best biographies of artists

The 10 Best Biographies and Memoirs of Artists to Read in 2023 (October)

The Art of Rivalry

Child of the Fire

Whether you’re an art history connoisseur or prefer the modern art scene, plenty of renowned artists have written biographies and memoirs.

When deciding which book are the best biographies of artists to read, I based my answers on these criteria:

• Personal connection
• Artist’s history
• Writing quality
• Unique information

Also, I have presented a few scenarios for each book. If you are on a budget or want to explore a specific portion of the art world, you can find the right memoir for you.

How to Choose a Biography or Memoir of Artists

When choosing the best biographies of artists to read, you will want to use these selection criteria. We have scored each of these metrics quantitatively on a scale from 1-10.

Personal Connection

While I cannot predict your connection to the artist, I can provide some pointers. A personal connection will directly impact your interest in the biography. Most likely, you will feel connected to someone whose work has inspired you. Perhaps you will relate to their personal lives and find inspiration in how they overcame shared adversity.

Artist’s History

You will want to select a biography based on the artist’s personal life. Someone with a vivid past will provide a far more interesting read than an artist with a mundane lifestyle.

By considering the artist’s history, I have narrowed the options to those that act as riveting reads. You will feel more committed to reading about someone whose life you relate to, find motivating, or think is interesting.

Writing Quality

Even the most fantastical story can seem boring if told poorly. Writing quality concerns the readability of the book. I have measured writing quality by performing a readability test on samples of each book.

Those on this list have reading levels above the 4th-grade level. The readability score that you want depends on your capabilities, but an 8th-grade level is considered ideal . However, something below the 4th-grade level will seem too elementary to be interesting.

Additionally, I have considered my perception of the writing and the reviews of others when coming to this conclusion.

Unique Information

If you are particularly interested in one artist, you won’t want to read the same backstory about them a million times. Instead, you would want one from a unique perspective with new information. For example, you might want to read a private diary, a biography from a family member, or one from someone who spent a significant amount of time with the individual.

The 10 Best Biographies of Artists

Here are ten of the best biographies about artists:

Best Biography Overall – Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Best compilation biography – the art of rivalry: four friendships, betrayals, and breakthroughs in modern art, best biography about african american artists – child of the fire: mary edmonia lewis and the problem of art history’s black and indian subject, best biography about female artists – tamara de lempicka: a life of deco and decadence, best lgbtq+ biography – the isolation artist: scandal, deception, and the last days of robert indiana, best biography about a photographer – a choice of weapons, best autobiography – memoirs of a pet lamb, best diary of an artist – keith haring journals, best biography about a famous artist – interviews with francis bacon, best biography about a lesser-known artist – amazing grace: a life of beauford delaney.

Read on to see a breakdown of each of the choices:

• Personal Connection : 9
• Artist’s History : 10
• Writing Quality : 8
• Unique Information : 9

Frida remains one of the most comprehensive, well-researched, and sympathetic biographies about the artist. Instead of focusing on the facts about her life, this book analyzes her psyche, artwork, and motives throughout her colorful life.

Many people can relate to Frida Kahlo. These days, she serves as an icon for ethnic minorities, feminists, the LGBTQ+ community, those who suffer from chronic illness, and even modern communists.

I found this book deeply engrossing. It did not paint her in a heroic or critical light — it just told me about the woman behind the masterpiece. This book holds a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 9.4. The writing is imperfect, but it remains accessible to most individuals.

• Focuses on Kahlo’s artistic nature rather than the tragedies she experienced
• Remains the definitive biography of Frida Kahlo
• Sensitive account of Kahlo’s life and art
• Somewhat dramatized and romanticized

• Personal Connection : 7
• Writing Quality : 9
• Unique Information : 8

The Art of Rivalry compares the rivalries between four pairs of artists:

• Freud and Bacon
• Manet and Degas
• Matisse and Picasso
• Pollock and De Kooning

Some readers might relate to the stories of these renowned artists. They were quintessential frenemies, fluctuating between admiration and envy. This book delves into the strengths and weaknesses of these artists to give readers a better understanding of their motivations.

I have never been in a competitive situation with one of my peers, but many people have and will find themselves in this book.

Some of the greatest artists of all time are depicted in this book, and they have page-turning life stories. Since Smee delves into the artists’ relationships with each other rather than just their backgrounds, you will get a unique perspective on their work. He considers lesser-known aspects of their personalities and lives, making it more than just a biography.

Lastly, this book has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 7.9, making it accessible to most people. The text is not overly complex, and it gets the point across.

• Focuses on the relationships between artists
• Offers a unique perspective on the modern art scene
• Considers their strengths and weaknesses for balance
• More of a character study than a biography

• Artist’s History : 7

This biography explores how society treated Lewis in the past and present. It thoroughly analyzes her presence in art history and the flaws in her representation. Furthermore, Buick dives further into Lewis’s sculptures than most accounts of her life. Many people can relate to Edmonia Lewis’s treatment and belittlement in the art world during and after her life.

Interested in Art History? Check out our Buying Guide on the Best Art History Books !

Many historians focus on her African American and Indigenous heritage instead of her art. Author Kirsten Pai Buick flips the script by praising her talents and sculptures first and foremost. However, the book does not discuss her life story much.

A passage of this book resulted in a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 10.7. While that indicates a challenging read, the vocabulary used is not that complex. The score is primarily driven up by the presence of run-on sentences. I found it a comfortable read.

• Boldly criticizes art historians
• Explores society’s treatment of the sculptor
• Many run-on sentences
• Skims over Lewis’s background

• Personal Connection : 6
• Artist’s History : 9
• Unique Information : 10

Passion by Design looks intimately at Tamara de Lempicka’s personality, life, and work. Few can relate to de Lempicka’s massive success, riches, indulgence, and fame. However, her story proves an interesting read.

By combining Renaissance inspirations with cubism, de Lempicka crafted a style of her own. Furthermore, her bold expressions of sexuality, human form, and controversial politics make her ever-relevant today.

Author Laura Claridge worked with de Lempicka’s friends, family, and historical archives to get the whole story. This book is the most comprehensive account of the painter’s life as the archetypical new woman.

Nevertheless, the book tries to provide too much information. It attempts to cover her psychology, art history, social movements, and biography at once. Also, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 16.4 means this book is not accessible for the average reader.

• Considers multiple perspectives of de Lempicka’s life
• Explores the artist’s life in past and present contexts
• Overly comprehensive

• Artist’s History : 8

Robert Indiana led a mysterious life, and he died in the middle of scandals, lawsuits, and fraud allegations. The Isolation Artist is the first biography about the gay contemporary artist. It details his life, work, business, and controversies in an objective manner. I didn’t relate much to him, but you might if you have hermit-like tendencies.

His history does tell the story of the business side of the art world. Overall, it provides a lot of unique information that you won’t find elsewhere. Also, it is an easy read. With a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 5.8, most people can read it comfortably.

• An authoritative account of his life
• Considers the ups and downs
• Not that relatable

You don’t always need to move to New York City to make your dreams come true. Gordon Parks moved to Minnesota, where he started his work as a photographer. Dazed Media Sites considers it one of the best artist biographies of all time.

Many readers can relate to his life. Parks battled homelessness, poverty, racism, and familial deaths. He turned to photography to aid in these struggles, which offered him many fortunes. His rags-to-riches story is very inspirational.

This book is easy to read as well. It has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 7.2, making it readable. I found it colorfully written and intriguing. Since it is an autobiography, you can get a firsthand account of this artist’s life. It is filled with information you won’t find elsewhere.

• Relatable and inspirational
• A firsthand account of his life
• Does not cover much after he becomes successful

• Personal Connection : 8
• Writing Quality : 7

Curator David Sylvester was a famous art critic who befriended many artists. He could get them to reveal intimate information, but he did not say much about himself until he released Memoirs of a Pet Lamb .

This book detailed his tumultuous childhood, family, friends, interests, romances, and disasters. He keeps a humorous tone that makes it easier to read, especially in the darker parts. While many of his life’s tragedies will seem out of touch for most readers, many will find themselves in his tales of family and friends, growing up, and finding love.

Memoirs of a Lamb gets convoluted in many points. It has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 10.3, meaning it is challenging to read for most people. I felt like I was back in high school taking a vocabulary test at times.

• Provides information you won’t find elsewhere
• Shows a side of history many people gloss over
• Not very readable

• Writing Quality : 5

Despite this book being a diary, Keith Haring explores his opinions on the modern art world more than his personal life. However, he kept this diary from his early teens until his death. You get to see more sides of him, from what he likes to read to his thoughts. It also has new artwork.

Keith Haring does not have the most interesting history. Nevertheless, fans of his work will enjoy reading his journals. It is not the best introductory book to him, and the writing is imperfect. With a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 4.4, most can read it easily.

• Provides insight into Haring’s interests and mindset
• Easy to read
• Only for big Keith Haring fans

David Sylvester had many artist friends, including Francis Bacon. He held several interviews with the artist over 25 years, giving insight into his life at different stages. I learned about Bacon’s vision, personal life, education, and shortcomings.

Many can relate to Bacon’s troublesome youth. He entertained grotesque images of the human form to create his art, and he had some mental health troubles.

Since it is a conversation between two people, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level varies drastically. I got an average score of 11, and I found the book challenging to read. It has many run-on sentences that would need revision to be more readable. However, it depicts Bacon’s personality better in its original form.

• Considered a modern art world classic
• Unedited insight into Francis Bacon’s mind
• Challenging to read

As one of the only biographies about Beauford Delaney, Amazing Grace possesses a swarm of unique information about this artist. People can connect to his hardworking nature, ability to rise above his social circumstances, deep spirituality, battles with sexuality, and struggles with mental illness.

Despite his influence and reach during his life, Delaney did not have lasting fame. Regardless, I found his intense backstory to be addictive to read above. However, this book uses some difficult language. The Flesch-Kincaid score is 12.1, making it inaccessible to many readers.

• Delicately depicts the highs and lows of Delaney’s life
• Immortalizes the artist when few others will
• Discusses James Baldwin too much

There are many riveting biographies about artists, and these are only a few of the best ones. If you have never read an artist biography before, I suggest reading Frida . Then, go for ones about artists you are interested in.

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15 Engrossing Artist Biographies and Memoirs to Read Now

We spotlight a selection of our favourite artists’ autobiographies and biographies, from the empowering to the scandalous, for your summer reading inspiration

Summer is upon us and this year, more than ever, it feels pertinent to pick holiday reads that will uplift and inspire. Where better to turn to, then, than artists’ memoirs and biographies – filled as they are with tales of overcoming life’s hardships, fights for justice and recognition in and outside of the art world, the quest to forge a legacy through art, and, more often than not, a juicy scandal or two to keep the reader’s interest piqued. Here, we’ve selected 15 of our favourites for your perusal, spanning the empowering, the ephemeral, the political and the downright provocative (Diego Rivera, we’re looking at you).

1.   We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold is one of America’s most renowned artists and activists, whose inherently political, exquisitely executed work – from “story quilts” to paintings – tackle civil rights and gender inequality head on. But Ringgold has had to fight hard for her successes, a story she shares in her stunning, illustrated memoir We Flew over the Bridge . In it, Ringgold details the many prejudices she’s battled and the challenges she’s faced in balancing her thriving artistic career with motherhood, sharing words of advice and empowerment along the way. It makes for magical reading; in the words of Maya Angelou: “Faith Ringgold has already won my heart as an artist, as a woman, as an African American, and now with her entry into the world of autobiography (where I dwell), she has taken my heart again. She writes so beautifully.”

2.  Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney by Beauford Delaney and David Leeming

Amazing Grace paints a poignant picture of the celebrated African American artist Beauford Delaney, a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and later – following a move to Paris in the 1950s – a noted abstract expressionist. Delaney’s tale is both remarkable and heartbreaking: he was a much loved character, who counted Henry Miller and James Baldwin among his close friends, yet he often felt isolated and underappreciated, struggling with mental illness throughout his life. His wonderfully vibrant paintings boast an extraordinary psychological depth, betraying the hardships he faced and his determination to keep going no matter what. “He has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and also by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and, more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and the outer darkness,” Baldwin once wrote.

3.  Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann

A memoir quite unlike any other, this book by American photographer Sally Mann weaves together words and images to form a vivid personal history, revealing the ways in which Mann’s ancestry has informed the themes that dominate her work (namely “family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South”). Mann decided to write the book after unearthing a whole host of unexpected family secrets – “deceit and scandal ... clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land ... racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder” – while sorting through boxes of old family papers and photographs. In gripping prose, she allows us to follow her on her resulting journey of self-discovery, shedding pertinent light on her image-making practice at every turn.

4.  Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz

David Wojnarowicz ’s beloved collection of creative essays, Close to the Knives , remains a vital work – “a scathing, sexy, sublimely humorous and honest personal testimony to the ‘Fear of Diversity in America’” (as per its inside flap). It’s an intensely powerful memoir that guides the reader across the American artist’s life – from his violent suburban childhood through a period of homelessness in New York City to his ascent to fame (and infamy) as one of America’s most provocative creators and queer icons – inciting action and self-examination on every page. In the words of Publishers Weekly : “ What Kerouac was to a generation of alienated youth, what Genet was to the gay demimonde in postwar Europe, Wojnarowicz may well be to a new cadre of artists compelled by circumstance to speak out in behalf of personal freedom.”

5.  Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth

Patricia Bosworth’s fantastic  Diane Arbus biography takes a deep dive into the turbulent life of the seminal American imagemaker, whose unflinching photographs of marginalised groups sought to challenge preconceived notions of “normality” and “abnormality” – with extraordinary results. Through Bosworth’s shrewd investigation, and interviews with Arbus’ friends, colleagues and family members, we learn of the ideas and inspirations that drove her, the fears and anguish that plagued her, her pampered childhood and passionate marriage, and the tragic turn her life took – in spite of growing artistic acclaim – resulting in her suicide in 1971.

6.  Ninth Street Women: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel  

This book is the brilliant tale of five brilliant women artists: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler, who burst onto the male-dominated New York art scene in the 1950s, smashing down gender barriers along the way. Each was an indomitable force in their own right – Krasner, an assertive leader and hellraiser; de Kooning, a great thinker; Hartigan, a fiercely determined housewife-turned-painter; Mitchell, a vulnerable soul with a steely exterior and prodigious talent; Frankenthaler, a well-schooled New Yorker, who shunned a traditional career path to follow her dreams. But together, “from their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved”, they changed the face of postwar American art and society forever.

7.  Voices in the Mirror: An Autobiography by Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks ’ autobiography Voices in the Mirror is a compelling and empowering read. It traces the American photographer’s difficult early life in Minnesota – where he became homeless, following his mother’s death – through his groundbreaking and meteoric rise as an image-maker (the first Black photographer at Vogue and Life , no less) and thereafter as a Hollywood screenwriter, director and novelist. Parks was a man of great compassion and courageous vision, whose work spanned “intimate portrayals of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini; of the Muslim and African American icons Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and Muhammad Ali; of the young militants of the civil rights and black power movements; and of the tragic experiences of the less famous, like the Brazilian youngster Flavio”. Suffice to say that incredible stories and  words of wisdom abound.

8.  Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Barnaby Martin

Ai Weiwei  has spent his entire career creating very beautiful, deeply political works that challenge and confront his country’s totalitarian regime – to global acclaim. But rising the ranks to become China’s most famous living artist and activist has come at a price. In April of 2011, just six months after his vast, thought-provoking sculpture Sunflower Seeds was installed in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall , Weiwei was arrested at the Beijing Capital International Airport and detained illegally for over two months in dire conditions. Shortly after his release, Barnaby Martin travelled to Beijing to interview the artist about his imprisonment and to discover more about “what is really going on behind the scenes in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party”. Hanging Man is the result – a highly informative and stirring account of “Weiwei’s life, art, and activism”, as well as “a meditation on the creative process, and on the history of art in modern China”.

9.  Gluck: Her Biography  by Diana Souhami

In Gluck , author Diana Souhami examines the radical life and work of British painter Hannah Gluckstein (1895-1978), who took on the name Gluck, with “no prefix, suffix, or quotes”, in her twenties to reflect her gender non-conforming identity. Famed for her masculine, undeniably chic style of dress, her passionate affairs with society women, and her emotive portraits, flower paintings and landscapes, Gluck was provocative and tender, fierce and gifted in equal measure – and decades ahead of her time. This excellent biography “captures this paradoxical ... woman in all her complexity”, to page-turning effect.

10.  Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

As its title suggests, this book is not a biography as such, but a series of nine interviews with the inimitable figurative painter, Francis Bacon . They were conducted by the late art critic and curator David Sylvester over the course of 25 years, from 1962 to 1986, and thereafter compiled into what has long been heralded a classic, offering an illuminating glimpse into one of the great creative minds of the 20th century. In it, the British painter contemplates the fundamental problems involved in making art, as well as his own “obsessive thinking about how to remake the human form in paint” (to quote the book’s back cover), revealing a great deal about his radical practice and storied past in the process. Cited by David Bowie as one of his all-time favourite books, it is essential reading not just for Bacon fans, but for anyone in search of creative impetus.

