Book of the Year

Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530–1830
Steven Brindle
Paul Mellon Centre for British Art

Brindle is not the first to regard the Reformation as a cultural catastrophe; his book charts how Britain recovered from the destruction of the crafts system – and how the figure of the architect came into being. Brindle’s desire to write an account that pays more attention to craft than art history puts him in conscious opposition to some of his illustrious predecessors, but the resulting survey complements rather than contradicts the likes of Summerson.

Melancholy Wedgwood
Iris Moon
MIT Press

In a typically original book, billed as an experimental biography, Moon, a decorative arts curator at the Met, examines the various strands of Josiah Wedgwood’s career – as ceramicist, entrepreneur and abolitionist – and tries to unpick them. The book pays particular attention to aspects of Wedgwood’s life that fit less neatly into his status as an industrial titan and presents an alternative history of the 18th century.

The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art
Susan Owens
Yale University Press

Owens’s survey covers 13,000 years of art chronologically, covering the usual, great suspects (Michelangelo, Leonardo). So far, so conventional. What justifies the subtitle is the expansion of the idea of drawing to take in land art, such as the White Horse of Uffington, and the book’s global scope. It is is a history of materials as well as of style, taking in developments in paper-making and implements.

Otti Berger: Weaving for Modernist Architecture
ed. Judith Raum
Hatje Cantz/Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

The Bauhaus-trained Berger isn’t as well known as her contemporary Anni Albers, but this book establishes her as one of the 20th century’s most important textile designers. Raum explores how Berger changed notions of what fabrics could be used for in modern interiors – as upholstery, curtains or wall coverings – and worked with the most advanced German architects of the time, such as Ludwig Hilberseimer and Hans Scharoun.

All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art
Orlando Whitfield
Profile Books

When the art dealer Inigo Philbrick went on the run, suspected of defrauding his clients, the person he called from his South Pacific hideout was his friend and former colleague Orlando Whitfield. In this thoughtful memoir and account of his fraudster friend, Whitfield tells a cautionary tale about how Philbrick was able to commit his crimes and what that says about the contemporary art world.

The Embedded Portrait: Giotto, Giottino, Angelico
Christopher S. Wood
Princeton University Press

In another stimulating, scholarly book, Wood takes Giottino’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ as a starting point for discussing portraits of donors in sacred scenes. For Wood, the presence of these particular patrons is a turning point for religious art; he deploys wide iconographical learning to show what it signalled for subsequent artists and their relations with patrons – and what viewers might make of such scenes.

The Shortlists | Artist of the Year | Museum Opening of the Year | Exhibition of the Year | Digital Innovation of the Year | Acquisition of the Year