A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar
I had never heard of Siena before. It is an Italian city in Tuscany with a pedestrian-only old town area. Seems to be an interesting place to visit. The author had studied there. He fell in love with art and the Italian culture. Later he went back to spend some time there and reminisce on his past and explore the city. Though it was not intended to be a travel book, it has enticed me to want to go visit Siena.
This gimmicky book has bits of artifacts on famous pictures for kids to touch. There are brief verses describing the paintings. It is quite weird, but it does introduce to some impressionist art pieces.
The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers by Curtis White
I was expecting a lot more from this essay praising romantic-era thought. The author begins by criticizing modern atheistic deterministic thought. Science can explain everything. Even human thought and "freewill" are seen as illusions predertmined by chemical activity. The author's response is that this argument is too simplistic and that we need to pay attention to the arts and humanities. There is an emphasis on looking at the romantic era and how science was a subset of the arts.
The arguments came up fairly flat. "Look at the arts! You can't use a computer to identify what is great art!" It feels rather flat. Does science have all the answers? Could the arts be explained by science? How can one really respond to a "know it all" that seems to have all the right answers (even if the right answers change all the time.)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter
How could you resist a math book that name drops a great composer and artist in the title? The book ties together the works of the two brilliantly with the Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Examples abound of self-referencing or self-continuing systems. Escher has drawings that seem to extend up endlessly. Bach has compositions that go up only to be back where they started.
Alas, the book is incredibly verbose. The preface to the 20th Anniversary edition goes on for more than 20 pages. The book itself extends beyond 700 pages. The chapters are mostly in couplets, with the first being a conversation between Tortoise and Achilles, followed by a chapter containing detailed analysis. The author was inspired by Lewis Carroll in approach, but not in succinctness. By the end, I was speed skimming. Perhaps I should have just read the outline at the start. The only problem with that would be missing out on the various drawings (primarily from Escher) included. The author did mention that he started out writing a paper and then transformed it into a book. It would have been nice to see that paper.
The first part of the book talks about incompleteness and systems that return on themselves or require themselves for definition. It elaborates that ad nauseum, and then focuses more on artificial intelligence. The view of machine learning and artificial intelligence from a 45 years ago is much different than today. At that time approaching human capabilities was seen as fairly impossible. Things are much closer now. The approach has also changed. Rather than try to create detailed decision trees, today most machine learning is done from models and training. AI "learns" and helps program itself. The book can be an interesting reference on the history of artificial intelligence and how things have changed in the past decades.
The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nicholas Day
A century ago, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa. He had previously done contract work at the museum, and had simply hid in the museum after it closed and walked out with the painting. However, people didn't know that. They theorized all sorts of elaborate criminal operations (influenced by popular culture.) Many suspected an art thief (who was alas dead.) American collectors seemed to be likely purchaser. Alas it was much more mundane. The worker held onto it for a while. Then he tried to repatriate to Italy. It eventually made it back to Paris. The Mona Lisa ended up benefiting as the heist made the painting much more famous. The book concisely explores the history of the painting and the crime and the culture that lead to the societal response.
Hilma af Klint: A Biography by Julia Voss
Hilma af Klint was a Swedish abstract artist who was deemed by the Nazis to produce degenerate art. She had ordered the bulk of her works to remain outside the public view for decades after she died. Her greatest fame has come after the works have recently come into view. She lived in a patriarchal time in Sweden and adopted strong counter-cultural views. She was one of the few women to persist in getting an appropriate education and doing things that were thought to be reserved for men. She had views of fluid sexuality and spiritualism. She was willing to tackle taboo subject matter. The bulk of her well known works were abstract. The biography presents her from a distance, and portrays an original, "different" artist.
This book is Smith's story of two young trying to find themselves in the New York City of the late 60s and eventually developing their own unique art. They both spent a significant amount of time struggling financially. They met by chance as he came to buy something at a store she was working at. She happened to see him walking by as she was trying to escape a bad date with a science fiction writer. She claimed he was her boyfriend to escape. They ended up becoming romantically involved. (At one time, he told his Catholic family they had eloped.) They broke up and got back together in different fashions. He eventually honed in on his homosexuality with other boyfriends, and she had other boyfriends, yet they still remained friends. They supported each other in their art. The book focusses on the "hard times" they had together in New York city in the late 60s. There were a series of odd jobs, some horrible apartments and many challenges as the artists spent time trying to create art. The book picks up speed in the 70s and then rushes through to touch on the launching point of their fame. Smith would eventually branch out from her Poetry to become a respected musician. He would be an artists known for his controversial sexual subject matter. He would provide the photographs for some of her album covers.
Goldfinch centers on the life of a New York City boy, Theodore Decker who loses his mother in a museum explosion. He is with his mom, dreading a visit to the principal's office. However, they decide to visit a museum and his life changes. There is an explosion. His mom dies. An old man gives him a ring on the way out and he decides to take a painting. His dad had previously left his family, leaving him a ward of the state. He remembers an elementary school friend and goes to live with them. He also traces down the partner of the guy that gave him the ring and becomes friends with him. (He is also attracted to the girl that was with the old man.) He learns about the antiques business. Months later, his alcoholic, gambler dad picks him up and takes him to Vegas. He is pretty much left alone. He befriends Boris who also lives with his rarely present father. They have a lot of fun drinking and taking drugs. 
