Suggested Readings
This book list is a select biography by Paul Rand, originally published in “From Lascaux to Brooklyn”. It covers a range of topics and is a great list for any creative professional looking for more inspiration and exploration into art and theory.
This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but one that will provide endless discussion and learning.
-
General Art Theory and Philosophy
The Use and Abuse of Art
Jacques Barzun
Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism
Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present
Monroe C. Beardsley
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
Harold Bloom
A History of Aesthetic
Bernard Bosanquet
Philosophies of Beauty
E.F. Carritt
The Principles of Art
R.G. Collingwood
A Companion to Aesthetics
David Cooper
Aesthetic.
Benedetto Croce
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix
Eugene Delacroix
Art as Experience
John Dewey
A Dictionary of Philosophy
Anthony Flew
Vision and Design
Roger Fry
The Philosophy of Art
Giovanni Gentile
Painting and Reality
Etienne Gilson
Language of Art
Nelson Goodman
System and Dialects of Art
John D. Graham
The Art and the Art of Criticism
Theodore M. Greene
Form and Function: Remarks on Art
Horatio Greenough
Art in Theory
P. Wood/C. Harrison
The Philosophy of Fine Arts
G.W.F. Hegel
Das Problem Der Form
Adolf Hildebrand
Introductory Readings in Aesthetics
John Hospers
Decline of the New
The Idea of the Modern in Literature and the Arts
Irving Howe
Homo Ludens
Johan Huizinga
Guide to Philosophy
Cyril E. Joad
Art and Freedom
Horace Kallen
Studies in Ancient American and European Art
George Kubler
Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures
Susanne Langer
Museum Without Walls
The Voices of Silence
Andre Malraux
The Meaning of Meaning
I.A. Richards/C. Ogden
The Meaning in Visual Arts
Erwin Panofsky
The Demands of Art
Max Raphael
Principle of Literary Criticism
I.A. Richards
The De-definition of Art
Harold Rosenberg
Theory and Philosophy of Art
Meyer Schapiro
Against the Interpretation and Other Essays
Susan Sontag
The Art of Thought
Graham Wallas
Axel’s Castle
Edmund Wilson
The Art of the Italian Renaissance
Principles of Art History
Renaissance and Baroque
The Sense of Form in Art
Heinrich Wolfflin
Abstraction and Empathy
Wilhelm Worringer
The Essential Kant
Arnulf Zweig
-
Modern Art History and Movements
Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews
G. Apollinaire
Futurist Manifestos
Umbro Apollonio
Cubism and Abstract Art
Alfred Barr
The Mirror of Art
Charles Baudelaire
Art
Clive Bell
Modernism, 1890-1930
J. McFarlance/M. Bradbury
Theories of Modern Art
H.B. Chipp
The Cubist Epoch
Douglas Cooper
Modern Art and Modernism
C. Harrison/F. Frascina
This is Not a Pipe
Michel Foucault
Progress in Art
Suzi Gablik
Visions of the Modern
John Golding
The Great Experiment: Russian Art
Camilla Gray
19th and 20th Century Art
George H. Hamilton
The Social History of Art
Arnold Hauser
Modern Artists on Art
Robert L. Herbert
De Stijl: 1917-1931
Hans L.C. Jaffe
Modern Art and the Object
Ellen H. Johnson
Modern Times
Paul Johnson
The Dada Painters and Poets
F. Marc/W. Kandinsky
Dadaism and Futurism
Max Kozloff
The Symbolist Aesthetic in France. 1885-1895.
