Fall reading lists may be popping up already, but contrary to popular belief, summer’s not over yet. The last few months have brought several compelling books worth fitting into your summer reading, from an exquisite book on race and water in contemporary art to Kent Mokman’s latest catalog, both recommended by Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian. Read on for our notes on a genre-defying tome on Mithu Sen’s shrewd practice that probes the politics of language and Western feminism, a book about Ruth Asawa’s community of modernist artist-mothers in the Bay Area (beautifully reviewed by Christen Clifford, herself an artist mother), and more. —Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Associate EditorRE: Carrie YamaokaCarrie Yamaoka’s first full monograph is what anyone would hope for such a publication — it’s a work of art in itself. Yamaoka’s art — which is on view through August 9 in a solo show at Manhattan’s Anonymous Gallery — is an exploration of light and shadow, surface and depth, through photographic processes and reflective surfaces. As a result, photographs don’t always do it justice, but multiple shimmering metallic reproductions and close-up views of individual works come as close as possible to capturing the in-person experience. Essays printed on smaller pages are inserted between the glossy pages, like books within a book. There’s something intimate and rhythmic about this layout as the essays act almost as interludes. Adding to the sense of intimacy is a section at the end that pairs images of the artist’s notebook pages with her ongoing correspondence with art historian Élisabeth Lebovici. The monograph also touches on Yamaoka’s long-running queer art collective fierce pussy. Most of all, though, it conveys that her seemingly minimalist art is a deeply personal reflection of the artist and viewer alike. —Natalie HaddadBuy on Bookshop | Radius Books, August 2025Wonder Women: Art of the Asian DiasporaConversations between curator Kathy Huang and artists like Dominique Huang about Asian-Americanness circa 2020 eventually became a 2022 exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York City, and then in Los Angeles, and finally, this book. Centering Asian diasporic women and nonbinary artists, it’s straightforward, following a very clear formula: short blurbs by or about each of the 40 featured artists along with reproductions of their work. These are interrupted every so often by another essay by a guest writer, including Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians, and a particularly lovely, personal reflection by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, assistant curator of American Art at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center. Part of the appeal of this book is that it isn’t a museum catalog: This gives the contributors breathing room to speak a little more casually — perhaps more honestly — and the results are often illuminating. Sometimes, of course, old tropes resurface, ones I’d like us to move past. But they, too, are part of our landscape. This book isn’t meant to push the envelope on what Asian-American art should be; it’s a snapshot of what it is. I expect to return to it for that very reason. —Lisa Yin ZhangBuy on Bookshop | Rizzoli Electa, May 2025Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury by Jordan Troeller“Jordan Troeller’s new book Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury (2025) [looks] at the community of Bay Area women modernists around Asawa in the 1950s and ’60s, including Merry Renk, Beth Van Hoesen, Sally Byrne Woodbridge, and Imogen Cunningham. Asawa and her circle didn’t make work about motherhood; they made work while mothering. Troeller argues that by using the rhythms of the domestic as organizing principles and forging an interdependent care and creative community, and in spite of ideas of the modern male genius alone in his studio, these women modernists ‘made motherhood into a medium.’ I’m not sure about motherhood as a medium in and of itself — it’s certainly an art — perhaps best understood as endurance art. Nonetheless, I loved reading about Asawa’s art practice while she raised six children and made work not in a standalone studio but in the house where they lived together. Troeller shows us the lives and practices of artist-mothers who nurtured children, creativity, and communities simultaneously.” —Christen CliffordRead the Review | Buy on Bookshop | MIT Press, May 2025UnMyth Works and Worlds of Mithu Sen, edited by Irina AristarkhovaOver more than two decades, Indian artist Mithu Sen has examined several prescient themes like institutional critique, decolonization, toxic side effects of capitalism, underlying politics of language and using it to destigmatize sexuality, and Western notions of feminist identity. Her work is radically disruptive not only because it questions purportedly progressive societal norms and expectations, but also because of the unexpected, even performative ways (like her gibberish “un-language”) in which she delivers it.True to her works, which defy easy categorization, this definitive monograph on Sen’s conceptually layered practice bridges the idea of a monograph with that of an artist’s book. Sen’s psyche is undeniably present, exemplified by the fictional interviews where she answers probing questions from characters like Sappho, Medusa, Sylvia Plath, and others about how she unpacks identity, understands feminism, or situates the body in her practice. These imagined interviews complement the excellent essays covering her practice and exhibitions over the years, written by curators and academics who have long engaged with her work. Together, they underscore how she has refused to be tied down to her assigned identities, such as gender and ethnicity — lenses through which the Western art world arbiters have expected her to frame her work — while pushing back with a creative and performative language that encourages the audiences to question themselves, as well. —Anindo SenBuy the Book | Mapin Publishing, March 2025Kent Monkman: History Is Painted by the VictorsKent Monkman is a favorite of museum-goers and art history buffs because he blends the history of art with contemporary commentary that feels clever, easily accessible, and even hilarious.The robust essays in this catalog for an exhibition that is jointly organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts are an illuminating read, as they linger on his major history paintings and situate them in the context of Romantic and Neoclassical history paintings. Monkman’s work lends itself well to deep readings; it has an easy illustrative style that never gets in the way of the content but piques wonder and awe all the same.Beautifully illustrated, these paintings challenge the hegemony of traditional European painting and force us to look again and again at the tropes we think we know. I’m still in awe at how Monkman got a Met Museum commission in 2019 without a major gallery behind him. If you’re a painting or history fan, this book is for you. —Hrag VartanianBuy on Bookshop | Delmonico Books, March 2025A Nation Takes Place: Navigating Race and Water in Contemporary Art, edited by Tia-Simone Gardner and Shana M. griffinIn this beautifully laid out book with a slipcover, there are poems printed on translucent paper placed throughout as reactions to the art on its pages — the effect is elegant and expands our perspective in a thoughtful way.As artist and volume editor Tia-Simone Gardner writes in her catalog essay, “Images, text, and symbols, artists in the exhibition mark the expansive landscape fantasies that have determined the shape of nations.” Those contours are evident in this volume, which comprises essays by a number of talented writers, including Katherine McKittrick, Erin Sharkey, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tiffany Lethabo King, and Jessica Marie Johnson.Crack open this book and let the waves of astute observations and storytelling wash over you, illuminating connections that transverse geography and sometimes even time. —HVBuy on Bookshop | Minnesota Marine Art Museum, September 2024More Titles to Read This MonthLiz Collins: Motherlode (Hirmer, August 2025)Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses (Thomas Cole National Historic Site, July 2025)Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory (Hatje Cantz, July 2025)Superfine: Tailoring Black Style (Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2025)