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Maira Kalman

Best Art Books of 2022

by Jason Farago, Holland Cotter, and Roberta Smith
The New York Times:
December 16, 2022

Holland Cotter, Jason Farago and Roberta Smith round up their favorite books, from museum catalogs of high-profile shows to photographs by Native artists to the treasures of Ukraine.

A bounty of art books offers a study of a 14th-century altarpiece, essays on the Enlightenment, little-known paintings by Louise Bourgeois, new ones (and words) by the acclaimed artist Maira Kalman, and a New York culture revolution in the early ’60s.Credit...From left: Yale University Press; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Harper Design; The Jewish Museum; Yale University Press
A bounty of art books offers a study of a 14th-century altarpiece, essays on the Enlightenment, little-known paintings by Louise Bourgeois, new ones (and words) by the acclaimed artist Maira Kalman, and a New York culture revolution in the early ’60s. Credit...From left: Yale University Press; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Harper Design; The Jewish Museum; Yale University Press

‘Women Holding Things’

Over the years, Maira Kalman has used her talent for writing and painting in different ways — most often in illustrated books. But rarely has she combined them with such complex resonances as in her latest, “Women Holding Things.” The book’s 85 images — many of them based on appropriated material — constitute a large exhibition; they continue Kalman’s droll evocations of the School of Paris heated up with intensely contemporary reds, magentas and olive greens. With them and their various captions and texts, she pays homage to the people known for holding things together, and includes a few men as well. Depicting relatives, cultural heroes and invented women, Kalman’s images encompass both everyday pleasures and incomprehensible loss, always affirming art’s sustaining grace. (Harper Design, distributed by HarperCollins Publishers)