A.G. Lehmann
Ulm Design: The Morality of Objects
Herbert Lindinger
Wallace Stevens and Modern Art
Glen McLeod
The Dada Painters and Poets
Robert Motherwell
Foundations of Modern Art
Amedee Ozenfant
The History of Impressionism
Post Impressionism
John Rewald
Concepts of Modern Art
N. Stagnos/A. Richardson
A History of the Modern Movement
Kurt Rowland
Modern Art, 19th and 20th Century
Nature of Abstract Art
Meyer Schapiro
Wiener Werkstaette, Design in Vienna
J. Werner Schweiger
The Banquet Years
Roger Shattuck
Skyscraper Primitives
Dickran Tashjian
Art After Modernism
Brian Wallis
The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago
Hans M. Wingler
-
Typography and Design
William Caslon: 1693-1766
Johnson Ball
Postscripts on Dwiggins. Essays and Recollections
Paul A. Bennett
Line and Form
Walter Crane
Visual Language
P. Thompson/P. Davenport
Practice of Typography: Correct Composition
Theodore De Vinne
Layout in Advertising
William A. Dwiggins
Typographie
Ottl Eicher
The New Graphic Design
M. Kutter/K. Gersner
An Essay on Typography
Eric Gill
Graphic Design
Milton Glaser
Seymour Chwast, The Left Handed Designer
Steven Heller
Graphic Design Manual
Armin Hofmann
American Alphabets
Paul Hollister
The Printer’s Terms
Rudolf Hostettler
Graphic Design
Werner Jeker
Writing and Illuminating and Lettering
Edward Johnston
The Art of the Poster
E. McKnight Kauffer
The Place, the Times and the Point
Uwe Loesch
The Art of Advertising
George Lois
Eric Gill
William Morris
Fiona MacCarthy
Typographers on Type
Ruari McLean
The Function of Esthetic Research
Enzo Mari
A History of Graphic Design
Philip Meggs
Graphic Design, Mendell & Oberer
Pierre Mendell
Letterforms. Typography and Scriptorial
On Type Design: Past and Present
Stanley Morrison
A.M. Cassandre
Henri Mouron
The Graphic Designer and His Design Problems
Joseph Muller-Brockman
Graphic Design
R. Tissi/S. Odermatt
Max Huber
Carlo Pirovano
Images sans Paroles
Gunther Rambow
Advertisement: Ad Vivum, Ad Hominum?
Paul Rand
Die Kunst der Typographie
Paul Renner
A Theory of Pure Design
Denman W. Ross
Typography
Emil Ruder
Basic Typography: Design with Letters
Ruedi Ruegg
Visuelle Kommunication: Ein Design-Handbuch
Anton Stankowski
Bruno Munari: Design as Art
Aldo Tanchis
Designing Books
The New Typography
Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering
Jan Tschichold
Printing Types
Daniel B. Updike
Design
Massimo Vignelli
Typographer and Designer
Wolfgang Weignart
Henryk Tomaszewski
Stanislaw Wieczorek
Ein Areitsbericht
Hermann Zapf
-
General, Sociology
Flatland. A Romance of MAny Dimensions
Edwin A. Abbott
Art and Visual Perception
Entropy & Art
New Essays on the Psychology of Art
The Power of the Center
Toward a Psychology of Art
Visual Thinking
Rudolf Arnheim
The Art in Painting
Albert C. Barnes
Begin Here
A Stroll with William James
Jacques Barzun
Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Daniel Bell
Aspects of Language
D.A. Sears/ D. Bolinger
The Beautiful Necessity
Claude Bragdon
All Consuming Images
Stuart Ewen
Objects of Desire: Design and Society
Adrian Forty
Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing
The Intelligent Eye
Richard L. Gregory
On Looking into the Abyss
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Culture of Complaint
Nothing if Not Critical
Robert Hughes
The Painter’s Eye
Henry James
Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth
William James
Tenured Radicals
Roger Kimball
Gestalt Psychology
Franz Koffka
Beer Can by the Highway
Made in America
John A. Kouwenhoven
The Age of the Avant-Garde
Hilton Kramer
Signs of the Times
David Lehman
The Age of Missing Information
Bill McKibben
The Book of Tea
Kakuzo Okakura
The Evolution of Useful Things
The Pencil
