15 essential art books

Truly comprehensive in scope, this bestselling book explores masterpieces by more than 700 artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, and Van Gogh. An invaluable art lover's reference book, it showcases everything from Italian baroque painting and African Art to contemporary art history.

An icon of 1980s New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) first made his name under the graffiti tag "SAMO," before establishing his studio practice and catapulting to fast fame at the age of 20. Although his career lasted barely a decade, he remains a cult figure of artistic social commentary, and a trailblazer in the mediation of graffiti and gallery art.

Through this incredible archive, Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up gives readers a unique window into Kahlo's life. It will focus on the personal, combining her prosthetics, jewelry, and clothes with self-portraits, diary entries, and letters to build an intimate portrait of the artist through her possessions, setting this in the context of her political and social beliefs.

A collection of two extraordinary artists' landscape paintings, with new insight into Vincent Van Gogh's influence on David Hockney. Now, for the first time, art lovers can study their pieces side by side.

As restaurants proliferated, the design of the menu became an integral part of eating out and as such menus became a marketing tool and a favored keepsake. Menu Design is an omnibus showcasing the best examples of this graphic art. With nearly 800 examples, this book not only showcases this extraordinary collection of paper ephemera but serves as a history of restaurants and dining out in America.

Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting - not as muses but as artists.

The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist's career.

Historically, major women artists have been excluded from the mainstream art canon. Aligned with the resurgence of feminism in pop culture, Broad Strokes offers an entertaining corrective to that omission. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of 15 brilliant female artists in text that's smart, feisty, educational, and an enjoyable read.

Vitamin C celebrates the revival of clay as a material for contemporary visual artists, featuring a wide range of global talent as selected by the world's leading curators, critics, and art professionals. Packed with illustrations, Vitamin C is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind.

Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, the role of the artist, and of what constituted an artwork. With featured artists including Andy Warhol, Allen Jones, Ed Ruscha, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, this book introduces the full reach and influence of a defining modernist movement.

In the period of radical change that was 1963-83, young black artists at the beginning of their careers confronted difficult questions about art, politics and racial identity. Soul of a Nation surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of 20th-century black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Jack Whitten, and more.

Good taste, however voluptuous, never goes out of fashion. In making this exceptionally rare book available to a wide audience, TASCHEN brings an artwork, a practical cookbook, and a multisensory adventure to today's kitchens. This reprint features all 136 recipes over 12 chapters, specially illustrated by Dalí, and organized by meal courses, including aphrodisiacs.

The Short Story of Art is a new and innovative introduction to the subject of art. Simply constructed, the book explores 50 key works, from the wall paintings of Lascaux to contemporary installations, and then links these to sections on art movements, themes, and techniques.

This large-scale TASCHEN monograph presents the complete Bosch oeuvre, celebrating the artist's staggering compositional scope and most bizarre and intricate details through full-page reproductions, abundant details, and a fold-out spread drawn from The Last Judgement. With guidance from art historian and Bosch expert Stefan Fischer, we explore the many compelling elements that populate each scene, from hybrid creatures of man and beast, to painterly assaults on the body, and a pictorial use of proverbs and idioms.

Visit the world's most comprehensive and compelling museum in a book - from pre-historic times to the present - over 1,600 artworks created with the expertise of 28 art world curators and historians.