The Times and The Sunday Times (November 24, 2023): Lose yourself among lily pads, potbellied Dutch merchants and Venetian canals. Laura Freeman and Waldemar Januszczak curate the finest of this year’s art books, taking in Monet, Picasso, Gwen John and more

12 Best Art Books Of 2023

Monet: The Restless Vision by Jackie Wullschläger

In his eighties, Claude Monet was spotted by a younger artist, “old but still very handsome”, wrapped in a sumptuous fur, sitting on top of a dyke “in a bitter west wind which ruffled his long white beard, mingling it with the foam of the waves”. This transporting biography by the Financial Times’s art critic Jackie Wullschläger paints the impressionist as a man for all seasons, out in the dawn and the dusk and the snow, obsessed, possessed, with capturing the fleeting effects of light, shade and water, calm as millpond or whipped up by a storm. Chocolate box? Jamais! Monet mounted the barricades of modern art, revolutionising the way the world could be seen and painted. A book for art-lovers — and for gardeners too. Art and literature, Monet proclaimed, were all humbug. “There’s nothing but the earth.” Laura Freeman

All the Beauty in the World: A Museum Guard’s Adventures in Life, Loss and Art by Patrick Bringley

Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of the year would be written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist — but by a museum guard? For ten years Patrick Bringley worked at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, directing visitors to the Islamic collections and watching out for angry protestors. It turned out to be a remarkably fruitful experience. Bringley weaves the story of a personal tragedy involving his sick brother with startling insights into museum life and — most impressively — into the great art in the Met’s collection. Waldemar Januszczak

Looking at Picasso by Pepe Karmel

If you have been living under a rock in 2023, you will not have noticed that this year was the 50th anniversary of the death of Picasso. The rest of us couldn’t avoid it. Countless exhibitions, events and books commemorated the occasion, but this was the most useful. Focusing on the art rather than the biography of the man, it’s a generous and sensitive text with brilliant illustrations. WJ

Pauline Boty: British Pop Art’s Sole Sister by Marc Kristal

Pauline Boty was “the Wimbledon Bardot”, “an ice-cream of a girl” and by her own mocking, ironic reckoning, “a happy, dumb blonde”. She was so much more than that, as this fizzing biography shows. Meet Boty the Sixties It girl, pop artist, voice-of-a-generation broadcaster and “anti-ugly” campaigner against hideous postwar development. Marc Kristal gives you the crumbling studios of the Royal College of Art, the creative squalor of Notting Hill bedsitters and the thrill of finding your feet (in knee-high boots) in swinging London. Boty died appallingly young, but her life was no tragedy. It was full of mischief, provocation and promise. This book brings Boty to life, painting, protesting and dancing the miniskirted twist. LF

Venice: City of Pictures by Martin Gayford

Venice isn’t just the most painted city in the world, it is probably the most written about too. Finding a fresh angle from which to view it is a challenge. Gayford’s answer is to understand the city and its history through the splendid and varied art it has inspired. Packed with potted histories and informed anecdotes, this is a tome to pack on a visit to La Serenissima. WJ

Giacometti in Paris by Michael Peppiatt

Alberto Giacometti used to claim that really he would have liked to carve and cast voluptuous women such as Marilyn Monroe. “The more I tried to make them broader, the narrower they got.” Giacometti’s beanpole people became icons of 20th-century art and Michael Peppiatt’s compelling portrait cuts to the core of the sculptor’s “strange life and his stranger fame”. Giacometti’s Paris studio is a character in its own right: a filthy lair filled with the most extraordinary figures and fragments, with a leaking roof, a tree growing up through the floor and a local fox given the run of the place. Appalling and fascinating. You’ll never look at a Giacometti the same way. LF

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