Romas Viesulas's Reading List

"In spite of it all, 2020 has been a good year for Modern and Contemporary Art, and art books relating to the last century. Auction houses and art fairs appear to be taking the pandemic in their stride, honing their online exhibition prowess, even as they take a hit. One publishing milestone was the reconstruction and publication of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne , a legendary modernist epic of visual thinking from the founder of iconology, tracing the migration of symbols through art, history and cosmology. This visual dictionary of symbols encompasses everything from medieval manuscripts to coins, playing cards, postage stamps and modern photographs, always looking for deeper meanings carried by images—a reference volume akin to an encyclopaedia among art books ."

"This editor has a predilection for painting, and especially for the enigmatic portraits of fictional people by British painter Lynette-Yiadom Boyakye. Her exhibit at Tate Modern has been keenly anticipated this year, and her work may appeal to poetry lovers too; words take the place of paint when she finds they express ideas more forthrightly. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Celebrated German painter Gerhard Richter’s exhibit Painting After All at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was open for all of nine days before lockdown hit. But the exhibition catalogue makes for an important entry in any reference library on painting, given his standing as one of the last centuries most celebrated practitioners. Finally, a shout out to Contemporary Art Issue , which I first signalled in a recent interview on figurative painting today . I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of their first volume, ‘ Apologia’ , which launches soon and looks like a fanzine for figurative art junkies."

"Artist biographies have been a staple in this editorial department. Regular readers will already be familiar with the magisterial biographies on Andy Warhol and Lucian Freud that have featured previously on Five Books. (Watch this space for forthcoming interviews on Goya, the Arts & Crafts movement and William Morris.) My current bedside table reading is a biography on American photographer Walker Evans, subtitled Starting from Scratch, by the notable art historian Svetlana Alpers. Evans approached his craft with the sensibility of a painter, Alpers argues, which may be why he is so close to my heart. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter In August 2020 Luchita Hurtado died, an artist associated with a vast network of internationally renowned artists and intellectuals, including members of the Dynaton group, the Mexican muralists, and the Surrealists. To mark her centenary, Hauser & Wirth have published an account of her extraordinary life, as related in a series of interviews with art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist , from beginnings in Venezuela, to New York, Mexico, and finally to California and New Mexico. Hurtado made the Time list of 100 most influential people, and crossed paths with some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, such as Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, and Rufino Tamayo, all of whom are referenced and remembered in this beautiful book , available via the publisher."

"Other ‘lives of artists’ worth exploring include Albers & Albers: Equal and Unequal , which documents a creative dynamo. This German-American power couple were pioneers of abstract art. For the first time, a single monograph presents both their beguiling relationship and exceptional creativity, from their formative years at the Bauhaus in Germany to their singular influence at the revolutionary Black Mountain College in the United States. Josef – painter, designer, and teacher – and Anni Albers – textile artist and printmaker – are among the twentieth century’s most influential artists, and this visual biography by Phaidon publishers does them justice, with a dazzling array of of bold colour photographs of their work in all its variety, certainly one of the most eye-catching art books of 2020."

"For those seeking architectural armchair travel experiences, I would heartily recommend Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide . This is an urgent volume for a rich, multi-layered city in the midst of a destructive redevelopment. It seems that one can find all of architectural history in this city, from turn-of-the-century revivalism and romanticism, to concrete expressionism, and modernist design. In contrast to Cairo’s ancient and medieval architectural heritage, the city’s modern architecture has to date not received the attention it deserves. Confinement has limited our access to noteworthy spaces and places but given many a renewed interest in exploring home. For architecture books, how could I resist a book about libraries? For The Love of Books is a standout for ideas on how to curate your library, and ties in with recent debates about the value and virtue-signalling of libraries in lockdown. Home is where the heart is— and the Hi-Fi . As more music becomes digital rather than analogue, this design book presents an almost wistful look back at the designs that for many defined the acoustic experience of being homebound. It may be some time before most of us fly again. The noise of overhead air traffic has become an ever more distant memory for many of us. What goes on in air terminals the world over when no-one is flying? Looking forward to perhaps boarding again next year, we also await the publication in January of Tom Hegen: Aerial Observations on Airports , from one of my favourite publishers of art, architecture and photography books, Hatje Cantz. Here, the German photographer known for his aerial photographs documents Germany’s airports at the height of 2020’s lockdown in all their geometric stillness. Inundated with ever more digital imagery, as all of us have become content producers while corporations harvest our IP. Yet no matter the extent of the proliferation of photos, some images remain seared on the imagination, a retinal after-image on the mind’s eye. In 2020, we lost several who had captured images of lasting power. These included Chris Killip, perhaps best known for his unflinching series In Flagrante , which he made in the industrial north-east of England between 1973 and 1985. And Paul Fusco, whose most enduring image is perhaps the track-side family of mourners passed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train in 1968. I will be adding both photography books to my library in memoriam. Just published, The New Woman Behind the Camera presents a detailed survey of the many ways women around the world shaped modern photography in the mid twentieth century, and is also on order. Lockdowns have been messing with our sense of both space and time, but we will all remember where we were during the quarantines of 2020. Many of us will remember what we were reading, and the art, architecture and photography books in 2020 that have left a lasting impression. Which art books left an impression on you this year? Part of our Best Books of 2020 series"

