Seven New Art and Culture Books: Mapping the Present Through Art, Work, Memory, and Perception

A roundup of seven new art and culture books published in May 2026, each offering a distinct lens on contemporary issues. Nicolas Martino's 'Lessico per le arti del XXI Secolo' (Luca Sossella Editore, €20) provides a provisional lexicon of twelve keywords—from author to artificial intelligence, feminism to queer, museum to care—authored by multiple scholars. Katsumi Komagata's 'Piccolo Albero' (Lazy Dog Press, €70) is a poetic pop-up book tracing a tree's life cycle through paper, light, and time. Helen Hester and Will Stronge's 'La società del post-lavoro' (DeriveApprodi, €20) critiques work's centrality and proposes reducing, revaluing, and redistributing labor. Linda Nochlin's 'Il corpo in pezzi' (Johan & Levi, €15) examines the fragmented body in modern art, from Füssli to Manet and beyond. Andrea Bocconi's 'L'incanto del labirinto' (Ediciclo Editore, €9.50) blends myth, psychotherapy, and travel writing to explore labyrinths as figures of disorientation and transformation. Marco Antonio Bazzocchi's 'Casa come me: Giorgio Morandi' (Electa, €18) enters the painter's Bologna home at via Fondazza 36, treating domestic space as key to his poetics. Ezzideen Shehab's 'Diario di un giovane medico. Appunti dal genocidio a Gaza' (Mimesis, €16) is a firsthand account of working at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza after October 7, 2023, and founding the Al-Rahma clinic amid destruction.