stimulating Reaktion Books' list includes two intriguing studies in cultural history, The Afterlife of Gardens by John Dixon Hunt (October, 25 [pounds sterling]) and Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present by Kenneth Bendiner (October, 19.95 [pounds sterling]). Ruins by Michel Makarius (Flammarion, October, 40 [pounds sterling]) discusses artists' depiction of ruins. The photography book of the autumn is probably Katherine Hoffman's Stieglitz: A Beginning Light (Yale, September, 25 [pounds sterling]).