Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Visual Arts by Jackie WullschlägerTJ Clark on Bruegel by TJ Clark (Thames & Hudson)The intellectual’s stocking filler: the Christmas volume from Thames & Hudson’s abundantly illustrated, affordable “Pocket Perspectives”, launched in the spring, is Bruegel, “monarch of down-to-earthness”, art’s great materialist, summoner of feasts and fatness amid scarcity and insecurity, interpreted by our most original art historian. Clark brings the paintings to sensuous life, and draws riveting contrasts between mass culture then and now.Manet: A Model Family edited by Diana Seave Greenwald (Princeton)Manet’s mysterious, secretive family, and the strange art between revelation and obfuscation that it stirred, is an enigma at the dawn of modern art and a fascinating story in itself. The illuminating catalogue to Boston’s current exhibition, the first on the subject, has the scope and psychological drama of a 19th-century novel.The Gourmand’s Lemon: A Collection of Stories and Recipes by The Gourmand (David Lane and Marina Tweed) (Taschen)The hedonist’s stocking filler: the lemon in art and design from Egyptian wall paintings to Philippe Starck’s spider-legged squeezer Juicy Salif, via Renaissance gardens, Dutch still life, “the many moods of Matisse’s lemons” and Duncan Grant’s “bittersweet Bohemia”. The text is funny and surprising, the recipes fabulous.Hokusai: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji by Andreas Marks (Taschen)Ride the great wave! The year’s most sumptuous, beautifully produced art book unfolds Hokusai’s 19th-century Edo, the floating world where everything — mountains, moons and masked actors, courtesans, crustaceans, cherry blossom — is stylised into patterns of line and colour, yet flutters off the page, restless and vital.Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment edited by Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins (Yale)Impressionism’s 150th birthday this year spurred a spectacular exhibition, opening at the Musée d’Orsay, now at Washington’s National Gallery. The catalogue, in unusual tall format, is particularly attractive and vivacious, full of fresh material and images, expanding the Impressionist cast of characters, exploring Paris as their tumultuous inspiration.Architecture and Design by Edwin HeathcoteJohn Soane’s Cabinet of Curiosities by Bruce Boucher (Yale University Press)John Soane’s house in London is captivating not only because of its architecture but because it is crammed with the fruits of a lifetime’s collecting, such as the sarcophagus of Seti I in the basement (deemed too expensive for the British Museum and snapped up by Soane). Boucher, the house’s former director, is both readable and scholarly on the contents of this densest and most theatrical of interiors.Atlas of Never Built Architecture by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin (Phaidon)A hefty monster of a book on hefty monsters that often remained imaginary, this is a strange volume. It features the great names of Modernism, but not their best sides. It constitutes an intriguing kind of counterfactual with a few real surprises, but mostly, I think, few great losses to civilisation.Interwar: British Architecture 1919-39 by Gavin Stamp (Profile Books)Stamp made his mark on British architecture through scholarship, campaigning for preservation of historic buildings and through his provocative Piloti column in Private Eye magazine. This book, published posthumously and finished by his widow Rosemary Hill, is a plea for the recognition of the incredible diversity of interwar architecture, from suburban Tudorbethan semis to Battersea Power Station. Stamp revels in the mix and is well served by Hill, who has done a splendid job of finishing off a daunting history.Siza Malagamba Before/After by Álvaro Siza and Duccio Malagamba (Phaidon)Portuguese Álvaro Siza, the chain-smoking, wise old man of contemporary architecture, is always sketching. His drawings are messy, enthralling and vivid but always entirely alive, rich in detail as well as dreams, joints and angles as much as angels. Here, those sketches are laid out opposite his longtime collaborator Duccio Malagamba’s photographs and the pair combine to illuminate his deceptively simple architecture perfectly. Kiosk: The Last Modernist Booths Across Central and Eastern Europe by Zupagrafika (David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka) (Zupagrafika)A rash of colourful plastic kiosks erupted throughout central and eastern Europe in the 1970s and ’80s. Super-modern, colourful structures that appeared everywhere from beaches to cemeteries, they accommodated the small, private commercial businesses that were beginning to emerge. A surprising number remain, now fashionable in an “ostalgic” way, and this book documents dozens in wonderful photographs. Quirky, heartening and surprising. Fashion by Carola Long When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion by Julie Satow (Doubleday)This absorbing social history goes back in time to the department store’s 20th-century heyday, when it was the place to go for everything from an ermine coat to a pair of rare green parakeets to afternoon tea. Three American women ascended to the upper echelons of the luxury retail game: Hortense Odlum at Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver at Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz at Henri Bendel’s. Weaving together glamour, drama and insights into the growth of consumerism, the real-life stories have the light touch and pace found in fiction. With the American department store in decline, all three stores have now closed, and Bonwit Teller’s original building complete with Art Deco sculptures was demolished in the early ’80s to make way for Trump Tower. An enjoyable tribute to a bygone era and these “uniquely female universes, where women commanded power in ways that were often unattainable elsewhere”.Yves Saint Laurent Inside Out: A Creative Universe Revealed by Carlos Muñoz-Yagüe and Philippe Garner (Thames & Hudson)Yves Saint Laurent is best known for his innovation and cult designs of the 1960s, when he pioneered the tuxedo for women, the safari jacket and the concept of ready-to-wear. But many fashion lovers admire his more opulent later works, and this book explores the phase of his career between 1989 and his last collection in 2002, thanks to intimate photographs by Carlos Muñoz-Yagüe. It was this period that current Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello referenced in his spring/summer 2025 show, via metallic brocade jackets with jewelled buttons. Vaccarello told me after the show: “We think of the 1990s as Helmut Lang and Ann Demeulemeester and minimalism but he [Yves Saint Laurent] never gave up that overdressed woman.” Fans of maximalism, supermodels and heavy gold jewellery, please form an orderly queue.This Creative Life: Fashion Designers at Home by Robyn Lea (Thames & Hudson)Beige begone! The tastes showcased in this compendium of fashion designers’ homes lean towards colour and pattern, whether that’s the bold stripes and graphic shapes in former Vogue stylist Lucinda Chambers’ London house or the springlike pinks and yellows of Sophie Conran’s quintessentially English mansion in Wiltshire. Take inspiration from the homes of Alice Temperley and Tamasine Dale on how to display ornaments and paraphernalia so they don’t look like clutter, and how to achieve rarefied eclecticism rather than the mismatching chaos. A reminder that creativity rarely stays neatly within one discipline.Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café