11.  My Art, My Life: An Autobiography Novel by Diego Rivera and Gladys March

My Art, My Life by Diego Rivera is a wild read, offering juicy first-person insight into the world of the larger-than-life Mexican painter. Rivera recounted his life’s story to the young American writer Gladys March over the course of 13 years, leading up to his death in 1957. The book sheds fascinating light on Rivera’s radical approach to modern mural painting, his strong political ideology and his equally unerring devotion to women (he married  Frida Kahlo not once but twice, you’ll remember). In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle : “There is no lack of exciting material. A lover at nine, a cannibal at 18, by his own account, Rivera was prodigiously productive of art and controversy.”

12.  Sophie Calle: True Stories by Sophie Calle

First published in French in 1994, and since expanded and printed in English, True Stories , by the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle , is a real gem. Calle’s idiosyncratic oeuvre comprises controversial explorations of “the tensions between the observed, the reported, the secret and the unsaid,” in the words of the book’s cover, spanning photography, film, and text. Many of her pieces revolve around the documentation of other people’s lives, and the insertion of herself into them (think: her 1980 work Suite Vénitienne , where she followed a stranger from Venice to Paris), but True Stories is entirely focused on Calle herself. Through a montage of typically poetic and fragmented autobiographical texts, and photographs, the artist “offers up her own story – childhood, marriage, sex, death – with brilliant humour, insight and pleasure”.

13.  Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase

This book centres on the late Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa – best known for her breathtaking hanging-wire sculptures and bold, urban installations and fountains. Asawa survived an adolescence spent in World War Two Japanese-American internment camps, before securing a place at the revolutionary art school Black Mountain College. There she discovered her signature medium as a lyrical means of challenging the conventions of material and form. Later, Asawa would become a pioneering advocate for arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, while raising six children, battling lupus and continuing to work. By incorporating Asawa’s own writing and sketches, photographs, and interviews with her loved ones, Marilyn Chase conjures up a fully rounded image of a visionary creator, who “wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and transformed everything she touched into art”.

14.  Hannah H öch : Life Portrait: A Collaged Autobiography by Hannah Höch and Alma-Elisa Kittner

German Dadaist and collage artist Hannah Höch’s esteemed career spanned two world wars and most of the 20th century, and by the age of 83, she was ready to reflect. The result was her final, largest photo-collage, Life Portrait (1972-3), comprising 38 sections and measuring nearly four by five feet. It is a self portrait-cum-memoir, alluding to the different periods of Höch’s life and work, while “ironically and poetically commenting on key political, social and artistic events from the previous 50 years.” It also includes imagery of her favoured themes and inspirations (“fashion imagery, news photographs, African art and pictures of plants and animals”) as well as multiple pictures of herself, identifiable by her signature bob haircut. This unique book presents the collage section by section, alongside relevant quotes and explanatory texts by Alma-Elisa Kittner, acting as a brilliant meditation on “Höch’s final masterpiece, and the life’s work it represents”.

15.  Georgia O’Keeffe by Roxana Robinson

Roxana Robinson’s acclaimed  Georgia O’Keeffe biography is a sensitive and enthralling investigation into the life and work of the so-called “mother of American Modernism”. It takes an in-depth look at O’Keeffe’s influences, from abstraction and photography to Asian art, and how she assimilated these into her singular painting practice – “the red hills, the magnified flowers, the great crosses and white bones”. It also shines a light on the many intense relationships the artist forged throughout her life, from her marriage to the revered photographer Alfred Stieglitz to her scandalous relationship with Juan Hamilton, a man six decades her junior. Best of all, it includes plenty of O’Keeffe’s own words – in the form of her letters and writings – allowing the artist herself to play a key role in the telling of her own multifaceted, infinitely inspiring story.

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10 Artist Biographies To Read This Year

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What would the winter holidays be without those warm, comforting afternoons spent under the blankets or close by the chimney? If you’ve exhausted all the classics of French literature and the summer’s bestsellers, why not try another genre: the artists’ biography? Since many artists have lived thrilling lives, Artsper suggests these biographies of artists whose lives make for a compelling novel!

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Dazzling Epic of the Precursor of Street Art

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), whose works can be found on Artsper, was undoubtedly one of the artists who made the biggest impressions on the New York underground art scene in the 1980s.

Born in Brooklyn, this African-American with a rebellious temperament left school when he was a teenager to devote himself to his passion: art. His personal graffitis were quickly noticed for their tribal signs and naïve characters. Criticizing consumerism and the exclusion of ethnic communities, Basquiat has his first exhibition at the age of 21. This remarkable arrival brought him to the forefront of the art scene.

These profoundly violent, tortured works relate to art brut and include numerous evocations of death. This work continued to torment him until his death, caused by an overdose when he was only 28 years old.

Short but prolific, the career of the child prodigy of urban art has recently been related in a graphic novel written by Julien Voloj and illustrated by Søren Mosdal. While based on real events, the book tries to reveal the artist’s demons, which inspired him but precipitated in his demise.

Andy Warhol: Icon of Pop Art

Close to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collaborated with him on over 200 works. They shared the same favourite theme: consumer society. If Basquiat is the emblem of Street Art, Andy Warhol (available on Artsper ) is unquestionably the emblem of Pop Art .

Beginning his career in advertising, he became world famous in the 1960s thanks to his screen prints of mass products, then eventually became one of the most iconic artists of all time. Duplicating his works in a multitude of flashy colours, he brought art into the category of consumer goods. In order to produce in industrial quantities, he created his Factory in 1964, a giant studio central to New York artistic life. His works are now among the most sought-after within the contemporary art market.

His biography was written by Victor Bockris, who was close to the artist, is the result of a meticulous investigation of his entourage. It reveals the career of this leader of pop culture, from his precarious childhood in a family of Slovakian emigrants to his breakthrough into the world of show business.

Raphaël: Genius of the Renaissance

Like Jean-Michel Basquiat , Raphael (1483-1520) is regarded as a precocious artist prodigy, whose early death only helped to create a myth.

At a young age, he acquired important notoriety in Northern Italy thanks to his realistic style, characterized by his great gentleness and harmony of shapes and colors. His achievement was completed in 1508, when Pope Julius II asked him to create monumental frescoes to decorate his apartments in the Vatican.

2020 being the anniversary of his death, Raphael is honoured by two major retrospectives. The first, in France, at the Musée de Condé du Domaine de Chantilly and extended until August 30th, displays a large number of his drawings. The second, in Rome, at the Scuderie del Quirinale and open until August 31st, allowing visitors to see his greatest pictorial masterpieces.

On this occasion, art historian Stefano Zuffi published a biography that allows visitors to (re)discover the life of the “prince of painters”, according to Giorgio Vasari. A fascinating biography with the details of his works as guiding thread.

Caravaggio: The Prodigious Criminal

What could be more gripping than the life of Caravaggio (1571-1610)? Raphael’s calm and luminous works are the opposite of the brutal and dark works of the master of chiaroscuro. It has been said that this 16th century Italian artist revolutionized painting.

Breaking tradition, Caravaggio depicted uncompromising realism of sacred Bible characters, transcended by powerful contrasts of light. Like Raphael, he was already famous during his lifetime. The birth of Caravaggism at his death demonstrates his influence on the many artists of the early 17th century. But the comparison stops just as quickly! Aggressive in his paintings as in life, he was compelled to exile himself from Rome after killing a man in a duel. Leaving for Malta, he was finally imprisoned there for a criminal case. After his escape from the island, he died days later near Rome.

Yannick Haenel tells us the story of the tumultuous life of this rogue, “bad boy” painter. Through the analysis of his works, the writer attempts to unlock the mysteries of this famed murderous artists. Discover this fascinating genius of tenebrism!

Artemisia Gentileschi: Revenge of the Humiliated Student

Although attached to the Caravaggesque school, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) clearly distinguished herself from the other disciples of the Italian master, as much by her talent as by her success. In fact, few women painters could have a career in the 17th century since they were not allowed access to artistic education… Nevertheless, Artemisia Gentileschi managed to be recognized of her time thanks to the singularity of her painting.

The violence of her scenes, depicting courageous, active women, taking their destiny into their own hands, often earned her the label of feminist artist before her time! Unfortunately, her painting is often interpreted in the light of her personal life. Raped at the age of 19 by her drawing teacher and humiliated by the trial that followed, many art historians justify her choice to paint women in the midst of revenge by her trauma. However, her talent cannot be reduced to the simple representation of strong female subjects. Rather, her subtle and powerful mastery of chiaroscuro must be noted.

Awaiting the retrospective at the National Gallery in London this autumn, the exciting life of one of the first renowned women painters is to be discovered in Alexandra Lapierre’s book. Lapierre’s book received the Prize for Best Historical Novel when it was published in 2012.

Niki de Saint Phalle: The Mentor of Feminist Artists

Also assaulted in her childhood, Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), whose drawings are for sale on Artsper, choose art as an outlet.

Her decisive encounter with the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely enabled her to join the group of the Nouveaux Réalistes in the early 1960s. She began her series of “Shooting” which scandalized the public as much as it brought the artist international recognition. Her performance paintings are made by shooting with a rifle at pockets filled with paint. They were a means of “shooting at society and its injustices”, especially those suffered by women. She keep on with her commitment through the production of her Nanas since 1965, female figures liberated from the patriarchal and misogynistic world. Behind the appearance of joyful and naive creations, Niki will not end to be committed to the defence of the feminine cause.  

This world of fantasy and colour is transcribed in the first graphic biography devoted to her. Plunging us into her artistic universe, the book retraces her journey with great sensitivity.

Frida Kahlo: Art as Therapy  

One of the greatest artists who left their imprint on 20th century art is undoubtedly Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). While politically committed and defending communist values, Frida Kahlo was best known for being one the most famous members of surrealism in Mexico.

Her painting is deeply poetic and inspired by Mexican folklore. This activity has also been the way enabling her to express her suffering through dreamlike worlds. Indeed, Frida’s life was full of tragic events, which nevertheless destroyed her unfailing joy of life. At the age of 18, a bus accident seriously injured her spine, crippling her for life and forcing her to wear a metal corset for the rest of her life. Finding refuge in art, she developed a passionate relationship with the artist Diego Riveira. They tried to conceive, but Frida had multiple miscarriages. Her global recognition allowed her to pass to posterity, while constituting a model for many women through her independence and strength of character.

This rich and dramatic life is told to us in a delicate, touching way by Rauda Jamis, a French author of Latin American origin.

Tina Modotti: Disowned Activist Photographer

Tina Modotti (1896-1942) died in Mexico and was politically committed like Frida Kahlo. Unlike her compatriot, Modotti was long forgotten by art history. She was known as a great photographer during her lifetime; nothing predestined this young girl who was forced to work in a factory at the age of 12.

After emigrating to the United States, she was spotted for her beauty and became a model, before starting an acting career in Hollywood. She met there the photographer Edward Weston, who made her his muse and taught her the technique of photography. It was during their trips to Mexico that she met artists link to the Communist Party. She decided to use her art to support political and social causes and became a photojournalist for the Mexican communist newspaper, El Machete. After leaving photography behind, she fully devoted herself to the fight against fascism. In 1936, she joined the International Red Cross and took part in the defense of Madrid against the Francoists. After fleeing Spain for America, she helped Spanish refugees and died there at the age of 45.

Gérard de Cortanze dedicated his last novel to the life of Tina Modotti. He had made a series of biographies about women within the 20th century artistic world, including Frida Kahlo and Violette Morris, in a style that is as romantic as ever, making the story more exciting. 

Camille Claudel: Madness Before Oblivion

If Camille Claudel (1864-1943) is one of the most famous French female artists and sculptors in the world, the whole first half of the 20th century passed her by in silence. Like Tina Modotti, she was subject to a late rediscovery.

Claudel was an apprentice of Rodin in the 1880s before having an affair with him. She hardly managed to emerge from the shadow of her mentor despite her undeniable talent. They separated after ten years of a passionate and destructive relationship. Camille Claudel was convinced that her lack of recognition was caused by Rodin and later developed paranoia disorders; leading to her admission into a psychiatric hospital in 1913. Her family’s opposition to her requests for release explains that she ended her days in total indifference, confined in an asylum until she died in 1943.

This novel about a tragically cursed artist was written by Anne Delbée, who received the 1983 Readers’ Choice Award of the revue Elle for her book.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Duo You Cannot Ignored in Contemporary Art

This article has surely made you aware of the difficulties for women artists to obtain recognition from their peers… A fact that has motivated many authors to take an interest in these complex, exciting journeys! Some artists have overcome their obstacles by working in tandem, blossoming both personally and artistically. One of the most famous couples in art is none other than Christo and Jeanne-Claude!

Christo (1935-2020) and Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009) have always worked together, each finding in the other a respective source of inspiration. Attached to the Land Art movement , they are famous for their monumental and ephemeral productions, especially their “wrappings”. They never stopped traveling the world to reveal its beauty.

With Christo’s death on 31 May 2020, the retrospective of the couple’s creations in Paris at the Centre Pompidou (ends October 19th, 2020) has become a tribute. The wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in September 2021 will be their final salute. Jacob Baal-Teshuva’s book browses their entire work: the passionate adventure of two lives.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of a few artist’s biographies. Learn more about the captivating personalities who were often subjected to the margins of society. While being stunning and entertaining, these artist stories act as a gateway to understanding their artworks by revealing the behind-the-scenes representations of simple appearances. 

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13 of the greatest artist biographies to live vicariously through

From tracey emin to francis bacon, yayoi kusama, and more, escape into the worlds of 13 artists who pushed life beyond its limit.

With a third of the global population currently on  coronavirus lockdown, life is likely to have turned a little monotonous.

Many museums, art galleries, and theatres are set to remain closed until further notice, meaning a daily dose of artistic inspiration can be rather challenging – especially if you’re not ready to settle for COVID-19-friendly  digital exhibitions .

From performance artists to photographers, sculptors, directors, and more, we tally a list of biographies of some of the most influential artists you can get lost in during quarantine. Through intellectual discussions, entertaining anecdotes, previously unseen artworks, and shocking revelations, these books will help you cope with the lockdown while satisfying your hunger for art. 

Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction,  Patti Smith ’s  Just Kids  retraces the romance and long-lasting friendship between Smith and photographer  Robert Mapplethorpe . Going back to their first encounter in 1967 New York, the memoir immerses the readers into the passionate lives of the two artists well before they reached international success. Reflecting the culturally and politically engaged nature of the 70s,  Just Kids  features, among others, Beat Generation artists  William S. Burroughs , Harry Smith, and Allen Ginsberg. In 2019,  Just Kids  was re-published with never-before-seen photographs, such as the one above by Norman Seeff .

Just Kids   is published by  HarperCollins Publishers

A CHOICE OF WEAPONS

First published in 1966, A  Choice of Weapons retraces Gordon Parks ’ artistic career as he escaped poverty and turned into the first African American to work at Life  magazine and write, direct, and score a Hollywood film. Entirely written by the artist himself, the book emphasises the incredible role that Parks’ mother, who died when he was only 16, played in the personal and artistic growth of the photographer, writer, composer, activist, and filmmaker. “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,” he writes. “I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” Through a profound and honest narration, A  Choice of Weapons celebrates Parks’ unique artistic contribution by telling his fight for a better, more democratic America.

A Choice of Weapons is published by  Minnesota Historical Society Press

KUSAMA: INFINITY

In internationally-acclaimed Infinity Rooms creator  Yayoi Kusama ’s documentary, Kusama: Infinity , the artist invites the audience on a journey into a universe full of repetition, shapes, mirrors, and dots. Presenting the public with Kusama’s revolutionary artistic production, the documentary sheds light on the artist’s mental health and childhood traumas, showing how she managed to turn those into a 50-plus year, unprecedented artistic production.

Watch Kusama: Infinity   here

THE SECRET LIFE OF SALVADOR DALÍ

Published in 1942,  The Secret Life of Salvador Dal í  is an autobiographical book by the late Spanish artist  Salvador Dalí . Originally written in French, the memoir was translated into English by Haakon Chevalier. The book reveals the artist’s family history, providing the readers with insights into his childhood and the beginning of Dalí’s artistic career. “At the age of six, I wanted to be a cook. At seven, I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily since,” reads the incipit of the autobiography. Thanks to Dalí’s detailed writing and visual descriptions, readers are encouraged to “step” into the artist’s world – full of anecdotes, fantasy, and questionable confessions. Due to its controversial content, the book was criticised by none other than George Orwell in  Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí .

The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí is published by  Dial Press

WALK THROUGH WALLS: A MEMOIR

Serbian-born artist  Marina Abramović  retraces her nearly 50-year-long artistic career in an autobiographical book celebrating the evolution of her groundbreaking performance art. Turning the spotlight on the artist’s dramatic childhood in post-war Yugoslavia,  Walk Through Walls  renders the intense struggle of Abramović in her passionate pursuit of art. Through the narration of the 12-year love story and artistic collaboration with fellow performance artist Ulay, Abramović engages her readers, taking them on a trip that culminates in a moving break-up on the Great Wall of China . A truthful portrait of a revolutionary artist, the book tells how Abramović overcame limits imposed by fear, pain, exhaustion, and danger by using her body as a vehicle of artistic expression. 