"Art Work is less a survey than a conversation: part memoir, part workshop, part exhortation to anyone who wants to make something honest. Photographer Sally Mann has always been frank and fearless. The tone is occasionally outrageous, and upends the abiding myth of the artist’s life, that it is some sort of effortless epiphany. Art is work. It is risk and doubt with the occasional flash of inspiration. This generous and provocative guide to the creative life blends photographs, journal-entries, letters and reflections on creative success and its essential counterpart, failure."

"Reading this book feels like stepping into artist Louise Bourgeois ’s in/famous art salon. In fact the experience goes beyond that, like an invitation to visit the weave of her memories — the tapestry workshop of her childhood, the domestic labour of women mending torn rugs, the repetitive craft of repair. The author shows how these early experiences of weaving and restoration haunted Bourgeois’s mind and later surfaced in her sculptures and large-scale installations. It is a book about continuity — between childhood trauma and adult expression, between memory and material. The research is impeccable, rich with illustration, diaries, letters, personal photographs and previously unpublished archives. For anyone interested in this singular figure in twentieth century art, and how lived experience becomes aesthetic conviction, Knife-Woman is essential reading."

"We’ve featured Joseph Leo Koerner on Five Books previously, one of the authoritative voices on art history and the Renaissance in particular. His new volume — an “art-historical epic for dangerous times” — examines three works made in moments of crisis: from the visionary pre-modern imagery of Hieronymus Bosch to the anguished modernism of Max Beckmann , to the resistant drawings of William Kentridge under apartheid. Through these, Koerner asks: what does art look like when the rule of law fails? This is a book for the deranged days of 2025. It insists that in “states of siege” — literal or metaphorical — art becomes not an afterthought but a last bulwark: a language of resistance. Especially in a year like this, given societal upheaval the world over, this reads more like manifesto than academic volume."

"Sight Lines is a re-imagining of what art history can be, grounded in the land, cultures, languages and gendered experiences of Aotearoa, the indigenous name for New Zealand. The book is eclectic, ranging from weaving and textile art, to painting, photography, performance, installation, and community-based practice. It is told through the voices of women, tangata whenua and tangata tiriti artists, activists, makers. And it is a beautifully made volume, winner of the PANZ Book Design Awards 2025 . Traditional categories — painter, sculptor, “fine art” — give way to something more fluid: what it means to make, belong, remember. More than an art book, Sight Lines reads like a map of cultural survival, plurality, and becoming. As Western museums wrestle with restitution, as monuments topple or get remade, this book not only interprets colonial legacies but expands our sense of what art history can be."

"A touchstone exhibition of 2025 which this author was lucky enough to visit was the ravishing Nigerian Modernism at the Tate. This richly illustrated exhibition-catalogue (and history) of modern art in Nigeria — tracks the emergence of a visual culture at the intersection of indigenous traditions, colonial history, Pan-Africanist aspirations, and global modernism. Covering roughly 1945–1995 and more than 50 artists, the book presents painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic arts — from early colonial-era works to the bold explorations of independence and post-independence Nigeria. Far from being a purely European export, Modernism was re-interpreted, adapted, challenged and transformed from Lagos to London and beyond. What emerges clearly is how Nigerian visual modernism was a major node in global art history that parallels and enriches the Modernist narrative we are so familiar with. ———————————–"

"Is there anything quite so seductive as a well-conceived technical manual or instruction booklet? This winner of the DAM Architectural Book Award 2025 demonstrates how deeply meaningful — and modern — traditional woodworking can be, and it does so with diagrams that are the epitome of effective communication. The book systematically documents more than 400 traditional wood-joints from across the world, with explanations of wood properties and technical terminology in English, German, Japanese. This is no nostalgic throwback. Precision and clarity of presentation make it obvious that these joinery techniques could once again become relevant, in an era of sustainable building, repairability, and respect for materials. Encyclopedic, elegant, inviting – for anyone who believes in longevity — of buildings, furniture, books — The Joinery Compendium is a reference that reads like a user’s manual for sustainable living."

