Gift to Open Again and Again

Sargent and the Sea

edited by Sarah Cash, with essays by Stephanie L. Herdrich, Erica E. Hirshler, Richard Ormond, and Marc Simpson; Corcoran Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 170 pages, 130 illustrations, $50.

Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture

edited by Gary M. Radke, with contributions by Martin Kemp, Pietro C. Marani, Andrea Bernardoni, Darin J. Stine, Philippe Sénéchal, and Tommaso Mozzati; High Museum of Art/J. Paul Getty Museum/Yale University Press, 216 pages, 210 illustrations, $50.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction

edited by Barbara Haskell, with essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes, Bruce Robertson, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner; Whitney Museum of American Art/The Phillips Collection/Georgia O’Keefe Museum/Yale University Press, 246 pages, 228 illustrations, $65.

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective

edited by Michael R. Taylor, with essays by Harry Cooper, Jody Patterson, Robert Storr, Michael R. Taylor, and Kim Servart Theriault; Philadelphia Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 400 pages, 334 illustrations, $65.

The really outstanding art books in recent years have been monographs issued in conjunction with major exhibitions mounted at museums throughout the world, a good number of them produced with Yale University Press, which by common consent has emerged as one of the leading publishers of art books in the world. This year’s crop is particularly rich. The exhibition of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) at the Corcoran in Washington takes special note of the great American artist’s passion for ships and seafaring. The Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) show now at the High Museum in Atlanta focuses on the master’s influence on sculpture, an especially interesting concept, since none of his sculptures have survived to our day. Long overlooked, the abstractions of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) get their just due in an exhibition mounted jointly by the Whitney Museum in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And the retrospective for Arshile Gorky (1902-1948), beginning its tour of three museums in Philadelphia (the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles follow in 2010) traces the evolution of the artist’s visual style in the early years of the twentieth century. All in all, a feast for art lovers.

Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber

edited by Robert Polito; The Library of America, 1,000 pages, $40.

Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing

edited by Ilan Stavans; The Library of America, 748 pages, $40.

Looking for a stocking stuffer? You can’t miss with either of these selections from the Library of America, which for more than a quarter-of-a-century has been documenting our national literary heritage with taste and style. Manny Farber (1917-2008) was a prolific critic whose film reviews and features for the New Republic and Nation of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s are regarded as classics of the genre, jewels of composition that were performances unto themselves, all of them collected for the first time in Farber on Film, and a treat for film buffs. Becoming Americans is an anthology of writings produced by 80 authors from every reach of the globe over the past 400 years, all of them writing about the experience of coming to this country, and “becoming American.” The writers range from Phillis Wheatley and John James Audubon to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, W. H. Auden, Henry Roth, Anita Desai, Jamaica Kincaid, and Frank McCourt. Great stuff.

White Noise

by David A. Carter; Simon & Schuster, 20 pages, $22.95.

The recommended age for this book—the fifth and final installment in master paper engineer David A. Carter’s series of remarkable books of kinetic sculptures centered on the twin themes of color and structure—is 3 and up; all well and good, the kids certainly will love this satisfying denouement to a brilliant concept, but there are many thousands of adults among us who will happily add it to their shelves as well. Carter is easily one of the very tops in the field—right up there, in my estimation, with Robert Sabuda in both imagination and execution—and this elegant creation (which invites the reader to find the source of sound in each structure) reaffirms his place in the wonderful world of pop-up books; for collectors of these wonderful marvels, a keeper for sure.

Nicholas A. Basbanes recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to work on his book on paper, which is forthcoming from Knopf. His most recent book is Editions & Impressions, a collection of essays. His other works include the acclaimed A Gentle Madness, Every Book Its Reader, Patience & Fortitude, Among the Gently Mad, and A Splendor of Letters.