Thursday's Three on Art

Today, Thursday's Three spotlights a trio of new or forthcoming art books, all from Thames & Hudson.

✭ Well-known art critic and editor Nancy Princenthal has written a biography of abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), titled Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (June 16, 2015). The book includes 38 illustrations, 33 of which are in color.

Spring 2015 Critic-in-Residence at Maryland Institute College of Art, Princenthal also is a co-author of After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art (Prestel, Revised/Expanded, 2013) and of Nancy Rubins: Drawing, Sculpture, Studies (Prestel, 2014).

Read Arne Glimcher's interview about Agnes Martin and Prudence Peiffer's BookForum review of Princenthal's book.

Note: A retrospective of Martin's work is on view through October 11 at Tate Modern. Read "Agnes Martin, Tate Modern, review: 'immaculate'" at The Telegraph.

✭ Due out June 23 is the essay anthology Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, edited by New York-based curator and writer Maura Reilly and featuring 29 essays by feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, famous for her 1971 piece "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Among the artists who are subjects of Nochlin's essays are Mary Cassatt, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Miwa Yanagi, and Sophie Calle. An interview with Nochlin is included in the collection, along with 247 illustrations.

Read Maura Reilly's essay "Linda Nochlin on Feminism Then and Now", ArtNews, June 2015 (pdf).

✭ This fall, in October, John Hanhardt's Bill Viola will be published (it is available now as a pre-order). Edited by Kira Perov, the book is the first monograph to examine Viola's entire career, from earliest major films to recent installations around the world, including the 2014 Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), commissioned for St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Hanhardt, consulting senior curator for film and media arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, looks at the visual, literary, and spiritual influences in Viola's work and technology's influence. Reproductions of Viola's sketches and notebooks are among the 450 illustrations, of which 250 are in color.

Bill Viola Website

St. Paul's Cathedral Page for Martyrs (A video is available at the page titled Martyrs in Context.)