READING LIST #01

a commentated bibliography

Reading list #01

Welcome to the first Imaginarium reading list, or maybe commentated bibliography ? Where I just give you some of the non-fiction books about art history, culture and history that I love and and that I want to share with you. These are ranging on various topics, from books that I consider seminal to have a good understanding of art history, or simply because I enjoyed reading them.  I still continue to love fiction, however through the years reading good nonfiction is, in my opinion, as satisfying to me as reading a good novel. I hope you like those recs, and please do keep me updated if you read any of them ! 

1. Ways of Seeing, John Berger : A work that I consider absolutely essential as a starting point for analysis in art history. John Berger, an art historian, a theorist and a novelist whose art history practice is grounded in empathy and a fierce desire for justice. In this book, and the BBC mini-series it was based on, he explains art history and the way we relate to it in. The act of looking and seeing is a primordial one when it comes to understanding art, after all the point of view through which  we see that art will absolutely transform the way we comprehend it.  This book is a really good starting point, in my opinion, for artistic analysis, with important parallels with the modern world of advertising, and the way that the simple act of seeing and understanding it, is paramount in our contemporary words where images dominate the media.

   

    

2. Pastimes and Pleasures in the Times of Jane Austen : a short book that investigates the way the British were spending their times during the Regency, from opera to the races, it outlines a very different portrait of the leisures of the era that we might have from books and movies of the epoch, and puts forward the less genteel ways in which people were diverting themselves during that time, in a concise and yet still very informative manner, it is a good complement of knowledge for people who are interesting in the regency era.

   

    

3. The Whole Picture : the colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about it. This book is another one that I think is an incredibly important read as the culture reckons with the way the museums and cultural establishments are based on a colonial history and the way that history very much is still alive and influencing our understanding of our history and of the art that is being displayed. It is an essential read, in my opinion, to really understand and unravel the current issues of decolonizing artistic and cultural institutions, and why museums need to assess their current place within society and culture, and to evolve in a way that reflects our current mindset about museums, colonialism and history.

   

    

4. The Modern Girl Around the World : Consumption, Modernity and Globalization. This book was one of my main sources for S3E01, The Modern Girl Through Art, and it is truly a wonderful work of research about the topics of womanhood, art, advertising and materialism, and all with the focus that goes outwards of the usual western-centric understanding of modernity, to explore the evolution of this archetype and the way it declined itself in various geographical and sociopolitical context. It delves into the way womanhood and the modern woman were understood in society, as well as the how that concept shaped women’s understanding of themselves and how women have, in turn, shaped and constructed the archetype.This book explores several fields of study, from art, literature, history and cultural studies to bring a truly detailed examination of the emerging New Woman of the 1920s.

   

    

5. How to Do Nothing : Resisting the Attention Economy, this is a book I have talked about with Frank from the The Left Page podcast a couple of years ago, and is still a book that I have to come back to every now and then as the overslaught of « content » and media and just so many things to consume, and I think it can overwhelms the mind, and sometimes genuinely brings me a lot of stress. This book delves into the way our attention and minds are constantly being monopolised by the fast pace of media,  there is constantly something new to watch, and and social media to scroll through and so many things happening at all times, that there is a definite need sometimes to step out of that ceaseless rhythm, and to just be.  To take the time to do nothing, an activity that I think few of us know how to do anymore, can be a purposeful act of resistance in a society where there is constant pressure for constant productivity, upwards growth and development.