Tuesday, September 07, 2010

The Top Ten Fine Art Books in August

Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books has been updated and now includes the best selling and top rated art books in August.

It's very interesting to see some of the trends which are beginning to emerge.  For example......

The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook - Landscapes has been the top rated painting book 4 months in succession

By way of contrast, the best-selling painting book has changed every single month - and seems to be very much linked to pushes by publishers to get those pre-publication orders in.

I've been impressed by the books listed to date so have now introduced a new feature this month for Best Selling Painting Books in previous months.  (There's also one for drawing - Best Selling Drawing Books in previous months)

Wall and Piece by Banksy is turning into a bit of a perennial feature.  He's actually topping both artist/art history categories this month - but I only allowed him to have one - he got top rated because nobody else comes near!

I knew there would be an element of seasonality to all this - and apparently August is when you buy your art history course books for the new academic year.  This is throwing up some interesting purchases as best sellers in the artists/art history category.  Such as Gardner's Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective (with Art Study & Timeline Printed Access Card) - which I've never even seen before but I'm now greatly intrigued by.  I want to see a copy.  The publishers claim this is the 13th Edition of the most widely read history of art book in the English language

I'm increasingly fascinated by the top ten books under the new releases.  First it demonstrates the range of new books which are being published.  Plus it also seems to suggest that August/September isn't a good month to publish art instruction books.  Theer were a lot in the July update - and this month there are none.

However the list of ones which got in the list this month is fascinating and ranges from a  Guide to Getting Arts Grants and the new fifth edition of Tad Crawford's standard  Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, Fifth Edition to one of the volumes which catalgoues the collection in the Hermitage (The Hermitage Collections: Volume I: Treasures of World Art; Volume II: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Present Day) and a new John Richardson book about Picasso - Picasso: The Mediterranean Years 1945-1962.

Anyway - here are the links to the top 10 art books in 
    Just click a link and go straight to the category of your choice and find out which I think are the top 10 art books in August!
    Remember these links will only tell you the top books for August during September as they will be revised at the end of September for the updates for this month.

    1 comment:

    1. "Interesting! Gardner's 'Art Throught The Ages' was out History of Art course book for my 1st year of post Secondary Educatin waaay back in the late 70's. I still have it, still find it interesting to llok at.I should love the see what this new edition looks like!(mine is the 6th Edition)

      This a comment from Charne who has a problem with the visual check for adding comments

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