Check out our pick of the best new art and culture books

Artist monographs, Japanese architecture and a debut novel are just some of the great new offerings

Wet Paint 
By Chloë Ashby (Trapeze, £14.99)

Arts Society contributor Chloë Ashby has already received accolades for her debut novel, which tells a story of grief, friendship and youth, intertwined with the protagonist’s intimate relationship with art. We see her turn her hand at life modelling – a source of much-needed income as her life unravels – and embarking on a therapeutic dialogue with the barmaid who stars in Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. A beautiful story made all the richer by Ashby’s deep understanding of the profound presence of art in everyday life. 

Florine Stettheimer: a biography
By Barbara Bloemink (Hirmer, £25)

This brilliant biography charts the life of Modernist artist Florine Stettheimer, who shocked critics with her nude self-portraiture and used her work to grapple with issues of women’s liberation, racial segregation and anti-Semitism. This hefty volume considers her impact as a key member of a new artistic elite in New York, which flourished between the two world wars, and is fully illustrated with paintings, sketches, archive photography and more. 

The Mindful Photographer 
By Sophie Howarth (Thames & Hudson, £14.99)

As the world rages on at warp speed, the notion of ‘mindfulness’ has become common parlance in recent years. However, in Howarth’s new book, she specifically uses it to consider how and why one might take a photograph. In an age when millions of images are snapped every day on smartphones, and proliferated via the internet, this book offers a much more considered approach, grouped by themes such as ‘clarity’, ‘playfulness’ and ‘gratitude’. 

Kagawa Prefectural Government Offices, Kenzō Tange, 1958

20th Century Japan in 20 Buildings 
By John Barr (Lund Humphries, £45)

From the Koide House to the Hiroshima Peace Centre, John Barr considers Japan’s Modernist architectural legacy through the lens of its much broader building history. With beautiful photography that contrasts the gilt and adornment of shrines and pavilions with the hard-edged (and occasionally extremely playful) design of 20 modern works, Barr combines history and anecdote, as well as conveying the conceptual and physical realities of creating a spectacular, functional building.