Henry Petroski
Amusing Ourselves to Death
The Disappearance of Childhood
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Neil Postman
Design for Escape
I.A. Richards
246 Little Clouds
Dieter Roth
Readings in Art History
Harold Spencer
Elements of Style
E.B. White/W. Jr. Strunk
Productive Thinking
Max Wertheimer
Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
Born Under Saturn
The Divine Michelangelo
Gothic Versus Classic
Idea and Image: Studies in Italian Renaissance
Palladino and Palladionism
Rudolf Wittkower
On Writing Well
William Zinsser
-
Art Biographies and Monographs
The Art of Cezanne
Karl Badt
Theo Van Doesburg
Joost Baljeu
Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complete
W. Boesiger
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp
Pierre Cabanne
Dubuffet
Andreas Franzke
Cezanne: A Study of His Development
Roger Fry
Magritte
Suzi Gablik
Life with Picasso
C. Lake/ F. Gilot
Brodovitch
Andy Grundberg
Gauguin
Rene Huyghe
Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture
Charles Jencks
Juan Gris
Daniel Kahnweiler
Point and Line to Plane
Wassily Kandinsky
The Paul Klee Notebooks, Vol 2: The Nature of Nature
Paul Klee
Functions of Painting
Fernand Leger
El Lissitzky
Sophie Lissitzky-Kuppers
Cezanne’s Compositions
Erle Loren
William Morris
Fiona MacCarthy
Essays on Art, 3 vols.
The Non-Objective World
Kasimir Malevich
Select Writings
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
A Throw of the Dice: Life of Stephane Mallarme
Gordon Millan
Degas, The Artist’s Mind
Theodore Reff
Cezanne: A Biography
Cezanne Letters
John Rewald
Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art
William Rubin
Kurt Schwitters
Werner Schmalenbach
Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography
Franz Schulze
Mondrian
Michel Seuphor
Max Ernst, Loplop
Werner Spies
William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary
Edward P. Thompson
Magritte: Ideas and Images
Harry Torczyner
Principles of Neo-Plastic Art
Theodore Van Doesburg
Van Gogh Letters
Vincent Van Gogh
Giorgio Morandi
Lamberto Vitali
John Dewey and American Democracy
Robert B. Westbrook
The Masterpiece
Emile Zola
-
Architecture
Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Christopher Alexander
The Dynamics of Architectural Form
Rudolf Arnheim
Adolf Loos: Theory and Works
Benedetto Gravagnuolo
The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning
The Modulor 1 and Modulor 2
Towards a New Architecture
Le Corbusier
Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings
Edward S. Morse
Katsura, A Princely Retreat
Akira Naito
Shaker Built
J. Sprigg/P. Rocheleau
Houses and People of Japan
Bruno Taut
-
Design History and Theory
Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
R. Banham
Space, Time, and Architecture
Sigfried Giedion
The Image and the Eye
In Search of Cultural History
Meditations on a Hobby Horse
The Sense of Order
Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition
E.H. Gombrich
The Language of Vision
Gyorgy Kepes
Art: The Revealing Experience
Kurt Kranz
The New Vision
Vision in Motion
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Technics and Civilization
Lewis Mumford
Design for the Real World
Victor Papanek
-
Geometry and Design
The Painter’s Geometry
Charles Bouleau
The Golden Number
Miloutine Borissavlievitch
Space in Medieval Painting
Miriam Schild Bunim
The Geometry of Art and Life
Matela Ghyka
Art & Geometry
William M. Ivins
The Theory of Proportion in Architecture
P.H. Scholfield
The Ten Books on Architecture
Vitruvius
Symmetry
Herman Weyl
Systems of Proportion
Rudolf Wittkower
-
Film
Film as Art
Rudolf Arnheim
Film Essays
Film Form: Essays in Film Theory
The Film Sense
Sergei Eisenstein
Powered by ExpressionEngine