Do your New Year’s resolutions include a desire to read more, but you don’t quite know where to start or maybe you’re just not ready for 2023? If you want to reminisce a bit about the past, we recommend “The Nineties” by essayist and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman. He drops deep into the decade, discussing everything from Nirvana’s Nevermind to Seinfeld to the re-election of Bill Clinton. Set a decade later, Hendrik Bolz’s debut, “Nullerjahre,” tells the story of Bolz, better known as rapper Testo from Zugezogen Maskulin, growing up in the prefabricated buildings of Stralsund between RTL afternoon programs, Hartz IV and neo-Nazis. Annabelle Hirsch also takes us on a journey from the past to the present. In “Die Dinge: Eine Geschichte der Frauen in 100 Objekten” (The Things: A History of Women in 100 Objects), she takes us into a cabinet of curiosities that contains numerous objects from everyday female life, from Amazon dolls to pussyhats. Some objects are tied to their time or owner, while others point beyond themselves and stand pars pro toto for the possibility of a feminine historiography.

How history, in this case art history, might be told from a woman’s point of view preoccupies Katy Hessel. The London-based curator has been exploring this question for several years with her podcast and Instagram channel, The Great Women Artists. In her new book, “The Story of Art without Men,” she focuses on women artists such as Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi and Expressionist pioneer Paula Modersohn-Becker. Those who want to immerse themselves in other worlds can follow in the footsteps of the great children’s book illustrator and his kind-hearted monsters with “Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak“. Art lovers should also check out Jorinde Voigt’s new publication “On Reality,” in which she presents works from the pandemic years drawn with a scalpel. Meanwhile, the Berlin-based sculptor Michael Sailstorfer takes a look back at more than 20 years of creative activity with the monograph MS 00 22, which also features more than 300 pages of his poetic and humorous spatial interventions and object transformations.

Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Fotos: Sophie Doering & Cottonbro

“The Nineties” by Chuck Klosterman (2023, Penguin Books, 384 pages)

“Nullerjahre” by Hendrik Bolz (2022, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 336 pages)

“Die Dinge. Eine Geschichte der Frauen in 100 Objekten” by Annabelle Hirsch (2022, Kein & Aber, 416 pages)

“The Story of Art without Men” by Katy Hessel (2022, Piper, 512 pages)

“Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak” (2022, DelMonico Books, 247 pages)

“On Reality” by Jorinde Voigt (2023, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 304 pages)

“MS 00 22” by Michael Sailstorfer, Works 2000–2022 (2022, DCV, 320 pages)

@thegreatwomenartists