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir is published by  Penguin Random House

THE SURREAL LIFE OF LEONORA CARRINGTON

Follow journalist Joanna Moorhead in her journey to reconnect with her long-lost cousin, who was also one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, Leonora Carrington. Published in 2017,  The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington  retraces the life and artistic production of the Lancaster-born artist, as she rejected the norms imposed by her upper-middle-class family to fulfil her artistic genius. In 2006, Moorhead found out that her father’s cousin, who had gone missing many decades earlier, had been a key member of the surrealist movement in Paris before moving to Mexico where she had become a national treasure. Curious to know more about it, the journalist flew to Mexico City where she reunited with Carrington and discovered the behind-the-scenes of her artistic career – from her escape from London, to her romance with the great Max Ernst, and finally her life in the Mexican capital. 

The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington is published by  Virago

CLOSE TO THE KNIVES

David Wojnarowicz ’s  Close To The Knives   is a collection of essays, sex memories, travel journalism, dream diaries, and manifestos written by the artist himself and published in 1992, the year of his death. A gay man raised on the streets of 1960s New York, Wojnarowicz was an artist, photographer, and writer whose work expressed the turbulent and provocative nature of an “outlawed existence”. Narrating his traumatic childhood and homelessness whilst living on the streets of New York City, the memoir pays tribute to Wojnarowicz’s seductive and rebellious contribution to the art world through his own poignant words.

Close To The Knives is published by  Vintage Books

DUCHAMP: A BIOGRAPHY

Writer Calvin Tomkins celebrates the extravagant life of last century’s most influential artist by telling readers how Marcel Duchamp revolutionised the future of modern art. Focusing on Duchamp’s art – stemming from the relationship between symbol and object – the biography describes how the painter, sculptor, and writer distanced himself from “retinal art” (that which is pleasing to the eye) to make art that served the mind. Through a glorious prose style, wit, and irony, Duchamp illustrates how the artist took the world by storm and influenced generations of artists, filmmakers, writers, and more.  

Duchamp: a Biography is published by Chatto & Windus

WIDOW BASQUIAT

Written by Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat narrates the rise to fame of one of the most influential visual artists of all time, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Told through the eyes of his muse and ex-lover  Suzanne Mallouk, the memoir brings the readers to 1970s New York. Guiding them across the transition which plunged  Jean-Michel Basquiat  into the centre of the city’s artistic scene – as well as the company of Madonna , Andy Warhol , Keith Haring , and more –  Widow Basquiat remembers the intense, incredible life of yet another artist who left us too soon.

Widow Basquiat is published by Canongate Books Ltd

KEITH HARING JOURNALS

Iconic artist Keith Haring kept a diary from his early teens until the day before his death in 1990. Published under the title Keith Haring Journals , the diary presents the readers with a largely unseen Haring, conscientious and serious, it shares everything from his reading lists to his daily thoughts. Featuring previously unpublished drawings from his notebooks, the book touches on key moments of Haring’s life as he emerged into the artistic scene of New York and became one of its most renowned pop icons. An unfiltered portrait of a brilliant artist, Keith Haring Journals shows the artist’s endless devotion to art, as expressed in his own words, “Work is all I have and art is more important than life.”

Keith Haring Journals is published by  Penguin Books

STRANGELAND

Published in 2006, Tracey Emin’s Strangeland captures the essence of the controversial British artist through a series of intimate memoirs and confessions. Known for her complex and medium-spanning artistic production – including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text, and sewn appliqué – Strangeland  reflects on Emin’s past by presenting the readers with her honest and controversial, yet touching view of the world.

Strangeland is published by Hodder & Stoughton

INTERVIEWS WITH FRANCIS BACON

Written by British art critic and curator David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon is a collection of exclusive interviews conducted by Sylvester over a period of 25 years. Throughout the book, Bacon reveals the goal of his artistic production, providing the readers with insights on his vision. Disclosing details of his personal life, the artist reflects upon the problem of realism with an unmistakable and engaging language. Among the others, Sylvester’s questions investigate Bacon’s artistic relation to the human form and its representation, his variations of old masters’ painting, and his dependence on chance. The result is an intriguing book capable of shedding light on the life of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. 

Interviews with Francis Bacon is published by Thames & Hudson

AI WEIWEI SPEAKS

In this series of interviews conducted by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ai Weiwei talks about the artistic inspirations that have shaped his work and also dives into his multi-dimensional artistic production – ranging from ceramics to blogging, philosophy, and more. The son of a Chinese poet who had been accused of “rightism”, Weiwei and his family were sent to a labour camp in Beidahuang when he was one year old. He then lived in exile in Shihezi, Xinjiang, for 16 years. In the book, the artist reflects upon his past and criticises the Chinese government, providing the audience with an authentic portrait of his personal, political, and artistic identity. 

Ai Weiwei Speaks is published by Penguin Special

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100 Must-Read Musician Memoirs and Biographies

Ashley Holstrom

Ashley Holstrom helps make books at Sourcebooks. She lives near Chicago with her cat named after Hemingway and her bookshelves organized by color. Newsletter: Crooked Reads . Twitter: @alholstrom .

View All posts by Ashley Holstrom

At least, that’s how I ended up obsessed with Guns N’ Roses. And The Doors. And Motley Crue. And Aerosmith. And, in the future, many more that I’m holding on to for just the right moment.

Here are 100 musician memoirs and biographies, sorted by the music’s genre (loosely defined), to get you rockin’ and rollin’ and movin’ and groovin’.

Country/Folk

My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman

Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie

Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh

Love, Janis by Laura Joplin

Coal Miner’s Daughter by Loretta Lynn, George Vecsey

Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough

Reba: My Story by Reba McEntire, Tom Carter

It’s a Long Story: My Life by Willie Nelson

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock by Gene Odom, Frank Dorman

Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir by Linda Ronstadt

The 50th Law by 50 Cent, Robert Greene

Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm by Percy Carey, Ronald Wimberly

Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality by Chuck D, Yusuf Jah

The Way I Am by Eminem

Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood by Ice-T, Douglas Century

Unashamed by Lecrae Moore

The Tao of Wu by The RZA

The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur

How to Ruin Everything: Essays by George Watsky

Gone ‘Til November by Lil Wayne

The Good Life by Tony Bennett

The Godfather of Soul: An Autobiography by James Brown

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch

Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis

Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters by Robert Gordon

Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King by B.B. King, David Ritz

John Coltrane: His Life and Music by Lewis Porter

Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time by Phyllis Rose

Now and Then… by Gil Scott-Heron

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout

Pop/Punk/Reggae/Ska

Catch a Fire: The Autobiography by Melanie B.

Black By Design: A 2-Tone Memoir by Pauline Black

Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash by Pat Gilbert

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

If Only by Geri Halliwell

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities by Herbie Hancock, Lisa Dickey

Reckless: My Life as a Pretender by Chrissie Hynde

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs by John Lydon

I’ll Never Write My Memoirs by Grace Jones, Paul Morley

A Natural Woman: A Memoir by Carole King

Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Björk by Evelyn McDonnell

Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones by Dee Dee Ramone

Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag by Henry Rollins

Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life As a Fabulous Ronette by Ronnie Spector, Vince Waldron

Rod: The Autobiography by Rod Stewart

Diana Ross: A Biography by J. Randy Taraborrelli

In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran by Nigel John Taylor

I, Tina by Tina Turner, Kurt Loder

Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White

Pharrell: Places and Spaces I’ve Been by Pharrell Williams

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine

Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir by Pat Benatar

Chuck Berry: The Autobiography by Chuck Berry

Moonage Daydream: The Life & Times of Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Lips Unsealed: A Memoir by Belinda Carlisle

Cash by Johnny Cash

Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton

Journals by Kurt Cobain

Not Dead Yet by Phil Collins

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello

  Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix by Charles R. Cross

Neon Angel by Cherie Currie

Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division by Deborah Curtis

Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis

Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett

Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac by Mick Fleetwood, Stephen Davis

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick

Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star by Ian Hunter

Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol

Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury by Lesley-Ann Jones

Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis

White Line Fever by Lemmy Kilmister

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee

Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead by Phil Lesh

Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love by Courtney Love

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson

Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason, Philip Dodd

It’s So Easy: And Other Lies by Duff McKagan

Autobiography by Morrissey

Joan Jett by Todd Oldham, Joan Jett

I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne

Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith by Joe Perry

Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley

Life by Keith Richards

Crazy from the Heat by David Lee Roth

Bird Lives!: The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker by Ross Russell

Slash by Slash, Anthony Bozza

Somebody to Love?: A Rock-and-Roll Memoir by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

Seven Deadly Sins: Settling the Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Good by Corey Taylor

Who I Am by Pete Townshend

The Real Frank Zappa Book by Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso

Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick

Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday, William Dufty

Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald

Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman by Fred Wesley

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The 15 most essential music bios (and autobiographies) so far this century

From sleater-kinney to springsteen, these are the tomes most deserving of joining the pantheon of essential musical memoirs.

Back in 2012, The A.V. Club asked if there was life left in the world of music memoirs . On one hand, it was obviously a rhetorical question—is anyone really going to say, “No, no more autobiographies from musicians, please”?—but the larger point was salient. Namely, that this young century had seen a glut of shoddily written and poorly edited books by famous artists (whether ghostwritten or not), that did the genre no favors. (Paging Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace .)

Lucky, then, to have so many counterexamples. The past 22 years have seen the release of not only tremendous memoirs and musical biographies, but among them some that belong in the highest echelons of the field—books that should be essential reading even for those who aren’t fans of the artist. The following are the ones that rose to the top when The A.V. Club looked back upon which music bios and memoirs were the most impactful, the most artful, and resonated far beyond the page. There are plenty of great books about the music industry not on this list (or about multiple artists, like Alex Ross’ must-read book on 20th century classical music, The Rest Is Noise ) that just didn’t fit the biography/autobiography designation. But when it comes to the singular stories of notable musicians and their lives, careers, and music, these are the ones we’ll recommend in perpetuity.

Note to desktop users: If you’d like to read this in a scrolling format (and why wouldn’t you?), simply narrow your browser window.

Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl [2015]

Sleater-Kinney is one of two families that Brownstein explores in this candid, heartfelt memoir. Hunger ’s childhood photos attest to the Brownsteins’ deep love, though a lack of communication made it difficult to fully process her mother’s anorexia and her father coming out. Her book’s dedication to bandmates Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss makes clear that Sleater-Kinney is (or was, anyway) as much a family as the Brownsteins, and her depiction of the band’s early days is a thrilling origin story. She makes repeatedly clear that Sleater-Kinney’s work—and music in general—is her lifeblood. One oft-quoted line from the book sums up her passion: “This is what it is to be a fan: curious, open, desiring for connection, to feel like art has chosen you, claimed you as its witness.” [David Brusie]

Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes On A Tribe Called Quest [2019]

Abdurraqib’s book is part history, part memoir. Abdurraqib was born in 1983, so he was 7 when A Tribe Called Quest began and 15 upon its 1998 breakup. Along the way—and in post-Tribe years of solo records and a surprisingly fruitful 2016 reunion—Abdurraqib grows alongside Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The book is at its most poignant when examining the often contentious relationship between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. They reconcile shortly before Phife’s death at 45 from complications due to diabetes, which is also the subject of Abdurraqib’s open letter to Phife’s mom, the book’s most heartbreaking moment. Abdurraqib’s Tribe expertise inspires the reader to seek out albums, playlists, and songs, with a spirit of exploration that reflects the group itself. [David Brusie]

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One [2004]

During Bob Dylan’s 1960s and ’70s heyday, he was an inscrutable figure, inclined either toward reclusiveness or puckish obfuscation. The greatest trick he pulls with his memoir Chronicles is to convince readers he’s finally telling his story straight, from the perspective of a gentle, neighborly old family man, who likes Little League baseball, American history, and vintage rock ’n’ roll. Devoted Dylanologists have debunked a lot of this book, proven that some of the anecdotes about recording sessions or the post-Woody Guthrie folk scene couldn’t have happened the way the author describes them. But Dylan’s exaggerations are themselves telling. Really, this is a book that illuminates where his songs come from: via scraps of newspapers, lost pop artifacts, and the lived experiences that a genius has transformed into myth. [Noel Murray]

Flea, Acid For The Children [2019]

Flea, acid for the children   [2019].

Red Hot Chili Peppers fans know the band for their goofier antics, but one layer deeper reveals an underlying through line across their history: the potent musicianship and quiet vulnerability of bassist Michael Balzary, a.k.a. Flea. Acid For The Children , outside of a handful of time jumps, takes place entirely before the formation of the Peppers; at its core, it’s the story of a music-obsessed Australian with a musically heroic but violent alcoholic stepfather. Graduating into his teen years, Flea gets some notoriety by being himself: awkward, wild, and overly dedicated to his musical craft. A handful of future-celebrity cameos make everything feel destined (like actor Laurence Fishburne as a former roommate), but the real juice is reading about a shy, sensitive boy becoming an outrageous, sensitive man. [Dan Bogosian]

Kristin Hersh, Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt [2015]

The late Vic Chesnutt was a brilliant singer-songwriter who was equal parts lovable and frustrating. In the piercing chronicle Don’t Suck, Don’t Die, musician Kristin Hersh uses vivid, engaging prose to capture Chesnutt’s complicated nature. The pair frequently toured together, and the book shines when she draws on her own personal, intimate observations, gleaned from their time on the road. “We didn’t stand a chance because when you were good, the work was true,” she writes. In the end, Don’t Suck, Don’t Die is a moving portrait of an artistic genius—and a vulnerable manual on how to navigate immense grief after the death of someone we love. [Annie Zaleski]

Herbie Hancock, Possibilities [2014]

Herbie Hancock has a ton of great stories, as you might guess of someone who was in Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet, played space-jazz with Mwandishi, and got real loose with Headhunters. But in his 2014 memoir Possibilities , he’s at his best when he’s talking about his artistic motivations. His taste is omnivorous—how many of bebop’s brightest stars have also been credited with helping to birth hip-hop, or have collaborated with Congolese electronic group Konono Nº1?—and he writes eagerly about how he’s evolved as an artist; when he gets into the whys and hows of that evolution, the book really sings. As great as it is on paper, the audiobook is highly recommended, if only to hear Herbie imitate Miles’ famous rasp to call himself a “motherfucker.” [Marty Sartini Garner]

Robin D.G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times Of An American Original [2009]

Thelonious Monk spent his entire life waiting for the world to recognize his brilliance, and when it finally happened, in the mid-1960s, the jazz world moved on with alarming speed. Robin D.G. Kelley approaches Monk’s life as a tragedy, one beset by mental illness and the everyday oppression that comes with being Black in America, as well as a lack of consistent recognition that’s frequently surprising given Monk’s reputation now. Kelley walks patiently through the man’s life, from his time as a tent-revival accompanist through his all-night gigs in Manhattan clubs, and while he does write at length about how Monk’s emotional and mental struggles colored both his playing and his life, he does so without sensationalizing—or stripping him of the incredible genius he developed by sitting at a piano and chasing his own sound for years and years. [Marty Sartini Garner]

Tegan And Sara Quinn, High School [2019]

Most music memoirs are about getting to the good stuff, when an artist starts to hit it big and enter the glory years. Not so with High School —it’s right there in the title. Tegan and Sara Quinn begin and end their back-and-forth autobiography (the two alternate chapters throughout) with their formative years in secondary education, the tale concluding just as the pair score a vital performance showcase and first glimpse the possibility of a future in music. But that’s what makes it so vital: The Canadian twins nail the hyperbolic emotional volatility of being a teen, connecting it to a passion for music in a way few artists have managed without losing the everything- cranked-to-11 intensity of adolescence. It’s artfully—and painfully—relatable (and soon to be a TV show .)[Alex McLevy]

Keith Richards, Life [2010]

Keith richards, life   [2010].