"In an era of architectural monumentality, celebrity designs and urban gigantism, the Palm Springs School feels like a quiet manifesto in favor of scale, humanity, context. This volume offers a fresh look at the mid-century architectural experiment in California. Sometimes architecture’s power is in subtlety: in the way a flat roof reaches toward sky, or a window frames nothing but light. The deceptively relaxed houses, the interplay of indoor/outdoor, light and shadow, the vernacular modernism that speaks of desert realities and post-war optimism, all of these feel like a laboratory for a life lived well."

"And the most anticipated book of early 2026? For me, it would be Silent Monoliths that feels like a book that will demand a place on my reference shelf. Brouws photographs the vestiges of North America’s steam age: the coaling towers that once powered locomotives, now abandoned, silent, overgrown — ghostly monuments to a bygone era, but somehow commentators on the energy politics of our own age. Don’t mistake this for ‘ruin porn’ or a romanticizing of decay. Instead this book sees these structures as vestiges of an industrial past that shaped landscapes, economies, and human movement. It brings to mind Islands of Abandonment by our very own Cal Flyn, and invites reflection on what we build, what we discard, and how memory lingers in the physical world. —————————————————"

"Design is often treated as surface — packaging, advertising, logos. But this book argues for instinct: the gut-feeling, the immediate emotional effect which good design triggers before we can rationalize it. In exploring branding, logos, spatial design, and more, I Love It! What Is It? reframes design not as decoration, but as communication at its most essential. Every object we grasp, every label we read, every storefront or web-page we scroll through — these use visual intelligence to speak to us, to shape desire, identity, belonging. And of course, coming from publishing house Phaidon, it is a beautiful example of well executed design. In a world saturated by sensory stimuli, this book asks us to pay attention by asking why a design works, what it signals, and what it asks of us."

"Published to coincide with the 2025 exhibition at Palais Galliera in Paris, this retrospective catalog of fashion provocateur Rick Owens is a meditation on identity, body, transformation and desire. For three decades Rick Owens and muse Michéle Lamy have been ringleaders of a fashion freak show that vividly illustrates how design — clothing, materiality, presentation — becomes a means of self-definition, of conceptual provocation. Flowing, diaphanous fabrics sit alongside structured, sharp silhouettes. There is an obsession with form, movement, texture and the unexpected. This is fashion as contemporary art, design as an existential argument, a bold and beautiful statement of living life adventurously. —————————————-"

"Books remain an analog bulwark against the visual slop of artificially generated imagery. Even, or especially, the ‘lowbrow’ category of comics can bring us greater delight than any number of algorithms. Illustration is alive and well. Perhaps the most surprising entry on this list — and the one that reaffirms my faith in graphic novels as a serious artform, is Drome . This is not idle entertainment. The novel’s visuals and narrative combine into a meditation on alienation, memory, identity. And they do so in the most innovative way. The page layouts are astonishing in this epic retelling of human creation myths, with effects that linger in the imagination for its refusal to arrive at any today narrative resolution."

"Finally, a book that reminds us of the power of illustration to re-animate old texts. MinaLima’s edition of Frankenstein adds to the gothic horror of the novel a visual, even tactile richness: hand-lettered pages, design flourishes, and a feeling that every turn of the page is a revelation. In 2025, when many of us read on screens, this volume is a reminder that books continue to matter as physical, carefully designed objects. Which books of 2025 stayed with you for their artistic, visual or design appeal?"

"No survey of art world publications this year is complete without a look at street art and other visual vernacular. As this editor is a surfer too, it’s hard to resist Point Break: Raymond Pettibon, Surfers and Waves in this year’s list. ‘Surf it or paint it,’ is his motto. Pettibon’s surfers are shown confronting the immensity of the ocean alongside words by the artist, or taken from literature in his trademark interplay of word and image. Another offbeat addition is Duke Riley: Tides and Transgressions , a monograph on the Brooklyn-based graphic/performance/tattoo artist and provocateur Duke Riley . For Riley, who lives and works by Manhattan’s many waterfronts, waterways are the conduit to understanding our interwoven history, geography, and ecology; this is a layered study of how politics and culture impact our relationship with water. It’s a recurring theme that is reflected in his tattoo work, scrimshaw, printmaking and performances. This book also revisits his high jinx antics with bathyspheres and waterborne gladiatorial combat. Whimsy of the highest order, with an undercurrent of protest. And, speaking of protest, has there been a more vital time to protest than now? Taking Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ as a touchpoint, A Brief History of Protest Art by Aindrea Emelife traces eight decades of art as political statement, artists at the vanguard of overturning the often-repressive status quo. Human rights in their many forms find visual champions in artists speaking up to galvanise the public against injustice, inequality, and war, and more recently in support of LGBTQ+ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement and climate action. Art too speaks truth to power."

