Summer reading enters its final stretch as 6 exciting new books hit the shelves in August (if you don’t count my own!).
This month’s offerings span the centuries, moving from Renaissance theories of vision to contemporary debates over morality, inequality, and the future of art.
A new biography explores the secret lives of John Singer Sargent, the queer Gilded Age society painter whose dazzling surfaces concealed a more guarded inner world. A manifesto by the artist collective Metahaven asks about the changing role of art as AI wreaks havoc on our attention span and climate change dampens our capacity to imagine a future. Journalist Hettie Judah guides readers through the opaque creature that is the art world, offering practical advice while puncturing a few of its more stubborn myths.
Meanwhile, Daisy Dixon’s Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art blends history and philosophy to explore a subject as timely as it is timeless, tracing anxieties around obscenity, taste, and public offense back to prehistoric art.
Whether you’re working in your last beach reads, looking for smart company on a long plane ride, or studying up for a September syllabus, we’ve got the latest and greatest listed for you below.
Happy reading!