Even Keith Richards seems a little astounded by how well his memory has served him. It’s understandable: Given the copious amounts of drugs the guitarist for the Rolling Stones has done over the course of his life, anyone would be forgiven for blacking out entire months, or maybe years. Instead, the garrulous and freewheeling icon holds court (with help from ghostwriter James Fox) on everything from his earliest beginnings to the depths of his addiction days with equally eagle-eyed description. Much like the chaos that seemed to perpetually surround the band, there’s a sense of frenetic abandon to the tale, an intensity that gives it the heady rush of a dishy beach read (when he and Mick Jagger turn on each other, oh, the zingers that ensue), even while making plenty of time to ruminate on the value of a passionate, devoted love of music above all else. It’s downright irreplaceable, innit? [Alex McLevy]

Patti Smith, Just Kids [2010]

Patti Smith was already a decorated poet and musician before writing the memoir Just Kids . Still, the tender chronicle of her decades-long relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe catapulted her into literature’s upper echelons, as the book became an award-winning best-seller; among other things, it won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The honors are well deserved: Set against a backdrop of a bohemian New York City that no longer exists, Just Kids is an intimate look at the inner workings of a complex relationship. Smith uses elegant, precise, and vivid language throughout to describe what it’s like to come of age when you’re marching to your own beat—giving Just Kids the feel of a vulnerable, honest guide to growing up even when gracefulness is in short supply. [Annie Zaleski]

Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run [2016]

For decades, Bruce Springsteen sprinkled pieces of his autobiography into his song intros, repeated nightly at his concerts like liturgy. For his official autobiography, the Boss reassembled those pieces and filled in some gaps, explaining his struggles with depression and the squalor he endured as a child. Those insights are invaluable. But the real revelations in Born To Run have to do with the music. Bruce gets downright wonky here, talking about his early days in the New Jersey club scene, where the only way to make a dollar was to flatten the audience, gig after gig. This book asks fans to think about Springsteen’s songs the way he thinks of them: in terms of how they’ll work in a live setting. Their visceral punch and their epic aspirations now make even more sense. [Noel Murray]

John Taylor, In The Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, & Duran Duran [2013]

As Duran Duran’s bassist, John Taylor is tasked with laying down lively grooves with pinpoint precision. That sense of rhythm and clarity permeates the writing in his memoir, In The Pleasure Groove . The book follows Taylor as he evolves from an eager young music fan growing up in Birmingham, England, into a daydreaming art school student and then a music superstar with Duran Duran. Although there are plenty of ’80s-related memories and references to long-ago debauchery, In The Pleasure Groove is most affecting when Taylor digs deep and reflects on the more personal aspects of his life and career. His candid reminiscences about his family, and insights about getting (and staying) sober, in particular, are quite moving. [Annie Zaleski]

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Mo’ Meta Blues; The World According To Questlove [2013]

At first glance, Questlove’s first memoir, Mo’ Meta Blues , comes across like an especially enjoyable hang session nerding out with a fellow music fan, someone unafraid to admit just how emotionally meaningful the records that connected with you growing up really are. But as you get deeper, you realize the book is actually a skeleton key of sorts to his entire musical career—tracing the path that led him to obsessive perfection of his instrument, obsessive devotion to musical curation, and the beauty to be found by channeling feeling into technique—something too many musical memoirs quietly pass by. [Alex McLevy]

Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Memoir [2020]

In her memoir, All I Ever Wanted , The Go-Go’s’ bassist Kathy Valentine blows the fun-loving image of the group to bits. The book has its share of salacious rock ’n’ roll stories, but it is Valentine’s honest and unflinching account of growing up unsupervised in a single-parent household that is the most engrossing—and difficult—to read. This includes a pregnancy and its termination at 12, which she revisits at 23, when she goes for the procedure again, then performs with The Go-Go’s the very next day. Valentine speaks candidly about her addiction, her destructive behavior, and the people she hurt, taking full responsibility for her actions. Despite her negligent upbringing, there are no complaints or accusations. This is perhaps All I Ever Wanted ’s strongest statement: acceptance without resentment. [Lily Moayeri]

Michelle Zauner, Crying In H Mart [2021]

Michelle Zauner, a.k.a. the band Japanese Breakfast, has been a fixture on the New York Times Best Seller list since the release of her raw, grief-filled memoir, Crying In H Mart, about a year ago. The book (which was preceded by a viral New Yorker essay of the same name) focuses on Zauner’s experience of her mother’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death. There are numerous flashbacks to Zauner’s relationship with her mother, which are at times devastatingly tender, and at others, brutal to the point of cruelty. Somehow, the mouth-watering and sensual food descriptions threaded throughout soften these blows. Zauner puts her lyrical skills to work painting detailed scenarios steeped in emotion so heightened, you can almost taste it. Do not read if you have recently lost a loved one: Crying In H Mart may send you off the deep end. [Lily Moayeri]

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Best Biographies » Artists' Biographies

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Maria Loh, Professor of the History of Art at CUNY Hunter College, chooses her best books on the lives of famous artists . Her choice is varied, including works on portraiture in the renaissance, as well as On Photography by Susan Sontag and Just Kids by Patti Smith. Meanwhile, Adam Eaker, assistant curator in the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, chooses his best books on the Dutch masters .

Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, one of the world’s leading authorities on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, chooses his best books on one of the most famous of all artists .

Monet: The Restless Vision

By jackie wullschläger.

Read expert recommendations

“As I read it, at first Monet is not an attractive character. You think, ‘This is absolutely why, as a woman, you should not live with an artist.’ It’s full of scrounging letters, and the suffering of these women who are, of course, immortalised in beautiful portraits by him, but following him around or being abandoned by him…She explains quite how it is that he comes to revolutionise art and to create these ravishing works that are just luminous. She writes very beautifully about it. As life goes on, instead of being improvident, he becomes very wealthy. Finally, you see him at Giverny employing six gardeners, one of whom has to dust off the water lilies! There’s great pathos. You’re won over to him, as his life goes on, and see how he, too, has suffered for his art. It’s a rich and moving account.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Duff Cooper Prize

Susan Brigden , Historian

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers

By deborah heiligman.

“Heiligman’s book is a multi-layered work of cultural history. It is a tightly wound story of two brothers, one of whom goes on to become one of the most famous impressionist painters and the other a seller of paintings. Both Van Gogh brothers played a central role in the history of late 19th-century art and ended up dying tragically, within months of one another. t gives the reader a feel for Western Europe in the 1870s and 1880s, for the countryside and vibrant art scene that inspired the brothers. It builds into a full biography of Van Gogh and his cohort. History is not at the center of the book; it’s the wings for the story.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books for Teens

Marc Favreau , Publisher

Rembrandt's Eyes

By simon schama.

“I chose this book because Simon Schama is such a wonderful writer. He has guts…He goes all the way, with all the senses engaged. Reading Schama is like stepping into a time machine. You can smell the paint, the poor quality of the air above Amsterdam’s canals, centuries ago…Rembrandt’s Eyes reads almost like a novel. He goes very far with some of his speculations, but I find it marvellous that Schama can do this about a foreign country—one that he didn’t even grow up in. It’s a real accomplishment of cultural empathy, and of course of bringing another time alive. He writes a book at once about a Dutch hero (and Rembrandt’s competition with Rubens, the Flemish master) and about Dutch history with the authority of a native…You have to remember: the only way to write about history or about a fabulous figure like Rembrandt is by being a storyteller. You have to use words, images, metaphors to kiss the past alive—and that is exactly what Schama does. I admire him for it. And since we’re talking about art, so much comes down to interpretation. Adopting an interpretive technique I think is fitting for the subject matter. What he does is to create a richer picture for the reader.” Read more...

The best books on Rembrandt

Onno Blom , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

The Lives of the Artists

By giorgio vasari.

“With Vasari, we begin thinking that artistic biography might matter. As much as we may want to resist the notion that biography is central to understanding art, it seems as though it is just inevitable – the life of the artist is an inevitable element in considering the art itself, as Vasari realised early on.” Read more...

The best books on Andy Warhol

Blake Gopnik , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

Leonardo da Vinci

By walter isaacson.

“Isaacson has really captured the complex brilliance of one of the most extraordinary humans in the world. It’s a favourite of mine.” Read more...

The best books on High Performance Psychology

Michael Gervais , Psychologist

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922 - 1968

By william feaver.

***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***

This book is the first volume in William Feaver's biography of Lucian Freud and the book to read on one of the 20th century's greatest painters. Feaver was a journalist and artist who became a friend of Freud's and they'd speak on the phone most weeks. As they put together material for this book—a process that took many years—they agreed that it wouldn't be published until after Freud died. The second volume of the biography , which covers the years till Freud's death in 2011, has also been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968 - 2011

* **Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***

This is volume two in William Feaver's two-part biography. Volume one covers the years 1992-1968 and was shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.

de Kooning: An American Master

By annalyn swan & mark stevens.

“Through the accounts of his contemporaries, de Kooning emerges not only as a great artist, but as sympathetic figure for whom we are rooting from the first pages” Read more...

The best books on Goya and the art of biography

Janis Tomlinson , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

by Lawrence Gowing

“Gowing adopts what you might describe as a formalist aesthetic approach to characterising the power of these paintings” Read more...

The best books on The Dutch Masters

Adam Eaker , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

Goya: A Portrait of the Artist

By janis tomlinson, memoirs of the life of john constable: composed chiefly of his letters, by c.r. leslie.

“You might say that Freud and Constable were literally close.” Read more...

The best books on Lucian Freud

William Feaver , Artists & Art Critic

Francis Bacon’s Gilded Gutter Life

By daniel farson.

“He came back to London wanting to create things that were reflecting the latest aesthetic and ideological thinking in art and design that he’d seen on the continent.” Read more...

The best books on Bohemian Living

Darren Coffield , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

by Blake Gopnik

"One of the major points in my book is that he’s not at all the kind of holy fool or idiot savant that he still stands as in the popular imagination...He was a deeply sophisticated thinker about art, as much so as other high calibre thinkers like Donald Judd or Pablo Picasso." —Blake Gopnik

Our interview with Blake Gopnik on the Best Andy Warhol Books was published on March 5th, 2020

Ninth Street Women: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art

By mary gabriel.

“ Ninth Street Women is about the women who were part of that collection of artists in post-war New York, who had really been written out of art history. When we think of Abstract Expressionism, we think of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko. It’s almost like a string quartet. But this book shines a spotlight on the period and shows that there’s a full orchestra playing, not just those four men. I really loved it, because it wasn’t preachy. It didn’t say, ‘they’ve been overlooked.’ It just told the story of Abstract Expressionism from a really, impeccably well-researched position.” Read more...

The best books on Art History

Charlotte Mullins , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley

By jane kamensky, by kenneth clark.

“It’s a beautiful book. And Leonardo has been fortunate in some of the writers who have tackled him……The book as a whole conveys wonderful shape to Leonardo’s art and life. And Clark is more right about aspects of his science and engineering than he has any right to be. He kept clear of the science, he didn’t really tackle it head on, yet via the art and via the drawings, he gets an enormous amount right about Leonardo’s scientific opus. “ Read more...

The best books on Leonardo da Vinci

Martin Kemp , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

Nollekens and his Times: Comprehending A Life Of That Celebrated Sculptor, And Memoirs Of Several Contemporary Artists

“I was completely charmed by the scurrilous, sardonic, sarcastic and farcical account of the life of this very eccentric, miserly, unhappily married person who made portrait busts of eminent people such as the bibulous politician Charles James Fox. It’s a splendid book, with none of the pieties of standard art biographies. What makes these so irritating to my mind, and to my eyes, is that they often see more intellectual substance and indeed more cunning in painting than is actually there. Painting is a fundamentally straightforward practice. If you’re making portrait busts like Nollekens did, it’s practically a nine-to-five occupation and not something to be larded in mysticism.” Read more...

The Andy Warhol Diaries

By pat hackett.

“We assume that Andy knew that they might be published, and he may have wanted them to be published – and so would have controlled and manipulated their content. He didn’t scribble these entries down in a notebook, for his own eyes only. So you never know if he’s speaking to posterity in order to falsify the record – or at least to construct a record – or whether the Diaries are actually giving you a genuine insight into the man himself, not only into his psyche but also into his actions and behaviours. There are incidents mentioned in the Diaries that his friends say are absolutely and simply untrue.” Read more...

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

By benvenuto cellini.

“The only autobiography by a major Italian Renaissance artist. We don’t have Leonardo’s, or Michelangelo’s, or anybody else’s memoirs. But we do have Cellini’s, and they are absolutely astonishing. It’s a completely thrilling book, and anybody who loves Italy and Italian art has to read it. I more often than not take it with me when I’m in Florence or Rome, to read passages of it. If a few hundred readers discover this book then we will have done something very, very worthwhile. We’ll have enriched their lives.” Read more...

Five of the Best European Classics

David Campbell , Publisher

Tiepolo Pink

By roberto calasso.

In a way, Calasso makes a case for Tiepolo as not the last of the Old Masters, but one of the first of the Moderns.

El «Cuaderno italiano», 1770-1786: los orígenes del arte de Goya

By jesús urrea fernández & manuela b. mena marqués.

“Rather than talk about sources for drawings in the notebook, or identities of named individuals, I invite people to look at this book as an intimate document of Goya’s life.” Read more...

The Peninsular War: A New History

By charles esdaile.

“Charles Esdaile’s book, The Peninsular War is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the tragedy that inspired Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’.” Read more...

Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen

By giles tremlett.

“Tremlett reveals Catherine through her role in events and relationships with people significant not only in her life, but in the course of European history: royal births, weddings, and deaths; alliances and intrigues of leaders jockeying for power; and the ever fascinating, ever despicable, Henry VIII.” Read more...

Cartas a Martín Zapater

By mercedes águeda & xavier de salas.

“The letters from the 1780s are crucial to understanding Goya’s career, as he reports his progress in impressing influential people and commissions received.” Read more...

Private View: The Lively World of British Art

By antony armstrong-jones (lord snowdon) , bryan robertson & john russell.

A Free House!: Or, The Artist as Craftsman

By walter richard sickert.

“Sickert was Austrian-Danish-British, a great European figure. He was a follower-student of Degas, knew Whistler very well, and they were almost competitors for a time. He wore very loud suits, was a great dresser-up and loved being a kind of artist rascal, always against the establishment, as he saw it. The London establishment was peculiarly stuffy in his day, roughly from the 1890s to the 1930s. And he wrote brilliantly…His book A Free House is a selection of his writings. He calls the bluff on Roger Fry for example, who in the early 1900s was forever earnestly proselytizing for Cézanne, while Sickert came out fighting, questioning everything including Cezanne.” Read more...

Emil and the Detectives

By eileen hall (translator) & erich kästner.

“ Emil has this vivid atmosphere of growing up in late 1920s Berlin, in which the protagonist and his young accomplices, rough-and-tumble working class boys, set out to catch a mysterious man in a hat who had pinched money from Emil when he fell asleep on a train.” Read more...

Factory: Andy Warhol

By andy warhol & stephen shore.

“There are a couple things that are special about this book. One is that sense of immediacy, of a snapshot aesthetic, which was to become a hallmark of Shore’s work as one of our great photographers.” Read more...

The Arts and Man

By raymond s. stites.

“One of the wonderful things about this book is that we know Andy Warhol actually read it. His copy of this textbook still exists in the Warhol archive. This is one of the things that is surprising about Andy and that I think is extremely important to understand: Lots of people who knew him well said he was smart in a fairly traditional sense.” Read more...

Swasarnt Nerf's Gay Guides for 1949

By hugh hagius.

” There’s this beautiful balance in these Gay Guides between an excitement about the possibilities of this particular subculture in American life, and the very real risks involved in pursuing those possibilities.” Read more...

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation

By e.h. gombrich.

“Gombrich was kind of mentor of mine.” Read more...

Leonardo da Vinci: i documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee

By edoardo villata.

“I always emphasise primary sources.” Read more...

The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci

By jean paul richter.

“He details all the military things he can do. He can build bridges for crossing moats and he can dig tunnels.” Read more...

The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting

By victor stoichita.

“Stoichita pushes us to think about painting as a site of self-awareness, where painting becomes almost a form of and forum for visual philosophy.” Read more...

The best books on The Lives of Artists

Maria Loh , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

by Patti Smith

Is there any reason not to listen to Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids , as an audiobook when it’s narrated by the artist herself?

Narrator: Patti Smith

Length: 9 hours and 50 minutes

Camera Lucida

By roland barthes.

“I have to confess that Camera Lucida is perhaps my favourite book ever about art.” Read more...

The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art

By joseph leo koerner.

“This is a seminal text in art history because it refers not only to Dürer specifically, but to the evolution of the idea of the artist.” Read more...

The best books on Albrecht Dürer

Ulinka Rublack , Art Historians, Critics & Curator

Art of the Everyday: Dutch Painting and the Realist Novel

By ruth bernard yeazell.

“That sort of cross-media artistic inspiration across centuries is very fascinating to me.” Read more...

Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market

By svetlana alpers.

“Alpers is the dominant figure in American art history working on Dutch art in recent years” Read more...

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age

“There’s a big debate within the study of Dutch art about whether these works are pure transcriptions of reality, documents of a historical moment, or whether they are really symbolic texts that we should be interpreting on a figurative level. I think the debate comes down to this: is the best explanation of these images a thorough knowledge of Dutch history and culture at the time, such as Schama presents? Or is there something irreducible in the greatest Dutch art that you can’t boil down to historical context?” Read more...

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy

By mark doty.

“He’s very right, that is what still life painting is about: the investment that humans make in things.” Read more...

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

By dante alighieri.

“It’s a poem that comes out of conflict in Florence in various ways. In a most literal sense it comes out of Dante’s exile – he was exiled in 1302 as a result of the conflicts between several political factions and he remained exiled, in various parts of Italy, for the remainder of his life (he died in 1321). The Commedia reflects that acute sense of the loss of one’s homeland and the resentment of that – Florence gets attacked quite viciously by characters in the Inferno . And then there’s the epigraph for the Inferno : ‘A Florentine by birth but not by disposition.'” Read more...

The best books on Dante

Nick Havely , Literary Scholar

On Photography

By susan sontag.

“Sontag’s lesson is that being photographed gives us a sense of both being real and also of existing. The rise of the selfie is eloquent testimony to how people continue to see themselves and how personal histories are now constructed first and foremost through the authority of the image.” Read more...

The best books on Goya and the art of biography , recommended by Janis Tomlinson

Catherine of aragon: henry's spanish queen by giles tremlett, de kooning: an american master by annalyn swan & mark stevens, el «cuaderno italiano», 1770-1786: los orígenes del arte de goya by jesús urrea fernández & manuela b. mena marqués, cartas a martín zapater by mercedes águeda & xavier de salas, the peninsular war: a new history by charles esdaile.

