Chosen Books

Invited designers and commentators have chosen these as the books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
240 books
Le Livre futuriste
Giovanni Lista
Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper
Leo Steinberg
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer
Erwin Panofsky
Life? or Theatre? (Leben? oder Theater?)
Charlotte Salomon
The Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari
Lives of the Artists
Calvin Tomkins
Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists
Edward Lucie-Smith
The Living Museum
Samuel Cauman
Lothar Meggendorfers Spielwelt
Hildegard Krahe
Louise Bourgeois: Aller-Retour
Gerald Matt et al.
Madame de Pompadour
Nancy Mitford
The Magic of a People
Alexander Girard
Magritte and Contemporary Art
Stephanie Barron
Marcel Duchamp in Munich 1912
Thomas Girst, ed.
Marcel Duchamp or The Castle of Purity
Octavio Paz
Marianne Brandt
Hans Brockhage et al.
Marinetti: Selected Writings
F. T. Marinetti
Mark Rothko: A Biography
James E. B. Breslin
Masterpieces from the House of Fabergé
Alexander von Solodkoff
Masters of Modern Art
Alfred Barr
Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West
Wesley M. Burnside
Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art
Ernst (E. H.) Gombrich
The Mind in the Cave
David Lewis-Williams
The Modern Ideal
Paul Greenhalgh
The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1679–1701
Gai Wang
A Nervous Splendor
Frederic Morton
The New Art—the New Life
Harry Holtzman et al.