Gift Guide for Art Aficionados

JOIN / SIGN IN

Welcome to Foyalty

Earn a Foyalty Stamp for every £10 you spend in our shops or online*

Every 10 Foyalty Stamps you earn adds £10 to your Foyalty Balance

Spend your Foyalty Balance in our shops or online, with no minimum redemption*

*Exclusions apply, see full T&Cs for details.

This Christmas, our Booksellers have been busy curating gifting guides to suit all. Whether you're buying for that cousin who lives to travel, a Cricket obsessed uncle; looking for the perfect gift for little ones, big ones or difficult ones, we've got you covered.

Presenting our Gifting Guide for Art Aficionados:

How To Live An Artful Life

Katy Hessel

Dive into the year with the wisdom of artists. Gathered from interviews, personal conversations, books and talks, How to Live an Artful Life moves through the months of the year offering you thoughts, reflections and encouragements from artists such as Marina Abramovic, Nan Goldin, Lubaina Himid, Louise Bourgeois and many more. With a thought for every day of the year, whether looking for beginnings in January, freedom in summer, or transformation as the nights draw in, this is a book of words to cherish. The year is full of the promise of work that has yet to be written, paintings that are yet to be painted, people who have yet to meet, talk, or fall in love. With this book in hand, pay attention, and see the world anew. Go out and find it, taste it, seize it, and live it – artfully.

Utterly Lazy and Inattentive

Martin Parr (author), Wendy Jones (author)

When Martin Parr was fourteen, his teacher wrote that he was ‘utterly lazy and inattentive’ in a school report. He went on to become one of the most successful and sought-after photographers in the world. Martin has published over one hundred photobooks on many different subjects, from seaside resorts to smoking, over his career. Now, for the first and only time, Martin has produced a book about himself, telling his own story, in his own words. This is the definitive account of a great photographer’s career, curating the work that has defined his life. By looking at the world through his eyes and his lens, we come away seeing Martin Parr – and ourselves – a little differently.

Vermeer

Andrew Graham Dixon

The paintings of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful, even sublime, in the history of art. Yet like the life of Vermeer himself, they are mysterious and have for centuries defied explanation. Following new leads, and drawing on a mass of historical evidence, some of it freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam, Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a dramatically new picture of Vermeer, revealing many of the painter’s hitherto unknown friendships as well as his previously undetected allegiance to a radical movement driven underground by persecution. The many piercingly direct descriptions of Vermeer’s pictures, which are the heart of the book, shed new light on the intentions of the artist. Nearly all of his best loved works, Graham-Dixon shows, were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. In light of such discoveries every one of Vermeer’s major paintings, including The Girl with a Pearl Earring, A View of Delft and The Milkmaid, are reassessed and their meanings rethought. As a result the two great unresolved questions about Vermeer – why did he paint his pictures, and what do they mean? – are persuasively answered here for the first time.

How To Art

Kate Bryan (author), David Shrigley (illustrator)

Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she’d been into a gallery just twice in her life and had no idea she was entering an elitist world. Now, she’s on a mission to help everybody come to art. Like playing or listening to music, or cooking and eating great food, reading or watching films, making art or looking at other people’s deserves to be an enriching part of all our lives. So here, in How To Art, is a nifty way to take art on your own terms. From where it is to what it is, to tips on how to actually enjoy really famous artworks like the Mona Lisa, to how to own art and make art at home, through to vital advice for making a career as an artist and even how to make your dog more cultural, How to Art gives art to everyone, and makes it fun. Laced throughout with original artworks by the very down-to-earth artist David Shrigley.