"Digital and analogue realms cross over with ever-greater regularity—life imitates art, which imitates video games , it seems. Making Videogames: The Art of Creating Digital Worlds by Duncan Harris and Alex Wiltshire is a lavishly illustrated overview of interactive entertainment, arguing for the craft that is videogame design. Last month I interviewed Brian Attebery on the many uses of fantasy , the cultural DNA that is at the heart of human worldbuilding and visual storytelling. This book takes a similar view through the prism of the world’s most popular entertainment medium, including some of my favourite electronic pastimes. Yves Saint Laurent Museum Marrakech is yet another gem from the publishing house Phaidon. Taking a single project from start to finish, this architectural book by Pierre Bergé and the architecture practice Studio KO tracks the museum from conception to launch, just after Bergé—Yves Saint Laurent’s partner and collaborator of many years—passed away. The Museum is dedicated to the work of the legendary French fashion designer, featuring Yves Saint Laurent’s vast collection of 5,000 items of clothing, 15,000 haute couture accessories as well thousands of sketches. The museum opened its doors in 2017, and now gets an artful overview including archival photographs, plans and sketches to accompany text by the likes of Catherine Deneuve and other members of their inner circle. The Ruins of Detroit (2010) was a landmark project by French photography duo Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, which alighted on a city of faded splendour before it vanished entirely. Detroit in its entirety has seemed to me like an island of abandonment for much of the recent past—to reference the ever-so-apt title of my colleague Cal Flyn’s excellent book on the culture of contemporary ruins. In Movie Theaters , they now return to capture the ruins of cinemas all across America. Those with an eye for architecture will find everything here: gothic to art nouveau, modernism to post-modernism, via the Byzantine and the Bauhaus. Last call for this late-nite screening of late capitalist splendour! Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . This editor has long believed that the accomplishments of a civilisation, or at least a city, are best judged by the quality of its public spaces. Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times architecture editor, would appear to agree if his new book On The Street: In Between Architecture is anything to go by. Street furniture can amount to a municipal signature, the public infrastructure that situates citizens in public space. This book spans London, New York , Paris and Budapest, but satellite editions extending to other cities would provide a fascinating architectural and anthropological survey of how we live collectively. Much architectural writing has focused on the ‘starchitect’ and their dazzling creations; I love that this book looks at the humble nuts and bolts that make cities more or less functional as living spaces."

"And to what extent is the consumer mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” infiltrating the mindset of those responsible for our built environment? Building for Change , edited by Dr. Ruth Lang, resents an optimistic survey, including waste repurposed as building material, the latest in modular design and spatial innovation in a beautifully illustrated argument for the virtues of working with what we’ve got. Constraints are creativity, and these can include not merely the history of a place but its very fabric, its blemishes and beauty marks. The powerful argument made here—with ample visual evidence, is that there is simply no excuse for demolition. Photographers are the scribes that record and relate what might otherwise escape our fleeting, distracted glances. Here’s a selection of photography books published in 2022 that are keepers: “Free as they want to be”: Artists Committed to Memory , edited by Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis, considers photography’s role in tracing the legacy of slavery and its aftermath in Black America. Inspired by the words of James Baldwin , this collection of work by twenty photographers and others working in video, silkscreen, projection and mixed-media asks: What is freedom? What does it mean for you? Equal parts documentation and exploration, this eloquent journey in the struggle for racial justice and equality celebrates endurance and empowerment."

"“Masterpiece for masterpiece, the Frick is the best small museum in the United States for western painting before 1900…. Empowered by its new setting, work once considered frivolous becomes visual thunder.” There’s no quarrel with Pulitzer prize-winning art critic Jerry Salz’ s assessment of the Frick’s collection, only impatience to visit the Frick’s new digs . That the Gilded Age founder was a vicious robber baron exemplifies the many contradictions that we’ve inherited with our art spaces into the 21st century. We can still marvel at the masterpieces even as we question their provenance and original purpose as capitalist trophies. Can’t we? Unable to visit in person, I’ll console myself with this superlative collection of essays about the masterworks at the Frick. It’s no surprise that two of the finest art critics – Salz and the poet Peter Schjeldahl – live in New York , my old home town, nor that they share a love for this institution, so dear for being so idiosyncratic. “More than one contributor to The Sleeve Should Be Illegal invokes a sensation of walking on air after a visit to the Frick, a payoff of renewed faith in the powers of art and a forgivable pride in our own perhaps untrained and underused capacities to comprehend the aesthetic and spiritual stakes of a timeless game.” This beautifully produced book includes 61 reflections on the Frick’s collection, which holds masterpieces by some of the most celebrated artists in the Western tradition―among them Bellini, Gainsborough, Goya, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Whistler. Other books about museums that I’ve added to my reference library include Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes , a look at the thorny issues of provenance and restitution, and the subject of a forthcoming Five Books interview. Watch this space."