The art of Francisco de Goya reflects the social and political chaos of Spain in his day, leaving later generations to read into his prolific work—by turns formal and bizarre, official and fantastic—many often contradictory interpretations. Art historian Janis Tomlinson recommends books that disentangle Goya from the retroactive projections of later admirers and situates him in his own time. We also consider what makes for a compelling biography.

The best books on Lucian Freud , recommended by William Feaver

Emil and the detectives by eileen hall (translator) & erich kästner, private view: the lively world of british art by antony armstrong-jones (lord snowdon), bryan robertson & john russell, a free house: or, the artist as craftsman by walter richard sickert, memoirs of the life of john constable: composed chiefly of his letters by c.r. leslie.

Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to his confidante and frequent collaborator, William Feaver , on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver's transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume biography . He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century.

Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke about painting, the art world and his life and loves to his confidante and frequent collaborator, William Feaver, on the phone most weeks for many years. Feaver’s transcript forms the core of his definitive two-volume biography . He speaks with us about the best books for understanding the life and work of this renowned painter, and the very particular collaboration that led to this magisterial account of one of the finest painters of the last century.

The best books on Andy Warhol , recommended by Blake Gopnik

The lives of the artists by giorgio vasari, the arts and man by raymond s. stites, swasarnt nerf's gay guides for 1949 by hugh hagius, factory: andy warhol by andy warhol & stephen shore, the andy warhol diaries by pat hackett.

Andy Warhol's ubiquitous soup cans – and his willingness to play the naïf – eclipse the leading Pop Art figure's depth, as Blake Gopnik reveals in his magisterial new biography. Here, Gopnik discusses five key books that offer crucial insight into Warhol the man.

Andy Warhol’s ubiquitous soup cans – and his willingness to play the naïf – eclipse the leading Pop Art figure’s depth, as Blake Gopnik reveals in his magisterial new biography. Here, Gopnik discusses five key books that offer crucial insight into Warhol the man.

The best books on Leonardo da Vinci , recommended by Martin Kemp

The divine comedy: inferno, purgatorio, paradiso by dante alighieri, art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation by e.h. gombrich, leonardo da vinci: i documenti e le testimonianze contemporanee by edoardo villata, the literary works of leonardo da vinci by jean paul richter, leonardo da vinci by kenneth clark.

Every generation has its own Leonardo, and for many he remains a man of mystery. Martin Kemp , Emeritus Professor in Art History at Oxford and the author of the recently published Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, helps us identify the non-mythical Leonardo. What might Leonardo be doing were he alive today, in our own digital age?

Every generation has its own Leonardo, and for many he remains a man of mystery. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor in Art History at Oxford and the author of the recently published Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, helps us identify the non-mythical Leonardo. What might Leonardo be doing were he alive today, in our own digital age?

The best books on The Lives of Artists , recommended by Maria Loh

The moment of self-portraiture in german renaissance art by joseph leo koerner, the self-aware image: an insight into early modern meta-painting by victor stoichita, on photography by susan sontag, camera lucida by roland barthes, just kids by patti smith.

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh , author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master , talks to Five Books about the curated self.

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh, author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master , talks to Five Books about the curated self.

The best books on The Dutch Masters , recommended by Adam Eaker

Still life with oysters and lemon: on objects and intimacy by mark doty, the embarrassment of riches: an interpretation of dutch culture in the golden age by simon schama, vermeer by lawrence gowing, rembrandt's enterprise: the studio and the market by svetlana alpers, art of the everyday: dutch painting and the realist novel by ruth bernard yeazell.

The past may be a foreign country, but the world portrayed in the art of the Dutch Masters is not so very far from our own, says Adam Eaker of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For a society that struggles with materialism and consumption, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt from the 17th century Golden Age.

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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21

The 30 best biographies of all time.

Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction .

All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels , if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation  😉

Which biography should you read next?

Discover the perfect biography for you. Takes 30 seconds!

1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.

2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges

Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title ( a nod to his work during WWII ), a great deal of the “enigmatic” Turing is laid out in this book. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during the war, his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and of course, the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s — when homosexual acts were still a crime punishable by English law.

3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, but also a work of creative genius itself. This massive undertaking of over 800 pages details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life: from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid (and ultimately career-destroying) affair with Maria Reynolds. He may never have been president, but he was a fascinating and unique figure in American history — plus it’s fun to get the truth behind the songs.

Prefer to read about fascinating First Ladies rather than almost-presidents? Check out this awesome list of books about First Ladies over on The Archive.

4. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

A prolific essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Hurston turned her hand to biographical writing in 1927 with this incredible work, kept under lock and key until it was published 2018. It’s based on Hurston’s interviews with the last remaining survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Rendered in searing detail and Lewis’ highly affecting African-American vernacular, this biography of the “last black cargo” will transport you back in time to an era that, chillingly, is not nearly as far away from us as it feels.

5. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Though many a biography of him has been attempted, Gilbert’s is the final authority on Winston Churchill — considered by many to be Britain’s greatest prime minister ever. A dexterous balance of in-depth research and intimately drawn details makes this biography a perfect tribute to the mercurial man who led Britain through World War II.

Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the \'dominion of matter\' with \'a great stillness\'--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening.

Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee

6. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

This “biography of the world’s most famous equation” is a one-of-a-kind take on the genre: rather than being the story of Einstein, it really does follow the history of the equation itself. From the origins and development of its individual elements (energy, mass, and light) to their ramifications in the twentieth century, Bodanis turns what could be an extremely dry subject into engaging fare for readers of all stripes.

7. Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

When Enrique was only five years old, his mother left Honduras for the United States, promising a quick return. Eleven years later, Enrique finally decided to take matters into his own hands in order to see her again: he would traverse Central and South America via railway, risking his life atop the “train of death” and at the hands of the immigration authorities, to reunite with his mother. This tale of Enrique’s perilous journey is not for the faint of heart, but it is an account of incredible devotion and sharp commentary on the pain of separation among immigrant families.

8. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Herrera’s 1983 biography of renowned painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognizable names in modern art, has since become the definitive account on her life. And while Kahlo no doubt endured a great deal of suffering (a horrific accident when she was eighteen, a husband who had constant affairs), the focal point of the book is not her pain. Instead, it’s her artistic brilliance and immense resolve to leave her mark on the world — a mark that will not soon be forgotten, in part thanks to Herrera’s dedicated work.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Perhaps the most impressive biographical feat of the twenty-first century, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman whose cells completely changed the trajectory of modern medicine. Rebecca Skloot skillfully commemorates the previously unknown life of a poor black woman whose cancer cells were taken, without her knowledge, for medical testing — and without whom we wouldn’t have many of the critical cures we depend upon today.

10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992. Five months later, McCandless was found emaciated and deceased in his shelter — but of what cause? Krakauer’s biography of McCandless retraces his steps back to the beginning of the trek, attempting to suss out what the young man was looking for on his journey, and whether he fully understood what dangers lay before him.

11. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by James Agee

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” From this line derives the central issue of Agee and Evans’ work: who truly deserves our praise and recognition? According to this 1941 biography, it’s the barely-surviving sharecropper families who were severely impacted by the American “Dust Bowl” — hundreds of people entrenched in poverty, whose humanity Evans and Agee desperately implore their audience to see in their book.

12. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Another mysterious explorer takes center stage in this gripping 2009 biography. Grann tells the story of Percy Fawcett, the archaeologist who vanished in the Amazon along with his son in 1925, supposedly in search of an ancient lost city. Parallel to this narrative, Grann describes his own travels in the Amazon 80 years later: discovering firsthand what threats Fawcett may have encountered, and coming to realize what the “Lost City of Z” really was.

13. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Though many of us will be familiar with the name Mao Zedong, this prodigious biography sheds unprecedented light upon the power-hungry “Red Emperor.” Chang and Halliday begin with the shocking statistic that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths during peacetime — more than any other twentieth-century world leader. From there, they unravel Mao’s complex ideologies, motivations, and missions, breaking down his long-propagated “hero” persona and thrusting forth a new, grislier image of one of China’s biggest revolutionaries.

14. Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Wilson

Titled after one of her most evocative poems, this shimmering bio of Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach. Instead of focusing on her years of depression and tempestuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes, it chronicles her life before she ever came to Cambridge. Wilson closely examines her early family and relationships, feelings and experiences, with information taken from her meticulous diaries — setting a strong precedent for other Plath biographers to follow.

15. The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

What if you had twenty-four different people living inside you, and you never knew which one was going to come out? Such was the life of Billy Milligan, the subject of this haunting biography by the author of Flowers for Algernon . Keyes recounts, in a refreshingly straightforward style, the events of Billy’s life and how his psyche came to be “split”... as well as how, with Keyes’ help, he attempted to put the fragments of himself back together.

16. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

This gorgeously constructed biography follows Paul Farmer, a doctor who’s worked for decades to eradicate infectious diseases around the globe, particularly in underprivileged areas. Though Farmer’s humanitarian accomplishments are extraordinary in and of themselves, the true charm of this book comes from Kidder’s personal relationship with him — and the sense of fulfillment the reader sustains from reading about someone genuinely heroic, written by someone else who truly understands and admires what they do.

17. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Here’s another bio that will reshape your views of a famed historical tyrant, though this time in a surprisingly favorable light. Decorated scholar Andrew Roberts delves into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his near-flawless military instincts to his complex and confusing relationship with his wife. But Roberts’ attitude toward his subject is what really makes this work shine: rather than ridiculing him ( as it would undoubtedly be easy to do ), he approaches the “petty tyrant” with a healthy amount of deference.

18. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson might not seem as intriguing or scandalous as figures like Kennedy, Nixon, or W. Bush. But in this expertly woven biography, Robert Caro lays out the long, winding road of his political career, and it’s full of twists you wouldn’t expect. Johnson himself was a surprisingly cunning figure, gradually maneuvering his way closer and closer to power. Finally, in 1963, he got his greatest wish — but at what cost? Fans of Adam McKay’s Vice , this is the book for you.

19. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Anyone who grew up reading Little House on the Prairie will surely be fascinated by this tell-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser draws upon never-before-published historical resources to create a lush study of the author’s life — not in the gently narrated manner of the Little House series, but in raw and startling truths about her upbringing, marriage, and volatile relationship with her daughter (and alleged ghostwriter) Rose Wilder Lane.

20. Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled just after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot of Prince’s life is actually a largely visual work — Shahidi served as his private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. And whatever they say about pictures being worth a thousand words, Shahidi’s are worth more still: Prince’s incredible vibrance, contagious excitement, and altogether singular personality come through in every shot.

21. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Could there be a more fitting title for a book about the husband-wife team who discovered radioactivity? What you may not know is that these nuclear pioneers also had a fascinating personal history. Marie Sklodowska met Pierre Curie when she came to work in his lab in 1891, and just a few years later they were married. Their passion for each other bled into their passion for their work, and vice-versa — and in almost no time at all, they were on their way to their first of their Nobel Prizes.

22. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

She may not have been assassinated or killed in a mysterious plane crash, but Rosemary Kennedy’s fate is in many ways the worst of “the Kennedy Curse.” As if a botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Yet in this new biography, penned by devoted Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of Rosemary’s post-lobotomy life is at last revealed.

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

This appropriately lyrical biography of brilliant Jazz Age poet and renowned feminist, Edna St. Vincent Millay, is indeed a perfect balance of savage and beautiful. While Millay’s poetic work was delicate and subtle, the woman herself was feisty and unpredictable, harboring unusual and occasionally destructive habits that Milford fervently explores.

24. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

Holmes’ famous philosophy of “biography as pursuit” is thoroughly proven here in his first full-length biographical work. Shelley: The Pursuit details an almost feverish tracking of Percy Shelley as a dark and cutting figure in the Romantic period — reforming many previous historical conceptions about him through Holmes’ compelling and resolute writing.

25. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Another Gothic figure has been made newly known through this work, detailing the life of prolific horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson. Author Ruth Franklin digs deep into the existence of the reclusive and mysterious Jackson, drawing penetrating comparisons between the true events of her life and the dark nature of her fiction.

26. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Fans of Into the Wild and The Lost City of Z will find their next adventure fix in this 2017 book about Christopher Knight, a man who lived by himself in the Maine woods for almost thirty years. The tale of this so-called “last true hermit” will captivate readers who have always fantasized about escaping society, with vivid descriptions of Knight’s rural setup, his carefully calculated moves and how he managed to survive the deadly cold of the Maine winters.

27. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, is properly immortalized in Isaacson’s masterful biography. It divulges the details of Jobs’ little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world — not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar, and indeed within the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

28. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Olympic runner Louis Zamperini was just twenty-six when his US Army bomber crashed and burned in the Pacific, leaving him and two other men afloat on a raft for forty-seven days — only to be captured by the Japanese Navy and tortured as a POW for the next two and a half years. In this gripping biography, Laura Hillenbrand tracks Zamperini’s story from beginning to end… including how he embraced Christian evangelism as a means of recovery, and even came to forgive his tormentors in his later years.

29. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Everyone knows of Vladimir Nabokov — but what about his wife, Vera, whom he called “the best-humored woman I have ever known”? According to Schiff, she was a genius in her own right, supporting Vladimir not only as his partner, but also as his all-around editor and translator. And she kept up that trademark humor throughout it all, inspiring her husband’s work and injecting some of her own creative flair into it along the way.

30. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

William Shakespeare is a notoriously slippery historical figure — no one really knows when he was born, what he looked like, or how many plays he wrote. But that didn’t stop Stephen Greenblatt, who in 2004 turned out this magnificently detailed biography of the Bard: a series of imaginative reenactments of his writing process, and insights on how the social and political ideals of the time would have influenced him. Indeed, no one exists in a vacuum, not even Shakespeare — hence the conscious depiction of him in this book as a “will in the world,” rather than an isolated writer shut up in his own musty study.

If you're looking for more inspiring nonfiction, check out this list of 30 engaging self-help books , or this list of the last century's best memoirs !

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Artist Biographies

A list of artist biographies.

Citation:  Pettinger, Tejvan . “Famous Artist Biographies”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net, 23/05/2014. Updated 26 June 2019.

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The 21 most captivating biographies of all time

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• Biographies illuminate pivotal times and people in history. 
• The biography books on this list are heavily researched and fascinating stories.
• Want more books? Check out the best classics , historical fiction books , and new releases.

For centuries, books have allowed readers to be whisked away to magical lands, romantic beaches, and historical events. Biographies take readers through time to a single, remarkable life memorialized in gripping, dramatic, or emotional stories. They give us the rare opportunity to understand our heroes — or even just someone we would never otherwise know. 

To create this list, I chose biographies that were highly researched, entertainingly written, and offer a fully encompassing lens of a person whose story is important to know in 2021. 

The 21 best biographies of all time:

The biography of a beloved supreme court justice.

"Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.25

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon who spent her life fighting for gender equality and civil rights in the legal system. This is an inspirational biography that follows her triumphs and struggles, dissents, and quotes, packaged with chapters titled after Notorious B.I.G. tracks — a nod to the many memes memorializing Ginsburg as an iconic dissident. 

The startlingly true biography of a previously unknown woman

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.06

Henrietta was a poor tobacco farmer, whose "immortal" cells have been used to develop the polio vaccine, study cancer, and even test the effects of an atomic bomb — despite being taken from her without her knowledge or consent. This biography traverses the unethical experiments on African Americans, the devastation of Henrietta Lacks' family, and the multimillion-dollar industry launched by the cells of a woman who lies somewhere in an unmarked grave.

The poignant biography of an atomic bomb survivor

"A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb" by Paul Glynn, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.51

Takashi Nagai was a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. A renowned scientist and spiritual man, Nagai continued to live in his ruined city after the attack, suffering from leukemia while physically and spiritually helping his community heal. Takashi Nagai's life was dedicated to selfless service and his story is a deeply moving one of suffering, forgiveness, and survival.

The highly researched biography of Malcolm X

"The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X" by Les Payne and Tamara Payne, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.99

Written by the investigative journalist Les Payne and finished by his daughter after his passing, Malcolm X's biography "The Dead are Arising" was written and researched over 30 years. This National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning biography uses vignettes to create an accurate, detailed, and gripping portrayal of the revolutionary minister and famous human rights activist. 

The remarkable biography of an Indigenous war leader

"The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History" by Joseph M. Marshall III, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $14.99 

Crazy Horse was a legendary Lakota war leader, most famous for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn where Indigenous people defeated Custer's cavalry. A descendant of Crazy Horse's community, Joseph M. Marshall III drew from research and oral traditions that have rarely been shared but offer a powerful and culturally rich story of this acclaimed Lakota hero.

The captivating biography about the cofounder of Apple

"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.75

Steve Jobs is a cofounder of Apple whose inventiveness reimagined technology and creativity in the 21st century. Water Issacson draws from 40 interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with over 100 of his family members and friends to create an encompassing and fascinating portrait of such an influential man.

The shocking biography of a woman committed to an insane asylum

"The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear" by Kate Moore, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $22.49

This biography is about Elizabeth Packard, a woman who was committed to an asylum in 1860 by her husband for being an outspoken woman and wife. Her story illuminates the conditions inside the hospital and the sinister ways of caretakers, an unfortunately true history that reflects the abuses suffered by many women of the time.