Lives of the Great Makers

Rebecca Knott (author), James Robinson (author)

This fascinating, richly illustrated anthology of the lives and careers of some of the most accomplished craftspeople represented in the V&A’s collection celebrates the pinnacle of creative accomplishment. Their pioneering designs, technique and aesthetic flair resulted in masterpieces that changed the nature and direction of the decorative arts forever. Arranged chronologically from the Renaissance to now, the makers’ biographies are contextualized by thematic introductions to the history of the decorative arts. The book features forty illustrated biographies, ranging from furniture makers such as Thomas Chippendale to woodcarvers such as Grinling Gibbons, textile artists including Gunta Stölzl and ceramicists such as Lucie Rie, alongside goldsmiths, enamellists and many more. It also explores less familiar names who made a significant contribution to their field, brought together by their extraordinary skill and innovative use of technology and materials. While maintaining a focus on makers in Europe and North America, the book surveys a range of international influences in the biographies and thematic introductions. These thematic introductions also explore important moments in the history of the decorative arts, ranging from early modern craft and industrialization through to the Arts and Crafts Movement, modernism and the post-war craft revival.

Survival Notes

Lydia R. Figes

Weaving artists’ reflections and anecdotes with their invaluable words of advice to aspiring creatives, this inspiring book explores the practical realities of the art world and demystifies the route to professional success. Survival Notes is an inspiring narrative weaving artists’ reflections on success with advice to aspiring creatives. Featuring direct quotes and exclusive interviews with internationally acclaimed artists such as Anish Kapoor, Shirin Neshat, Tracey Emin, Jesse Darling and Shahzia Sikander, this book offers authoritative counsel on how to thrive in a highly competitive art world as well as thoughtful insights on what it means to be an artist in the twenty-first century.

Screenprints

Gill Saunders

Screenprints: A History, the first title in the V&A's new series on the history and practice of printmaking, is a celebration of the fine-art applications of this versatile medium, from the commercial origins of the screenprinting process in 1920s America, its pivotal role in 1960s Pop and Op Art among artists such as Andy Warhol and Bridget Riley, through to its adoption by Damien Hirst and the YBAs of the 1990s, and its enduring presence in contemporary art. This beautifully designed, strikingly illustrated introduction will appeal to art lovers and practising artists everywhere.

The Art Isles

Charlotte Mullins

Artistic creativity in the British Isles stretches back to Ice Age engravings of reindeer, horses and birds. International networks were already shaping prehistoric art and by 1,000 CE artists working in Britain and Ireland were using lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, walrus tusks from Greenland, garnets from India and elephant ivory from Africa. The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans introduced new styles from overseas, as did later European artists, attracted by the wealth of royal courts. Art was traded and looted across the British empire by colonial explorers, merchants and the military. In the course of the 20th century these islands have been a refuge, but also a place where migrants have faced resistance. Sculptures by Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi death camps, paintings by post-war Caribbean artists and protest murals sparked by the Troubles in Northern Ireland all express artists’ complex relationships with the idea of home. Artists today such as Grayson Perry, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Shonibare, Rachel Whiteread and Edmund de Waal consciously reflect on this long history in their work, exploring concepts of identity and belonging.

The History of Art in One Sentence

Verity Babbs

What’s so special about Dutch paintings of cheese? When does Art Nouveau become Art Deco? Why were the Pre-Raphaelites obsessed with gingers? Find out in one sentence with comedian and art historian Verity Babbs. Verity Babbs journeys through 50 key art movements across history, answering ten questions for each in just one sentence at a time. Within these fascinating, and sometimes hilarious, nuggets of art wisdom, Verity covers everything from who inspired the movement and its impact on history, to the key artists and artworks for each. Spanning 500 years – from the Renaissance to the Young British Artists – this wonderfully illustrated book is for anyone who wants to learn more about art and also have a laugh along the way. It won’t answer everything, nor will you be a genius by the end of it, but you will feel a little less lost next time you’re in a gallery or museum and will most likely become a whole lot more helpful on your pub quiz team.

Lessons for Young Artists

David Gentleman

Sincere, practical and unpretentious, Gentleman’s insights are a breath of fresh air. Here are new ways to focus, notice the world and cultivate your own style; techniques to evolve your work, from playing with time to painting in bad weather; methods for getting the most out of mistakes and negative criticism; and, above all, reminders to return, always, to the simple delights of creativity. With lush illustrations, anecdotes and explanations of how he made some of his most famous work, this is a unique guide to the nature and practice of art-making which will encourage and inspire artists young and old.