"Right up to our present day, art history has been mostly written by white men admiring or analysing the work of other white men. In parallel, women have continued to produce art – with the odds so often stacked against them, be they social, religious or economic. The Mirror and the Palette relates the stories of women artists who show us the many ways that art is made and looked at. Through the lens of the self-portrait and over the span of five centuries, Jennifer Higgie weaves art history and biography into a compelling narrative to celebrate women whose creative expression bears witness to the courage and resilience with which they lived their lives. “Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available.” Other best art books 2021 that I’ve added to my reference library include Hilma Af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer , available in English for the first time since its original publication by Åke Fant in 1989; Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon , by the artist who maintains that ‘beauty is a basic service’; and the catalog from Jennifer Packer’s show at the Serpentine Gallery in London, The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing . Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."

"Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal were this year’s winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize . Through their design of private and social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces, and urban developments, Lacaton and Vassal “reexamine sustainability in their reverence for pre-existing structures, conceiving projects by first taking inventory of what already exists”, in the words of the jury. Architecture , and by extension architects, have tremendous influence in defining the way we live, work, and interact individually and collectively. As we’ve discussed elsewhere on Five Books, architecture is in some ways the very social process through which our collective priorities take shape in the built environment. What about the collective priority of environmental consciousness? Construction is on the front lines of climate concern. Buildings today generate nearly forty percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In this book – field guide, manifesto and call to action – the architectural practice Space Caviar invites us to consider what kind of architecture will be born once its primary purpose is serving communities and not capital accumulation? “The first step architects can take towards a more just, harmonious, and non-exploitative designed environment is to redesign themselves, and what the word ‘architect’ stands for.” Another book about architecture that I’ve added to my ‘best art books 2021’ reference library include this thoughtful dialogue between architect and artist, David Adjaye, Adam Pendleton . Get the weekly Five Books newsletter"

"Architects wear black. This seems to be a given, and has been addressed in the literature about the profession. Similar quantities of ink have been spilled on the subject of artists’ studios. Only this year, however, do we have an assessment of how and why artists dress as they do. In What Artists Wear, style luminary Charlie Porter gives us a written catwalk of outfits worn by artists, in the studio, on stage, at work, at home and at play. There are iconic looks that will be familiar to even casual observers: Andy Warhol’s signature denim , Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots . And there are the more subtle style signifiers like Georgia O’Keefe’s prairie minimalism or Yves Klein’s impeccable tailoring . “Part love letter, part guide to chic, and featuring generous photographic spreads, What Artists Wear is both a manual and a manifesto, a radical, gleeful, inspiration to see the world anew-and find greater pleasure and possibility in the clothes we all wear…. Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity.” Other books about fashion and design that I’ve added to my ‘best art books 2021’ reference library include: Woman Made , the most comprehensive illustrated manual to women in design to date; and No Compromise: The Work of Florence Knoll, who was responsible for so many design hallmarks of the modern era."

"If one were to have a single volume of photography for one’s reference shelf dedicated to the twentieth century, this one might be it. In 2001, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired an unprecedented survey of modern photography from longtime collector Thomas Walther, who amassed one of the most impressive private collections of photography in the world. Focused on the era between the two World Wars, a time of experimentation and movements such as pictorialism, abstraction and candid street photography, this was a moment in image-making that set the stage for modernism. Throughout the history of the medium, photography books played a rather under-appreciated role, but their value has been increasingly recognised. Inundated with ever more digital imagery, as all of us have become content producers while corporations harvest our IP. Yet no matter the extent of the proliferation of photos, some images remain seared on the imagination, a retinal after-image on the mind’s eye. Among the pieces included in this clothbound volume are some of the definitive examples of the medium: Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, John Gutmann, André Kertész, Alexander Rodchenko, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Edward Weston. Other photography books I’ve added to my ‘best art books 2021’ reference shelf this year include the beautiful documentary fairy tale The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams by Argentine photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti; American Protest: Photographs 2020–2021 , an urgent look at our troubled times by Mel D. Cole; Lee Friedlander , an American master; and rare photographic glimpses by celebrated cinematographer Roger Deakins, Byways . Part of our best books of 2021 series."