Six New Art Books: From Maria Lai to Cesare Brandi

A weekly roundup of six recent art publications includes a reissue of Cesare Brandi's 1963 classic 'Teoria del restauro' with a preface by Vittorio Sgarbi and an introductory essay by Massimo Carboni linking Brandi to Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics. Francesco Faraci's 'Anima nomade' (Mimesis, May 5) combines text and photography, curated by Desirée Maida, exploring a nomadic and 'poor' photography. Giorgio Caponetti's 'Drovetti l'Egizio' (Utet) fictionalizes the life of Bernardino Drovetti, the diplomat and collector whose excavations in Thebes formed the core of the Museo Egizio in Turin and the Egyptian collections of the Louvre. Micol Forti's 'Maria Lai. Ricucire il dolore, tessere la speranza' (5 Continents Editions) catalogs a summer 2021 exhibition at Cantina Antichi Poderi di Jerzu, focusing on Lai's 1981 Via Crucis for the Church of Sant'Antioco di Ulassai. Julia Kissina's novel 'Madame la Dostoevskaja' (Scritturapura, 2020) was originally published in 2016 in Ukrainian, Russian, and German by Suhrkamp; Kissina, born in Kiev in 1966, is a political refugee and member of the Russian conceptualist movement. Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli edited 'A Season in Slemani' (Humboldt Books), documenting an artist residency from March to June 2019 in Sulaymaniyah (Slemani), Iraqi Kurdistan, with artists Gabriele Silli, Giacomo Sponzilli, Giulio Squillacciotti, and Manuel Scano Larrazábal, linked to the Earth Exchange Project of Gianfranco Baruchello.