Your Recommendations!

At Art History Society, we think it’s really important to keep everyone’s initial love for art alive (whether you study it or not), which is why we’ve created this collective, updateable recommendation list for you to get inspiration from! This database is completely academia-free, so it’s not like your uni reading list! Instead, take a look and browse through books (both fictional and factual), films, documentaries, and podcasts that relate to the discipline of art history, and get inspired!

FICTION BOOKS

Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1999

Susan Vreeland, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, 1999

Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, 1995

Jessie Burton, The Muse, 2016

NON-FICTION BOOKS

Lisa Slominski, Noncomformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists, 2022

Alice Procter, The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of Art in Our Museums and Why We Need to Talk About It, 2020

Clare Barlow, Queer British Art 1867-1967, 2017

The Vanishing Man by Laura Cumming

Caravaggio A Life sacred and profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Women in the picture by Catherine McCormark

Van Gogh’s Ear The true story by Bernadette Murphy

The World According to Colour A culture History by James Fox

The Illustrated letters and diaries of the Pre-Raphaelites by Jan Marsh

AUDIOBOOKS

Leonardo Da vinci – by Walter Isaacson – narrated by Alfred Molina

Art is Life – by Jerry Saltz – narrated by author & Mark Bramhall

Michelangelo, God’s Architect – by William E Wallace – Narrated by Simon Callow

Adolfo Kaminsky – By Sarah Kaminsky, Mike Mitchell – Narrated by Simon Vance

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of being Alone – By Olivia Laing – Narrated by Zara Ramm

FILMS/TELEVISION SERIES

Genius: Picasso  

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6812028/

Desperate romantics

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1346018/

The Last Vermeer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8337320/

Julie Taymor, Frida, 2003

Dorota Korbiela and Hugh Welchman, Loving Vincent, 2017

Woman in Gold

DOCUMENTARIES

James House, Queer as Art, 2017

Matthew Akers, Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, 2012

Jeffrey Dupre, Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace, 2014

Wu Tsang, Wildness, 2012

PODCASTS

ArtHoles by Michael Anthony

ArtCurious by Jennifer Dasal

Katy Hessel, The Great Women Artists Podcast, 2019

Russell Tovey and Robert Diament, Talk Art, 2018

The Art Newspaper, The Week in Art

WEBSITES/NEWSPAPERS

The Art Newspaper

SCENE – York Vision