The defining biography of a formerly enslaved man

"Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $12.79

50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States, Cudjo Lewis was captured, enslaved, and transported to the US. In 1931, the author spent three months with Cudjo learning the details of his life beginning in Africa, crossing the Middle Passage, and his years enslaved before the Civil War. This biography offers a first-hand account of this unspoken piece of painful history.

The biography of a famous Mexican painter

"Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $24.89

Filled with a wealth of her life experiences, this biography of Frida Kahlo conveys her intelligence, strength, and artistry in a cohesive timeline. The book spans her childhood during the Mexican Revolution, the terrible accident that changed her life, and her passionate relationships, all while intertwining her paintings and their histories through her story.

The exciting biography of Susan Sontag

"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $20.24

Susan Sontag was a 20th-century writer, essayist, and cultural icon with a dark reputation. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, archived works, and photographs, this biography extends across Sontag's entire life while reading like an emotional and exciting literary drama.

The biography that inspired a hit musical

"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.04

The inspiration for the similarly titled Broadway musical, this comprehensive biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton aims to tell the story of his decisions, sacrifice, and patriotism that led to many political and economic effects we still see today. In this history, readers encounter Hamilton's childhood friends, his highly public affair, and his dreams of American prosperity. 

The award-winning biography of an artistically influential man

"The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke" by Jeffrey C Stewart, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $25.71

Alain Locke was a writer, artist, and theorist who is known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Outlining his personal and private life, Alain Locke's biography is a blooming image of his art, his influences, and the far-reaching ways he promoted African American artistic and literary creations.

The remarkable biography of Ida B. Wells

"Ida: A Sword Among Lions" by Paula J. Giddings, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.99

This award-winning biography of Ida B. Wells is adored for its ability to celebrate Ida's crusade of activism and simultaneously highlight the racially driven abuses legally suffered by Black women in America during her lifetime. Ida traveled the country, exposing and opposing lynchings by reporting on the horrific acts and telling the stories of victims' communities and families. 

The tumultuous biography that radiates queer hope

"The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" by Randy Shilts, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.80

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California who was assassinated after 11 months in office. Harvey's inspirational biography is set against the rise of LGBTQIA+ activism in the 1970s, telling not only Harvey Milk's story but that of hope and perseverance in the queer community. 

The biography of a determined young woman

"Obachan: A Young Girl's Struggle for Freedom in Twentieth-Century Japan" by Tani Hanes, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $9.99

Written by her granddaughter, this biography of Mitsuko Hanamura is an amazing journey of an extraordinary and strong young woman. In 1929, Mitsuko was sent away to live with relatives at 13 and, at 15, forced into labor to help her family pay their debts. Determined to gain an education as well as her independence, Mitsuko's story is inspirational and emotional as she perseveres against abuse. 

The biography of an undocumented mother

"The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story" by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.40

Born in Mexico and growing up undocumented in Arizona, Aida Hernandez was a teen mother who dreamed of moving to New York. After being deported and separated from her child, Aida found herself back in Mexico, fighting to return to the United States and reunite with her son. This suspenseful biography follows Aida through immigration courts and detention centers on her determined journey that illuminates the flaws of the United States' immigration and justice systems.

The astounding biography of an inspiring woman

"The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire" by Tananarive Due, available on Amazon for $19

Madam C.J. Walker is most well-known as the first Black female millionaire, though she was also a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and born to former slaves in Louisiana. Researched and outlined by famous writer Alex Haley before his death, the book was written by author Tananarive Due, who brings Haley's work to life in this fascinating biography of an outstanding American pioneer.

A biography of the long-buried memories of a Hiroshima survivor

"Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story" by Anthony Drago and Douglas Wellman, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.59

When Kaleria Palichikoff was a child, her family fled Russia for the safety of Japan until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima when she was 22 years old. Struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable devastation, Kaleria set out to help victims and treat the effects of radiation. As one of the few English-speaking survivors, Kaleria was interviewed extensively by the US Army and was finally able to make a new life for herself in America after the war.

A shocking biography of survival during World War II

"Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival" by Laura Hillenbrand, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.69

During World War II, Louis Zamperini was a lieutenant bombardier who crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943. Struggling to stay alive, Zamperini pulled himself to a life raft where he would face great trials of starvation, sharks, and enemy aircraft. This biography creates an image of Louis from boyhood to his military service and depicts a historical account of atrocities during World War II.  

The comprehensive biography of an infamous leader

"Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.39

Mao was a Chinese leader, a founder of the People's Republic of China, and a nearly 30-year chairman of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976. Known as a highly controversial figure who would stop at very little in his plight to rule the world, the author spent nearly 10 years painstakingly researching and uncovering the painful truths surrounding his political rule.

The emotional biography of a Syrian refugee

"A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival" by Melissa Fleming, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.33

When Syrian refugee Doaa met Bassem, they decided to flee Egypt for Europe, becoming two of thousands seeking refuge and making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. After four days at sea, their ship was attacked and sank, leaving Doaa struggling to survive with two small children clinging to her and only a small inflation device around her wrist. This is an emotional biography about Doaa's strength and her dangerous and deadly journey towards freedom.

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Odilon Redon – A Visionary and Imaginative Artist Biography

Odilon Redon, a visionary French artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, left an indelible mark on the art world with his captivating and imaginative works. Born in Bordeaux in 1840, Redon initially gained recognition for his charcoal drawings known as “noirs,” which often explored themes of the macabre and the fantastical. However, it was his later foray into color, particularly his vivid pastels and oils, that truly showcased his mastery of symbolism and emotion. Redon’s art defied easy categorization, blending elements of Symbolism, Surrealism, and even early abstraction, making him a pivotal figure in the transition from traditional to modern art. This article delves into the life, influences, and iconic creations of Odilon Redon, illuminating his enduring impact on artistic expression.

Table of Contents

• 1 Key Takeaways
• 2.1 Early Life and Artistic Influences
• 2.2 Career and Artistic Evolution
• 2.3 Collaborations and Contemporaries
• 3.1 Symbolism and the Noirs Period
• 3.2 From Darkness to Color
• 3.3 Pastels and Oils
• 4.1 Portraits and Mythological Themes
• 4.2 Floral and Dreamlike Compositions
• 5.1 In Museums and Collections
• 5.2 Impact on Modern Art and Culture
• 5.3 Influence of Odilon Redon’s Art Today
• 6.1 What Artistic Style Is Odilon Redon Best Known For?
• 6.2 What Techniques Did Odilon Redon Employ in His Artwork?
• 6.3 What Are Some of the Prominent Themes in Odilon Redon’s Paintings?
• 6.4 How Did Odilon Redon Contribute to the Symbolist Movement?

Key Takeaways

• Odilon Redon emerged as a pivotal figure in French Symbolism with a body of work that transcends simple categorization.
• Incorporating a range of media, including lithography and oil pastels, his art captures the interplay between darkness and color, revealing a profound interest in the psychological and the fantastic.
• Redon’s legacy extends beyond his lifetime, influencing future art movements and continuously prompting exploration into the realms of dream and fantasy.

Biographical Overview

Odilon Redon was a multifaceted French artist widely acknowledged for his significant contributions to the Symbolist movement. Born on April 20, 1840, in Bordeaux, Redon’s artistic journey was distinguished by a unique blend of the visionary and the enigmatic. With a penchant for the fantastic and a nod to the psychological, Redon’s oeuvre includes an extensive range of media such as charcoal (“noirs”), lithography, pastels, and oil paintings. His artistic evolution showcases a striking duality: from the dark, monochromatic early works to the later vibrant explorations of color and form, Redon’s art constantly played at the intersection of dreams and reality.

While initially exploring dark, mysterious themes in his charcoals and lithographs, Redon later shifted toward vivid color and dream-like subjects in his pastels and oil paintings. His works often evoked an ethereal, otherworldly realm, where the line between the real and the imaginary was beautifully blurred. His flowers and mythological figures are exemplars of an introspective style that sought to represent the unseen rather than the seen world. Redon remains an influential figure in art, often regarded as a precursor to Surrealism and a bridge between the 19th-century Symbolist movement and modern art.

Early Life and Artistic Influences

Odilon Redon was born Bertrand Jean Redon on April 20, 1840, in Bordeaux, France. Growing up in a prosperous family, he adopted the nickname “Odilon” from his mother, Odile. Redon began his formal artistic education under the guidance of Stanislas Gorin who taught him drawing.

However, it was his apprenticeship with Rodolphe Bresdin, a master printmaker, that profoundly shaped Redon’s early charcoal works, known as his noirs.

Career and Artistic Evolution

His career, which spans the latter half of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th century, shows a trajectory divided into two divergent styles. Post his service in the Franco-Prussian War, Redon’s initial oeuvre is characterized by a pervasive use of charcoal, lending a dream-like quality to his noirs. As he developed, Redon transitioned into using oils and pastels, which allowed him to express a more colorful and luminous conception of the world. This period is noted for still lifes and mythological themes. His visionary works concern dream states and the imagination, positioning him within the Symbolist movement, which sought to express the ideas of the unconscious mind.

Collaborations and Contemporaries

Throughout his career, Redon was affiliated with various artists and literary figures. He was particularly influenced by Gustave Moreau, another leading Symbolist painter, under whose direction Redon’s use of color was likely emboldened. While not known for extensive collaborations, Redon’s work paralleled many artistic advancements of his time, and he remained in dialogue with other artists and the evolving movements, which eventually led to Surrealism and Dadaism.

His contemporaries included renowned artists such as Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse, whose pursuit of expressing the internal world resonated with Redon’s own artistic endeavors.

Artistic Style and Techniques

Odilon Redon’s evolution as an artist is marked by a distinctive journey from somber monochromatic works to vibrant color compositions, embracing symbolism, pastels, and oils to explore themes beyond the visible world.

Symbolism and the Noirs Period

Redon emerged as a prominent figure in Symbolist art, a movement that sought to convey the ideas of dreams and the imagination beyond the physical reality. During his Noirs period, he primarily utilized charcoal and lithography to create evocative images that often delved into the realm of fantasy and darkness.

This engagement with symbolism allowed Redon to express not what was seen, but what was perceived internally.

From Darkness to Color

In stark contrast to the Noirs period, Redon’s later career was marked by a transition from darkness to color. Inspired by the natural world, he began integrating flowers and natural elements into his work. This shift was also influenced by Japanism, mirroring the Japanese art’s flat areas of strong color. Redon’s immersion in color signified a departure from his earlier phase, symbolizing a rebirth into a new realm of creativity suffused with life and delicate hues.

Pastels and Oils

During the final stage of his artistic career, Redon predominantly worked in pastels and oils, mediums that complemented his fascination with color and allowed for richer textural and chromatic variations. He employed these mediums to masterfully create compositions flush with fantasy and poetic expression.

Flowers became a recurring subject in his pastel works—a symbol of the unseen world—and demonstrated his command over vibrant oil pigments, echoing the transition from realism to the boundaries of surrealism where the elements of dreams and imagination continued to play a central role in his creations.

Major Works and Themes

Odilon Redon’s oeuvre is celebrated for its synthesis of the dreamlike with reality, often integrating mythological subjects and florals into his compositions that invite viewers into a realm of the subconscious. His work encompasses a variety of mediums, including pastels, lithographs, and oil paintings, where he illustrates profound narratives and themes through a Symbolist lens.

Portraits and Mythological Themes

Redon’s fascination with the spiritual and mythical materialized in works like Guardian Spirit of the Waters , which evokes a mystical ambiance through his depiction of an ethereal being. Mythology also plays a central role in Redon’s vision, where he conjures images from literature and legends. In The Temptation of Saint Anthony , he deftly uses his brush to illustrate the inner turmoil and hallucinations of the saint, each stroke adding to the narrative intensity. Another significant mythological theme is evident in Redon’s portrayal of Ophelia , the tragic figure from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This work adds to the diverse range of nuances in his portrayal of characters that stem from classical literature.

Boldly, he uses color and form to convey the emotional weight of Ophelia’s narrative.

Floral and Dreamlike Compositions

A departure from human subjects reveals Redon’s penchant for the natural world with works like Flowers , which features a luxuriance of floral diversity rendered through rich color contrasts and shadowing that appear almost sentient. Similarly, in the dream motifs surface repeatedly in Redon’s art, where he marries botanical elements with fantastical imagery. This is particularly evident in his piece The Dream , where the viewer is transported to a meditative, surreal space that teases the edge of consciousness.

Redon’s lithograph, The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon Moves Towards Infinity, epitomizes his dreamlike approach, setting forth an odyssey of an eye surrounded by a stark yet compelling landscape. Furthermore, the serenity of myth comes alive in the pastel Sita, embodying a blend of Eastern mythological motifs into Redon’s Symbolist narrative, showcasing his range of thematic exploration and narrative styling.

Legacy and Influence

The works of Odilon Redon possess a transformative power that has cemented his standing within art institutions and significantly altered the course of modern art and culture.

His influence is palpable across various realms of creative expression, from fine arts to the broader cultural oeuvre.

In Museums and Collections

Redon’s masterpieces are collected and exhibited globally, with prestigious institutions holding his works. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is particularly notable for its substantial collection of Redon’s pieces, which showcase his journey from the ‘noirs’ to his brightly colored pastel works. Other museums that celebrate Redon’s legacy include The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and The Art Institute of Chicago. His art is considered a visual treasure and is meticulously preserved for public appreciation and scholarly examination.

Impact on Modern Art and Culture

Within the context of modern art, Redon stands as a figure who both inspired and paralleled the developments of movements such as the Nabis—artists who deeply valued his expressive handling of color—and the Surrealists, who saw in his work a precursor to their explorations of the unconscious. Esteemed contemporaries like Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse acknowledged Redon’s groundbreaking approach, which moved beyond the visible world to depict the ineffable and the dreamlike.

Such endorsements by eminent artists of his time solidified his impact on the course of art history.

Influence of Odilon Redon’s Art Today

To this day, Redon’s art transcends time, continuing to evoke discussion and admiration. His unique blend of reality and the imaginary realm has marked him as a visionary who paved the way for future exploration in the arts. Contemporary artists and critics reference his works, underscoring his enduring presence in discourses about the interplay between the conscious mind and the mystical aspects of human experience. Redon’s legacy lives on as his art continues to inspire and challenge the boundaries of creativity.

Odilon Redon’s legacy as an artist is a testament to his boundless creativity and profound exploration of the human psyche. His ability to evoke complex emotions through his use of color, symbolism, and fantastical imagery has cemented his place as a visionary in art history. From his early monochromatic works to his vibrant and ethereal later pieces, Redon’s journey encapsulates the evolution of artistic expression during a transformative period in art. His influence continues to resonate with contemporary artists and enthusiasts, ensuring that his contributions to the world of art remain timeless and impactful.

Frequently Asked Questions

What artistic style is odilon redon best known for.

Odilon Redon is best known for his contribution to the Symbolist movement. His artwork is characterized by a blend of dreamlike, fantastic imagery and a personal expression of the psychological and the spiritual.

What Techniques Did Odilon Redon Employ in His Artwork?

Redon utilized various techniques in his artwork, including lithography, pastel, and oil painting. He is renowned for his noirs, or black-and-white lithographs, and his expert use of vibrant colors in his later pastels and oil paintings.

What Are Some of the Prominent Themes in Odilon Redon’s Paintings?

Prominent themes in Redon’s paintings include dreams, fantasy, and the exploration of one’s inner psyche. His work often features mystical creatures and strange, macabre elements which serve to evoke emotional responses from the viewer.

How Did Odilon Redon Contribute to the Symbolist Movement?

Redon’s contribution to the Symbolist movement lies in his emphasis on the expression of emotional experiences over the representation of the external world. He created visual representations of literary ideas, symbolism, and the exploration of imagination, thus advancing the movement’s ethos of depicting the mystical and the unseen.

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Odilon Redon – A Visionary and Imaginative Artist Biography.” Art in Context. April 15, 2024. URL: https://artincontext.org/odilon-redon/

Meyer, I. (2024, 15 April). Odilon Redon – A Visionary and Imaginative Artist Biography. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/odilon-redon/

Meyer, Isabella. “Odilon Redon – A Visionary and Imaginative Artist Biography.” Art in Context , April 15, 2024. https://artincontext.org/odilon-redon/ .

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The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

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How Do Artists Do It? Parsing Their Life Stories

By Jackson Arn

Jackson Arn

We have the Catholic social scene to thank, or blame. It was the year of our Lord 1543, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese was entertaining guests at his palazzo in Rome. One of them, a physician and historian named Paolo Giovio, told the cardinal he wanted to write a series of biographies of the great modern artists: Leonardo, Michelangelo, et al. The cardinal introduced Giovio to another guest, Giorgio Vasari , a struggling painter and architect who claimed to have studied with Michelangelo, and suggested that Vasari could be of some help. Vasari provided Giovio with heaps of helpful information about Michelangelo and his peers—so much that Giovio started to question his own qualifications and suggested that maybe Vasari should take the project instead. Vasari, who was badly in debt, accepted, and the modern artist biography was born.

