Six Art Books for Christmas: From Institutional Critique to New Media Art

Artribune presents six art books for Christmas gifts, spanning institutional critique, ethnographic museums, female artists' routines, new media art, art crime, and the symbolism of walls. Gennaro Castellano's 'Portrait of King Paintin'' (Allemandi, 2020) explores the love-hate relationship between art and its system, based on his experience as an artist who left the scene in 1998 to found Reporting System. Clémentine Deliss's 'The Metabolic Museum' (Hatje Cantz, 2020) recounts her tenure as director of the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, where she attempted to decolonize the institution until her dismissal in 2015. Mason Currey's 'Grandi artiste al lavoro' (Neri Pozza, 2020) corrects the gender imbalance of his previous book by focusing solely on female artists and their daily routines. Marco Mancuso's 'Intervista con la New Media Art' (Mimesis, 2020) compiles 60 interviews from 15 years of Digicult magazine, covering art and network, software, cinema, sound, performance, design, architecture, science, activism, and culture. Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm's 'Art & Crime' (24 Ore Cultura, 2020) examines art-related crimes including theft, forgery, smuggling, and money laundering. Simone Gobbo's 'L'innocenza del muro' (Quodlibet, 2020) analyzes walls as architectural and anthropological elements, from the Berlin Wall to geopolitical partitions.