Beaux Arts Magazine Selects Seven Art-Themed Books for France's 2026 Literary Season

Key facts

• Beaux Arts Magazine selected seven art-related books for the 2026 French literary season.
• Enrique Vila-Matas's new novel centers on a literary canon created by a character named Vidal who believes he is an android.
• Phœbe Hadjimarkos Clarke's Le Livre des souterrains follows the disappearance of performance artist Marie Marzouk in a near-future heatwave.
• Juan Gabriel Vásquez's Les Noms de Feliza is a fictionalized biography of Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, who died in Paris on January 8, 1982, at age 48.
• Gouzel Iakhina's novel portrays filmmaker Sergueï Eisenstein (1898–1948) during the Russian Revolution and early Soviet era.
• Melania G. Mazzucco's L'architecture romaine chronicles Plautilla Bricci, the first woman architect of the modern era, who rivaled Le Bernin and Pierre de Cortone.
• Joy Sorman's book profiles neuroatypical painter Irène Gérard, born in 1958, after a year at La « S » Grand Atelier in Vielsalm, Switzerland.
• Irène Gérard's works are exhibited at the Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris from September 11, 2026, to July 31, 2027, in 'Art brut ressourcé – La ‘S’ Grand Atelier.'