Vasari got the job because of his superior grasp of the facts, but today nobody really thinks of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) as factual. He may have fibbed about studying with Michelangelo, and it shows: each life in the Lives gets a short stack of pages—75 for Michelangelo in the Oxford Classics edition, 15 for Leonardo, 17 for Ghiberti—but it’s a rare page that’s totally error-free. Surveying hundreds of Italian artists, Vasari gets almost as many dates wrong as right. He says engraving was invented in Florence (it wasn’t). He says Andrea del Castagno murdered a rival painter (he didn’t).

Other inaccuracies are more like myths than mistakes. Vasari’s artists are preternaturally good at what they do almost from the moment they emerge from the womb, much like the Christian saints whose hagiographies served as models for Vasari’s biographies. The adolescent Giotto’s talent is “miraculous,” a product of “God’s grace,” and a version of divine creation in its own right: God creates life, and little Giotto paints such a lifelike fly that his master tries to swat it away. There’s plenty of juicy artist gossip in the Lives too (Leonardo and Michelangelo hated each other, Piero di Cosimo ate nothing but hard-boiled eggs), which throws the miracle of the artists’ work into starker relief.

It’s odd to imagine a book on Renaissance art that devotes more space to Ghiberti than to Leonardo, but the broad strokes of the story haven’t aged at all. Nearly 500 years later, writers still talk their way into plum gigs by going to the right parties. Accuracy is still important but relative. Artist biographies still sell well because people think the art is interesting and assume the artist must be too.

The parts that make up the basic formula for an artist biography have stayed the same as well: human interest plus elements of creative genius that can be analyzed but never fully explained. The main difference is that today’s artist biographies tend to be hundreds of pages long, not dozens. The juicy gossip and creative genius have to be spread over a greater word count, until the juice is almost dry, and genius starts to look like nothing special.

Biographers of artists deserve our respect and our sympathy. Many of the people they write about, to give Oscar Wilde a nod, haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die. Art is the reason we care about artists’ lives, but usually their lives are neither directly connected to their art’s cultural value nor strikingly, amusingly detached from it.

Some artists do great work in their twenties and spend the next fifty years at dinner parties and awards luncheons; others work anonymously for decades before they gain enough attention to prompt a too-little-too-late life history. Even Jesus had years of obscurity, but most artist biographers keep continuous watch over their subjects from cradle to grave, no matter how little happened in between. And God forbid the artist’s life is really interesting, in which case a suitably thorough biography will take decades to finish, assuming it doesn’t finish the biographer first.

One way to avoid both longueurs and overkill is to stick to the extra-interesting portions of the artist’s life and forget the rest. Alexander Nemerov’s Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York (2021), one of the most breezily entertaining artist biographies of recent years, devotes 217 pages to a single decade of the painter’s career and 10 pages to everything else. It’s not the definitive life of Frankenthaler, and it’s clearly not trying to be.

Other biographies start out aiming for definitiveness, fall short for unforeseeable reasons, and are the better for it. By beginning Magritte : A Life (2020) with the announcement that Magritte is “the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world,” Alex Danchev promises to stick with his subject to the bitter end (anything less would be an affront to the modern world).

Danchev died of a heart attack in 2016, leaving the last twenty years of Magritte’s biography unwritten; a chapter covering this period was added by art historian Sarah Whitfield, who modestly admitted her contribution was a thinner version of the work Danchev, with his French fluency and his years of research, would have turned in. But when you’re dealing with a painter who ended up recycling a lot of his own ideas, thinner isn’t such a bad way to go.

Even setting aside money, masochism, and glory, there are plenty of excellent reasons to write a book-length artist biography. Some artists make great art and still find the time to live a fun life, after all. Even if they’re too busy for that, they can still serve as smart observers of their times, so that their biographies are more like biographies of an entire era—notice the subtitle of Nemerov’s Frankenthaler book. Writing a biography also allows the author to make a full-throated case for a neglected artist’s importance, though if this is the goal, the writer will probably need to shoot for whole-life definitiveness, with no Nemerovian shortcuts along the way.

One might object that there are better ways to make this case—a critical study of Magritte’s paintings, for example, instead of hundreds of pages on Magritte’s schooldays and sex life with descriptions of the paintings mixed in. This might be true. But an artist’s full-length biography is a badge of honor few critical studies can rival. It’s not just that biographies sell better; a critical study argues that an artist is important, but a biography makes the same case simply by existing. Biographers prove their devotion to their subjects by straining their eyes in archives, much as certain birds expend valuable energy building little structures out of twigs in order to signal devotion to potential mates. How much does Magritte matter? Enough for somebody to spend years researching hot air balloon crashes in his childhood town.

All artist biographies, definitive or not, implicitly ask, “How did they do it?” In the sixteenth century, Vasari had the luxury of answering “God,” but our disenchanted age won’t tolerate such simplicity: we know that artists get their inspiration (the word’s trivialization reflects the disenchantment) from college courses, beloved siblings, dead parents, lovers, pets, broken bones, opium, TV, ads, jokes, mentors, whiskey, disillusioning meetings with idols, and STDs.

The process by which these things become art is still basically unknowable, but where Vasari’s Renaissance heroes breathed in the spirit of the divine, more recent biographical subjects are obliged to snort up the air of the everyday and still somehow exhale masterpieces. In the absence of certainty about which stuff inspired which artworks, biographers tend to favor more over less, which explains some of their page counts. The big question—how the artist did it—is broken down into fifty thousand little questions: What movie did she watch? Which book did he read on vacation? Who was at the party? What was the cat’s name?

Maybe a hot air balloon crash does hold the secret to Magritte’s art or, as Danchev suggests, part of it. Who am I to disagree? I can name episodes of “The Simpsons” that had a bigger impact on me than certain members of my family; maybe Magritte had a similar thing with balloons, and if so, it’s only right for his biographer to discuss them.

This brings up one reason for the popularity of the twenty-first-century artist biography: in detailing the minutiae of everyday life, it makes the artist just like us (weren’t you into balloons as a kid?). This, in turn, is a major advantage of the biography over the critical study: it’s harder to get away with oversimplifications, since minutiae don’t readily change or go away.

Reading a good artist biography makes you realize how much of art history is oversimplification. Florine Stettheimer is presumed to have been an idle epicure; Barbara Bloemink’s biography amends the stereotype without banishing it completely. Alexander Calder is described as boyishly apolitical; Jed Perl devotes some of the most thoughtful pages of his excellent Calder biography to the artist’s philosophy of freedom and free speech. Picasso claimed he could draw like Raphael when he was eight; in his four-volume biography, John Richardson shows how very un-Raphael-esque Picasso’s juvenilia actually was.

These aren’t just corrections of the art historical record; they’re calls to look closer, to wipe away smudges like “apolitical” and “epicurean” and “Raphael-esque” and see art and artists for what they really are. But Rosalind Krauss considered the facile connection of artist and art to be the real problem, and the real oversimplification. Writing for October in 1980, more than a decade before the first volume of Richardson’s Picasso biography appeared, Krauss mocked Richardson f or a New York Review of Books article in which he suggested that Picasso’s style could be analyzed in terms of his love life, friends, etc.

Such autobiographical approaches to Picasso, Krauss contended, were ruining his paintings by reducing their rich ambiguities to pat, one-to-one reflections of life. The fact, for example, that Picasso’s Blue Period triumph La Vie (Life), 1903, contains a portrait of his friend Carles Casagemas, who’d killed himself two years before, encourages art historians, as Krauss writes, to “use ‘Casagemas’ to explain the picture—to provide the work’s ultimate meaning or sense. When we have named Casagemas, we have (or so we think) cracked the code of the painting and it has no more secrets to withhold.” Krauss, incidentally, would later write a book analyzing Picasso’s abandonment of Cubism in terms of Freudian reaction formation. Everyone, even renowned art critics, should be able to change their minds, but that’s like arguing that biochemistry doesn’t fully explain the miracle of life and then explaining it with alchemy.

Krauss overstated her case, of course—show me an art historian of any stripe who thinks there’s nothing about La Vie worth finding out once you know who Casagemas was. But there’s a serious point buried under the caricature. Contemporary artist biographies do oversimplify, even when they’re four volumes long and full of myth-busting complexities; they oversimplify by overemphasizing external facts at the expense of the artists’ inner lives. “Biography,” critic Craig Brown wrote this past September in the Times Literary Supplement , “is at the mercy of information, and information is seldom there when you want it.”

True, but there’s bound to be more information about external facts than inner life. It doesn’t matter what your opinions on psychology or human nature happen to be—you can’t know what was going on in the artist’s head with the same confidence that you know what day this war broke out or that cousin got married. You can guess, of course, but because the conventions of contemporary biography place such emphasis on the facts, your guesses, no matter how educated, will lack the facts’ explanatory power.

This, for Brown, is the problem with biography in general, and it’s even more the problem with artist biographies in particular, since inner life is probably even more of a driving force for artists than it is for everybody else. It’s not that artist biographies treat art in overly autobiographical terms, as Krauss complains; it’s that artist biographies are too coherently autobiographical in their understanding. With a limited window into inner life and an almost as limited tool kit for representing it (little to no first-person narration, free indirect discourse, or stream of consciousness), biographers must confine themselves mostly to the clearest-cut, most easily measurable sources of creativity—a college course will almost always be made to explain more than a nightmare, even though nightmares have probably inspired more great paintings than all the college courses in the world put together. When a biographer does manage a great description of how artists make art, it’s like watching someone swim one-armed against the current.

Eleven years after Krauss sniped at him in October , Richardson gave a suitably snarky rebuttal. The portrait of Casagemas in La Vie , he announces in Volume I of his Picasso biography, was originally a self-portrait, painted over. “So much for the idea that La Vie was conceived as an apotheosis of Casagemas, or an allegory of his impotence and suicide,” he inveighs. “Nor does the substitution of Casagemas’s head for Picasso’s automatically turn it into one. That is far too limited a reading.” For the rest of the chapter, Richardson unpacks the “ambivalent or antithetical meanings” in La Vie with all the subtle expertise Krauss thought Picasso biographical specialists lacked: he discusses Casagemas’s suicide, but also Picasso’s study of El Greco and Gauguin, his uneasy relationship with his father, and his interest in tarot.

The artistic process that emerges from these pages is a fascinating mixture of rigid and flexible, careful and careless. Picasso had all but memorized Gauguin’s D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where Do We Come From, What Are We? Where Are We Going?), 1897-98, before he began La Vie , but he also based details of his painting on cards randomly drawn from a tarot deck. He painted figures, painted over them, and painted over them again.

Richardson cheerfully admits some of his ideas about La Vie are hypotheses. Resisting the all too common temptation to overexplain, he allows that some elements of the painting that seem juicily symbolic are just “coincidental.” He says the painting reminds him of T.S. Eliot’s poetry. He flits from certain to fanciful to likely to possible with an agility few biographers permit themselves, and in doing so, gives one of the frankest a ccounts of art-making I can think of, frank because it makes La Vie ’s existence seem far from inevitable—the work of a loud-mouthed 22-year-old from Málaga instead of a legend. It’s not a depiction of Picasso’s inner life, but it’s the next best thing: a collection of external facts so close to the source that they feel internal, a charcoal rubbing of inner life.

Richardson spent decades gathering “every crumb of information” about Picasso he could. Many of the crumbs were probably just crumbs, but others came together in this chapter, and for that I’m grateful. I’m amazed too, because it proves how much work is required to write a biography that makes art-making seem at all vivid, and how few biographers manage to convey this vividness. It is strange to think that creativity, the fundamental reason why artist biographies exist, is probably the thing they’re worst at deciphering.

It is even stranger to realize that we don’t have any better idea now of where creativity comes from than we did in 1543. Neurology keeps promising an answer and then kicking the can down the road. Malcolm Gladwell insists it has something to do with 10,000 hours, a magical figure that he reveres the way our ancestors revered 12 or 8 or 777. Others insist that the creative greatness Vasari praised doesn’t exist and never did. For Linda Nochlin, “greatness” is the artistic residue of masculinity; for culture critic Louis Menand, writing about figures like James Baldwin and Robert Rauschenberg in The Free World , it’s self-promotion, plus twenty-five years.

But despite these nonbelievers, despite disenchantment, the artist biography remains a religious genre hundreds of years after Cardinal Farnese’s fateful party. Biographers pledge themselves to the patient study of an artist’s life and sometimes end up giving their own lives: Richardson died in 2019, at the age of 95, having spent more than half his adulthood researching and writing about Picasso (and he still had the artist’s last thirty years to cover). There are only so many reasons a person would do something so devotional. You’re supposed to call it by a different name, but the glimmer of divinity Vasari recognized in Giotto is still around, and the feeling you’re chasing when you read the biography of an artist you love is a glimmer of that glimmer.

I’m not sure which form of religion the artist biography feels closest to—maybe Catholicism, even after all this time. Maybe animism, in which divinity is spread across the world and the artist’s duty is to soak up as much of it as possible. My best guess is mysticism, specifically apophatic mysticism, the one that claims nothing positive can be said about divinity—the best you can do is name the countless things divinity is not . I think this is the ritual the contemporary artist biography performs: a four- or five- or six-hundred-page stab at putting creativity into words, which can succeed in lots of ways but always falls short of this highest aspiration and, by falling short, makes creativity glimmer all the brighter.

A version of this article appears under the title “From God to 10,000 Hours” in the June/July issue , pp. 42-47.

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Best biographies and memoirs of 2021

Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreet

In a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True (John Murray) traces her path from cherished child of an Oxford GP to Bafta-winning actor to chat-show sofa staple, in a raucously indiscreet memoir replete with fruity tales of sexual experimentation, tricky co-stars and Olympic-level farting. And Bob Mortimer’s winningly heartfelt And Away… (Gallery) reveals the brilliant highs and terrible lows of his childhood as the “irritating runt” of four brothers, his initial career as a solicitor and subsequent reinvention as a celebrated comic alongside his partner in crime, Vic Reeves.

Themes of identity and belonging underpin Beautiful Country (Viking), Qian Julie Wang’s elegantly affecting account of her move from China to New York where she lived undocumented and under threat of deportation, and Nadia Owusu’s powerful Aftershocks (Sceptre), in which the author recalls a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a volatile Armenian-American mother and a Ghanaian father, a United Nations official who died when she was 13. Both books tell remarkable stories of displacement, heartache and resilience.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Bodley Head) is another tale of extraordinary resilience, as the artist Ai Weiwei vividly reflects on his own life and that of his father, who was a poet. Both men fell foul of the Chinese authorities: Ai’s father, Ai Qing, was exiled to a place nicknamed “Little Siberia”, where he lived with his young son in a dug-out pit with a roof made from mud and branches, while Ai himself was imprisoned in 2011 for 11 weeks on spurious tax charges. Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin) is a beautifully written account of life under a crumbling Stalinist system in Albania and the shock and chaos of what came next. In telling her story and examining the political systems in which she was raised, the author and LSE professor asks tough questions about the nature of freedom.

In Maybe I Don’t Belong Here (Bluebird), the actor David Harewood lays bare his struggles with racial injustice and mental illness, and shows how these things are connected. Harewood’s childhood was punctuated by racist abuse; later, as he tried to get his career off the ground, he was bullied by colleagues and critics. At 23, he had a psychotic breakdown during which it took six police officers to restrain him, and was dispatched to a psychiatric ward where, he learns from his hospital records, he was described as a “large black man” and administered drugs at four times the recommended dose. His recollections of his unravelling, treatment and recovery are acutely drawn.

Huma Abedin’s electrifying memoir Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (Simon & Schuster) grapples with her multiple identities as a woman with Indian parents, who was born in Michigan and raised in Saudi Arabia. It is also a brave and unflinching account of her job as aide to Hillary Clinton and her years as the wife of Anthony Weiner , the congressman at the centre of a sexting scandal that landed him in prison, prompted an investigation by child services and ultimately derailed Clinton’s presidential campaign. Of the night Abedin learned her work emails had been discovered on her husband’s laptop, which would lead to the FBI reopening its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, she recalls: “I wrote one line in my notebook. ‘I do not know how I am going to survive this. Help me God.’”

The actor Brian Cox lost his father to pancreatic cancer when he was eight years old, his mother battled with mental illness and his childhood was one of almost Dickensian poverty. But you won’t find self-pity in his meandering but amusingly irreverent memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Quercus). Instead, we get a whistlestop tour of his working life, during which he takes entertaining pot-shots at Johnny Depp (“overrated”), Steven Seagal (“ludicrous”) and Edward Norton (“a pain in the arse”).

Finally, two terrific biographies. Frances Wilson’s smart and scholarly Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury) paints a vivid picture of a brilliant writer who was “censored and worshipped” in his lifetime, and remained furious at the world and at those not sufficiently cognisant of his genius.

And Paula Byrne’s The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (William Collins), about the British postwar novelist whom Philip Larkin compared to Jane Austen, is a touching and revealing portrait of a flawed romantic and a free spirit.

• Autobiography and memoir
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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2021

Featuring tom stoppard, michelle zauner, mike nichols, d. h. lawrence, chimamanda ngozi adichie, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

First up: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Knopf)

24 Rave • 6 Positive

“… powerfully maps a complicated mother-daughter relationship cut much too short … Zauner’s food descriptions transport us to the table alongside her … a rare acknowledgement of the ravages of cancer in a culture obsessed with seeing it as an enemy that can be battled with hope and strength …Zauner carries the same clear-eyed frankness to writing about her mother’s death five months after her diagnosis … It is rare to read about a slow death in such detail, an odd gift in that it forces us to sit with mortality rather than turn away from it.”

