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9 Stylish New Art and Design Books to Add to Your Library
From an enigmatic couturier’s late-career highlights to glimpses inside a Brazilian design icon’s joyful interiors, these new arrivals are sure to elevate your bookcase
Sig Bergamin: Eclectic. Photo: Courtesy of Assouline
1. Sig Bergamin: Eclectic (Assouline)
A favored designer among Brazil’s high society, Sig Bergamin is celebrated for interiors that expertly meld color, pattern, and his curatorial eye for vibrant art and collectible design in the spirit of his home country. His eclectic panache comes to light in the lavishly illustrated volume Eclectic that, much like his interiors, overflows with warmth, humor, and energy. With a foreword by art and design dealer Ralph Pucci, the book features a multitude of never-before-seen properties around the world emblematic of his signature style, from stylish pieds-à-terre and idyllic countryside mansions to Bergamin’s own home that all revel in joyful, unexpected moments.
The National Gallery. Paintings, People, Portraits. Photo: Courtesy of Taschen
2. The National Gallery. Paintings, People, Portraits (Taschen)
A bastion of artistic treasures that has been enjoyed by millions since 1824, London’s National Gallery has borne witness to innumerable creative trends and reminds that art transcends aesthetics, rather serving as a repository of human experience. The same applies to this splendid tome recounting the story of 700 years of art history through a selection of more than 200 works from the collection. Not only is there a visual feast through centuries of painting in the Western European tradition, but photographic portraits of 25 leading cultural figures—Kim Jones, Ai Weiwei, Rachel Whiteread, Annabelle Selldorf—alongside their favorite masterworks offer fresh new insights into the classics and how they continue to shape creative sensibilities today.
Yves Saint Laurent: Inside Out. Photo: Courtesy of Thames & Hudson
3. Yves Saint Laurent: Inside Out (Thames & Hudson)
This lavish volume pulls back the curtain on the sumptuous latter phase of Yves Saint Laurent’s illustrious career from 1989 to his final collection in 2002, chronicling such rarely seen moments as intimate drawings, studio fittings, and the whirlwind of his runways. They particularly shine thanks to photographer Carlos Muñoz-Yagüe—his mother, Anne-Marie Muñoz, managed the house’s design studio for more than four decades—who captures snapshots of one of history’s most enigmatic couturiers immersed in his creative cycle. “I want to show the work of the hand,” Muñoz-Yagüe says, “the hand that draws, but also the hand that sews, the magic of the men and women who helped make these now-legendary fashion collections a reality.”
Made by MSCHF. Photo: Courtesy of Phaidon
4. Made by MSCHF (Phaidon)
The Brooklyn art collective MSCHF is perhaps best known for their shoes—Satan-themed sneakers, cartoonishly clunky red boots—and subversive art-world stunts like purchasing a Damien Hirst Spot print, cutting out each spot, and selling each individually. The group’s cheeky meditations on contemporary culture were recently the subject of an exhibition at Seoul’s Daelim Museum and now star in a comprehensive book that explores their operating principles, creative evolution, and most notable art-world troublemaking. Through the lens of 12 such projects, their inner workings and internal handbook slowly reveal themselves: core tenets like “always punch something, never punch down” and “make objects with a point of view” illuminate the provocations that keep aesthetes closely dialed in.
Thomas Heatherwick: Making. Photo: Courtesy of Thames & Hudson
5. Thomas Heatherwick: Making (Thames & Hudson)
Those looking to contextualize Thomas Heatherwick’s most recent publication, Humanize, in which the British designer scorns drab architecture and advocates for buildings that spark joy, may do well in picking up the most updated edition of Making. Revised and updated to include 16 of the prolific rule-breaker’s latest projects with fresh photography, the publication illuminates the imagination behind some of his most exceptional works around the world. Among the projects included are Little Island park on Manhattan’s Hudson River, the conversion of a Cape Town grain silo into the breathtaking Zeitz MOCAA museum, and smaller-scale projects like one-of-a-kind Christmas cards and a modular dining table.
Isabel López-Quesada: Town & Country. Photo: Courtesy of Vendome
6. Isabel López-Quesada: Town & Country (Vendome)
Regarded as one of Europe’s most important interior designers, Isabel López Quesada has amassed a formidable trove of blue-chip clientele clamoring for her signature elegant yet unfussy modern aesthetic in their homes. Her second volume is a veritable showcase of this stunning range, from secluded Mediterranean hideaways to chic city apartments that are both inspirational and unforgettable. Each inventively combines period and contemporary furniture and art in a seemingly effortless yet sophisticated mix, making this tome a must for discerning design lovers seeking guidance in deftly placing decorative objects among stunning furniture.
Liaigre: 12 Projects. Photo: Courtesy of Flammarion
7. Liaigre: 12 Projects (Flammarion)
The late Christian Liaigre devised exquisite residences for high-profile tastemakers Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, and Kenzo Takada, who valued his adept balance of artful understatement with discretion and elegance. His transportive interiors left nothing to chance and were widely beloved for their timelessness, tranquil beauty, and keen sensibility for light and space. A highly anticipated reissue of the late designer’s final book spotlights 12 international projects from Nantucket and Athens to Seoul and the Caribbean, extending a welcome hand into the French visionary’s rarefied universe through hundreds of luscious large-frame photographs.
Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces. Photo: Courtesy of ArtBook
8. Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces (Hatje Cantz)
Since their early days, Elmgreen & Dragset have recast staid exhibition halls into uncanny settings with adventurous sculptures that upend preconceived notions of space and function. The prolific duo has transformed galleries into swimming pools and, perhaps most famously, installed a replica of a perennially closed Prada boutique alongside a barren stretch of a desert highway near Marfa, Texas. Through these incongruous situations, they invite exploration into the unknown and question the power embedded in everyday environments—a core focus of their latest book. Their spatial alterations, says Dr. Seungchang Jeon, who penned the foreword, “restages the traditional, whitewashed walls of the gallery spaces into sites where visual dialogues can be sparked.”
“Weiss/Manfredi: Drifting Symmetries.” Photo: Courtesy of Park Books
9. Weiss/Manfredi: Drifting Symmetries (Park Books)
How can architecture shape a sustainable and connected future? That’s the operative question posed in an informative new volume by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, whose namesake architecture firm’s nature-inspired projects often incorporate landscapes and reference topographies. The duo’s most acclaimed built works (Olympic Sculpture Park, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, Longwood Gardens) are featured alongside parallel research of historical precedents across geographies and centuries (Khaju Bridge in Iran, the Sydney Opera House, Rockefeller Center) to serve as a manual for expanding the terrain of contemporary architecture in the name of resiliency. “This book is most projective and reflective,” Weiss and Manfredi said jointly, “weaving together the loose ends of architecture, ecology, infrastructure, and history to create new opportunities for design and future action.”
Photo: Courtesy of Galerie
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