soon new art books, from African art and Bernini to self-taught artists and Franz Kafka

Constantin Pétridis, The language of beauty in African art, Art Institute of Chicago, 368pp, 315 colors + 30 black and white illustrations, £ 50 / € 57.50 / $ 65 (hb), March 8

Published to accompany the exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the Art Institute of Chicago, this groundbreaking book reconsiders Western appraisals of traditional African works of art, focusing on the judgments and vocabularies of communities that created and used them. .

Livio Pestilli, Bernini and his world: sculpture and sculptors in modern Rome, Lund Humphries, 288pp, 140 colors + 27 black and white illustrations, £ 60 (hb), March 21

The art, life and world of Gian Lorenzo Bernini can be like well tilled land. But through six unusual perspectives, from “Clothes” to “Tall Tales,” Livio Pestilli, a former principal of Trinity College in Rome, aims to re-present and illuminate this Leviathan of Roman Baroque.

Lisa Slominski, Mavericks: a new history of self-taught artists, Yale University Press, 400pp, 300 color illustrations, £ 35 / € 40 / $ 45 (hb), March 22

Global and historical in scope to contemporary, this richly illustrated volume examines the work of “self-taught” creators beyond the cultural establishment – AKA “foreign” art – and how it has been valued since the early 20th century. century. Black American folk art and French art brut are among the test subjects.

Françoise Spalding, The real and the romantic: English art between two world wars, Thames & Hudson, 384 pages, 100 illustrations, £ 35 / $ 50 (hb), May 26

Finding a balance between the ‘real’ or the authentic and the ‘romantic’ – often seen as nostalgia – is Frances Spalding’s goal in her new study of a generation.
English artists: famous Stanley Spencer and Eric Ravilious,
to those largely ignored until recently, including Winifred Knights and Evelyn Dunbar.

Andreas Kilcher, dir., With Pavel Schmidt; essays by Judith Butler and Andreas Kilcher; trans Kurt Beals, Franz Kafka: the drawings, Yale University Press, 368 pages, 240 color illustrations, £ 35 / $ 50 (hb), May 31

In 2019, hundreds of previously unknown drawings by Kafka were unearthed in a private collection, rebalancing the importance of art in the life of the famous writer. Extensively illustrated, this publication, now in English, assesses Kafka’s known designs alongside this wealth of new materials.