–Kristen Martin ( NPR )

2. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, trans. by Tiina Nullally and Michael Favala Goldman (FSG)

23 Rave • 4 Positive Read an excerpt from The Copenhagen Trilogy here

“… beautiful and fearless … Ditlevsen’s memoirs…form a particular kind of masterpiece, one that helps fill a particular kind of void. The trilogy arrives like something found deep in an ancestor’s bureau drawer, a secret stashed away amid the socks and sachets and photos of dead lovers. The surprise isn’t just its ink-damp immediacy and vitality—the chapters have the quality of just-written diary entries, fluidly translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman—but that it exists at all. It’s a bit like discovering that Lila and Lenú, the fictional heroines of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, were real … A half-century later, all of it—her extraordinary clarity and imperfect femininity, her unstinting account of the struggle to reconcile art and life—still lands. The construct of memoir (and its stylish young cousin, autofiction) involves the organizing filter of retrospection, lending the impression that life is a continuous narrative reel of action and consequence, of meanings to be universalized … Ditlevsen’s voice, diffident and funny, dead-on about her own mistakes, is a welcome addition to that canon of women who showed us their secret faces so that we might wear our own.”

–Megan O’Grady ( The New York Times Book Review )

3. Real Estate by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury)

18 Rave • 9 Positive Read an excerpt from Real Estate here

“[A] wonderful new book … Levy, whose prose is at once declarative and concrete and touched with an almost oracular pithiness, has a gift for imbuing ordinary observations with the magic of metaphor … The new volume, which follows the death of one version of the self, describes the uncertain birth of another … She herself is not always a purely likable, or reliable, narrator of her own experience, and her book is the richer for it.”

–Alexandra Schwartz ( The New Yorker )

4. A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Biblioasis)

17 Rave • 4 Positive Read an excerpt from A Ghost in the Throat here

“… ardent, shape-shifting … The book is all undergrowth, exuberant, tangled passage. It recalls Nathalie Léger’s brilliant and original Suite for Barbara Loden : a biography of the actress and director that becomes a tally of the obstacles in writing such a book, and an admission of the near-impossibility of biography itself … The story that uncoils is stranger, more difficult to tell, than those valiant accounts of rescuing a ‘forgotten’ woman writer from history’s erasures or of the challenges faced by the woman artist … What is this ecstasy of self-abnegation, what are its costs? She documents this tendency without shame or fear but with curiosity, even amusement. She will retrain her hungers. ‘I could donate my days to finding hers,’ she tells herself, embarking on Ni Chonaill’s story. ‘I could do that, and I will.’ Or so she says. The real woman Ni Ghriofa summons forth is herself.”

–Parul Sehgal ( The New York Times )

5. Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf)

12 Rave • 7 Positive

“… achingly of its time … I really appreciated Adichie’s discomfort with the language of grief … Books often come to you just when you need them, and it is unimaginable to think just how many people have, like the author, lost someone in this singularly strange period of our history. Adichie’s father didn’t die from COVID-19, but that doesn’t make the aftermath of that loss any less relevant … A book on grief is not the kind of book you want to have to give to anyone. But here we are.”

–Allison Arieff ( The San Francisco Chronicle )

1. Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee (Knopf)

13 Rave • 18 Positive • 3 Mixed Read an excerpt from Tom Stoppard: A Life here

“Lee…builds an ever richer, circular understanding of his abiding themes and concerns, of his personal and artistic life, and of his many other passionate engagements … Lee’s biography is unusual in that it was commissioned, and published while its subject is still alive. Lee is a highly acclaimed biographer whose rigor and integrity make her decision to write under such conditions surprising … Lee is frank and thoughtful about the challenges of writing about a living subject. She is aware, as the reader will be, that her interview subjects do not want to speak ill of a friend and colleague who is still among them. In addition to the almost unrelievedly positive portrayal of Stoppard, the seven-hundred-fifty-plus pages of this volume might have been somewhat condensed, were its subject no longer living, thereby rendering the biography easier to wield and to read. In spite of these quibbles, this is an extraordinary record of a vital and evolving artistic life, replete with textured illuminations of the plays and their performances, and shaped by the arc of Stoppard’s exhilarating engagement with the world around him, and of his eventual awakening to his own past.”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

2. Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris (Penguin)

18 Rave • 8 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Mark Harris’s portrait of director Mike Nichols is a pleasure to read and a model biography: appreciative yet critical, unfailingly intelligent and elegantly written. Granted, Harris has a hyper-articulate, self-analytical subject who left a trail of press coverage behind him, but Nichols used his dazzling conversational gifts to obfuscate and beguile as much as to confide … Harris, a savvy journalist and the author of two excellent cultural histories, makes judicious use of abundant sources in Mike Nichols: A Life to craft a shrewd, in-depth reckoning of the elusive man behind the polished facade … Harris gently covers those declining years with respect for the achievements that preceded them. His marvelous book makes palpable in artful detail the extraordinary scope and brilliance of those achievements.”

–Wendy Smith ( The Washington Post )

3. The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (W. W. Norton)

12 Rave • 11 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from The Doctors Blackwell here

“Janice P. Nimura, in her enthralling new book, The Doctors Blackwell , tells the story of two sisters who became feminist figures almost in spite of themselves … The broad outlines of their lives could have made for a salutary tale about the formidable achievements of pioneering women; instead, Nimura—a gifted storyteller […] recounted another narrative of women’s education and emancipation—offers something stranger and more absorbing … A culture that valorizes heroes insists on consistency, and the Blackwell sisters liked to see themselves as unwavering stewards of lofty ideals. But Nimura, by digging into their deeds and their lives, finds those discrepancies and idiosyncrasies that yield a memorable portrait. The Doctors Blackwell also opens up a sense of possibility—you don’t always have to mean well on all fronts in order to do a lot of good.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

4. Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey (W. W. Norton)

13 Rave • 13 Positive • 6 Mixed • 4 Pan

“Bailey’s comprehensive life of Philip Roth—to tell it outright—is a narrative masterwork both of wholeness and particularity, of crises wedded to character, of character erupting into insight, insight into desire, and desire into destiny. Roth was never to be a mute inglorious Milton. To imagine him without fame is to strip him bare … The biographer’s unintrusive everyday prose is unseen and unheard; yet under Bailey’s strong light what remains on the page is one writer’s life as it was lived, and—almost—as it was felt.”

–Cynthia Ozick ( The New York Times Book Review )

5. Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence by Frances Wilson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

11 Rave • 8 Positive • 5 Mixed

“… the feeling you get reading Frances Wilson’s Burning Man … The flare of a match, a man on fire, raging, crackling, spitting, consuming everything and everyone around him. Wilson too is on form and on fire … I’m not totally convinced the Dante business works. Wilson’s voice is so appealing—confiding, intelligent, easy, amused—I would happily have read a straightforward blaze through the life, cradle to grave, basket to casket … This is a red-hot, propulsive book. The impression it leaves is of Lawrence not so much as a phoenix (his chosen personal emblem) rising from the flames, but of a moth coming too close to a candle and, singed and frantic, flying into and into and into the wick.”

–Laura Freeman ( The Times )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The 50 Best Biographies of All Time

Think you know the full and complete story about George Washington, Steve Jobs, or Joan of Arc? Think again.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Biographies have always been controversial. On his deathbed, the novelist Henry James told his nephew that his “sole wish” was to “frustrate as utterly as possible the postmortem exploiter” by destroying his personal letters and journals. And one of our greatest living writers, Hermione Lee, once compared biographies to autopsies that add “a new terror to death”—the potential muddying of someone’s legacy when their life is held up to the scrutiny of investigation.

Why do we read so many books about the lives and deaths of strangers, as told by second-hand and third-hand sources? Is it merely our love for gossip, or are we trying to understand ourselves through the triumphs and failures of others?

To keep this list from blossoming into hundreds of titles, we only included books currently in print and translated into English. We also limited it to one book per author, and one book per subject. In ranked order, here are the best biographies of all time.

Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss

You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo , the 1844 revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown

Few biographies are as genuinely fun to read as this barnburner from the irreverent English critic Craig Brown. Princess Margaret may have been everyone’s favorite character from Netflix’s The Crown , but Brown’s eye for ostentatious details and revelatory insights will help you see why everyone in the 1950s—from Pablo Picasso and Gore Vidal to Peter Sellers and Andy Warhol—was obsessed with her. When book critic Parul Sehgal says that she “ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice,” you know you’re in for a treat.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, by Alec Nevala-Lee

If you want to feel optimistic about the future again, look no further than this brilliant biography of Buckminster Fuller, the “modern Leonardo da Vinci” of the 1960s and 1970s who came up with the idea of a “Spaceship Earth” and inspired Silicon Valley’s belief that technology could be a global force for good (while earning plenty of critics who found his ideas impractical). Alec Nevala-Lee’s writing is as serene and precise as one of Fuller’s geodesic domes, and his research into never-before-seen documents makes this a genuinely groundbreaking book full of surprises.

Free Press Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D.G. Kelley

The late American jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk has been so heavily mythologized that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. But Robin D. G. Kelley’s biography is an essential book for jazz fans looking to understand the man behind the myths. Monk’s family provided Kelley with full access to their archives, resulting in chapter after chapter of fascinating details, from his birth in small-town North Carolina to his death across the Hudson from Manhattan.

University of Chicago Press Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest

There are dozens of books about America’s most celebrated architect, but Secrest’s 1998 biography is still the most fun to read. For one, she doesn’t shy away from the fact that Wright could be an absolute monster, even to his own friends and family. Secondly, her research into more than 100,000 letters, as well as interviews with nearly every surviving person who knew Wright, makes this book a one-of-a-kind look at how Wright’s personal life influenced his architecture.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man , is about a Black man who faced systemic racism in the Deep South during his youth, then migrated to New York, only to find oppression of a slightly different kind. What makes Arnold Rampersand’s honest and insightful biography of Ellison so compelling is how he connects the dots between Invisible Man and Ellison’s own journey from small-town Oklahoma to New York’s literary scene during the Harlem Renaissance.

Oscar Wilde: A Life, by Matthew Sturgis

Now remembered for his 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde was one of the most fascinating men of the fin-de-siècle thanks to his poems, plays, and some of the earliest reported “celebrity trials.” Sturgis’s scintillating biography is the most encyclopedic chronicle of Wilde’s life to date, thanks to new research into his personal notebooks and a full transcript of his libel trial.

Beacon Press A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, by Angela Jackson

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, but because she spent most of her life in Chicago instead of New York, she hasn’t been studied or celebrated as often as her peers in the Harlem Renaissance. Luckily, Angela Jackson’s biography is full of new details about Brooks’s personal life, and how it influenced her poetry across five decades.

Atria Books Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, by Dana Stevens

Was Buster Keaton the most influential filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century? Dana Stevens makes a compelling case in this dazzling mix of biography, essays, and cultural history. Much like Keaton’s filmography, Stevens playfully jumps from genre to genre in an endlessly entertaining way, while illuminating how Keaton’s influence on film and television continues to this day.

Algonquin Books Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation, by Dean Jobb

Dean Jobb is a master of narrative nonfiction on par with Erik Larsen, author of The Devil in the White City . Jobb’s biography of Leo Koretz, the Bernie Madoff of the Jazz Age, is among the few great biographies that read like a thriller. Set in Chicago during the 1880s through the 1920s, it’s also filled with sumptuous period details, from lakeside mansions to streets choked with Model Ts.

Vintage Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, by Hermione Lee

Hermione Lee’s biographies of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton could easily have made this list. But her book about a less famous person—Penelope Fitzgerald, the English novelist who wrote The Bookshop, The Blue Flower , and The Beginning of Spring —might be her best yet. At just over 500 pages, it’s considerably shorter than those other biographies, partially because Fitzgerald’s life wasn’t nearly as well documented. But Lee’s conciseness is exactly what makes this book a more enjoyable read, along with the thrilling feeling that she’s uncovering a new story literary historians haven’t already explored.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark

Many biographers have written about Sylvia Plath, often drawing parallels between her poetry and her death by suicide at the age of thirty. But in this startling book, Plath isn’t wholly defined by her tragedy, and Heather Clark’s craftsmanship as a writer makes it a joy to read. It’s also the most comprehensive account of Plath’s final year yet put to paper, with new information that will change the way you think of her life, poetry, and death.

Pontius Pilate, by Ann Wroe

Compared to most biography subjects, there isn’t much surviving documentation about the life of Pontius Pilate, the Judaean governor who ordered the execution of the historical Jesus in the first century AD. But Ann Wroe leans into all that uncertainty in her groundbreaking book, making for a fascinating mix of research and informed speculation that often feels like reading a really good historical novel.

Brand: History Book Club Bolívar: American Liberator, by Marie Arana

In the early nineteenth century, Simón Bolívar led six modern countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela—to independence from the Spanish Empire. In this rousing work of biography and geopolitical history, Marie Arana deftly chronicles his epic life with propulsive prose, including a killer first sentence: “They heard him before they saw him: the sound of hooves striking the earth, steady as a heartbeat, urgent as a revolution.”

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang

Ever read a biography of a fictional character? In the 1930s and 1940s, Charlie Chan came to popularity as a Chinese American police detective in Earl Derr Biggers’s mystery novels and their big-screen adaptations. In writing this book, Yunte Huang became something of a detective himself to track down the real-life inspiration for the character, a Hawaiian cop named Chang Apana born shortly after the Civil War. The result is an astute blend between biography and cultural criticism as Huang analyzes how Chan served as a crucial counterpoint to stereotypical Chinese villains in early Hollywood.

Random House Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford

Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century—an openly bisexual poet, playwright, and feminist icon who helped make Greenwich Village a cultural bohemia in the 1920s. With a knack for torrid details and creative insights, Nancy Milford successfully captures what made Millay so irresistible—right down to her voice, “an instrument of seduction” that captivated men and women alike.

Simon & Schuster Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Few people have the luxury of choosing their own biographers, but that’s exactly what the late co-founder of Apple did when he tapped Walter Isaacson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Adapted for the big screen by Aaron Sorkin in 2015, Steve Jobs is full of plot twists and suspense thanks to a mind-blowing amount of research on the part of Isaacson, who interviewed Jobs more than forty times and spoke with just about everyone who’d ever come into contact with him.

Brand: Random House Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “Without my wife, I wouldn’t have written a single novel.” And while Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra could also easily make this list, her telling of Véra Nabokova’s life in Russia, Europe, and the United States is revolutionary for finally bringing Véra out of her husband’s shadow. It’s also one of the most romantic biographies you’ll ever read, with some truly unforgettable images, like Vera’s habit of carrying a handgun to protect Vladimir on butterfly-hunting excursions.

Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt

We know what you’re thinking. Who needs another book about Shakespeare?! But Greenblatt’s masterful biography is like traveling back in time to see firsthand how a small-town Englishman became the greatest writer of all time. Like Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, there’s plenty of speculation here, as there are very few surviving records of Shakespeare’s daily life, but Greenblatt’s best trick is the way he pulls details from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to construct a compelling narrative.

Crown Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

When Kiese Laymon calls a book a “literary miracle,” you pay attention. James Baldwin’s legacy has enjoyed something of a revival over the last few years thanks to films like I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk , as well as books like Glaude’s new biography. It’s genuinely a bit of a miracle how he manages to combine the story of Baldwin’s life with interpretations of Baldwin’s work—as well as Glaude’s own story of discovering, resisting, and rediscovering Baldwin’s books throughout his life.

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Influential black artists.

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Aaron Douglas

Kara Walker

Jacob Lawrence

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Beyond the canvas.

How Pablo Picasso’s Wives and Mistresses Inspired His Art

7 Facts About Vincent van Gogh

How a Horrific Accident Changed Frida Kahlo’s Life

How Andy Warhol and Halston Transformed Art, Fashion and Studio 54

Renaissance artists.

Leonardo da Vinci

Filippo Brunelleschi

.css-1aq4sl:before,.css-1aq4sl:after{visibility:hidden;} Sculptors

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Augusta Savage

Photographers

Annie Leibovitz

Dorothea Lange

Gordon Parks

Ansel Adams

Josephine Baker

Isadora Duncan

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson

Martha Graham

Caravaggio: The Italian Painter Was Also a Notorious Criminal and Murderer

More famous artists.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson’s Career Since ‘Calvin and Hobbes’

Fernando Botero

All About Cillian Murphy's Wife Yvonne McGuinness

Henri Matisse: His Final Years and Exhibit

Who Is Karl Lagerfeld?

Gustav Klimt

Salvador Dalí

Margaret Keane

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Back to Black

The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

• Sam Taylor-Johnson
• Matt Greenhalgh
• Marisa Abela
• Eddie Marsan
• Jack O'Connell
• 23 User reviews
• 40 Critic reviews
• 52 Metascore

• Amy Winehouse

• Mitch Winehouse

• Blake Fielder-Civil

• Cynthia Winehouse

• Janis Winehouse

• Nick Shymansky

• Raye Cosbert

• A & R Manager

• Chris Taylor

• Perfume Paul

• Aunt Melody

• News Crew Man

• Uncle Harold
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Marisa Abela did all the singing in this film herself. She trained extensively to mimic Amy Winehouse 's vocals.

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes

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