As a wise person once said (debatably Frank Zappa or Laurie Anderson or Martin Mull or Thelonius Monk), “writing about art is like dancing about architecture.” That is, how can a string of words hope to capture the experience of art? And what’s the point of writing about art when a picture, as they say, is “worth a thousand words”? And yet not just a thousand words have been written about the Mona Lisa or Girl with a Pearl Earring—hundreds of millions maybe, and there could still be hundreds of millions more.

Since writing has existed, art has been and continues to be a limitless fountain of inspiration. So we gave ourselves the impossible task of choosing just ten books about art to recommend, below. Have a favorite we missed? Let us know on social media: @meetmeural.

10. Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel

The prototype for Bohemian life may well be Paris in the first half of the 20th century, but Mary Gabriel makes a strong case for New York in the years leading up to WWII (and the decades after). We get tales of art, passion, love, and destiny through, told through five unique protagonists: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler. Each woman defied gender norms and the improbability of success to leave her mark on abstract expression—and all of art history. Occasionally the book can read like a gossip column, with as much about what happened on the streets as what happened in the studio. What art-lover wouldn’t love to be there during those crucial, heady years when the baton was passed from Europe to the States?

9. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt has explored artists and the art world through both fiction and non—both What I Loved and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women are worthy reads. But The Blazing World, her most recent novel, captures the problems and ambiguities of the art world masterfully. In it we get Harriet Burden, a struggling artist who, sick of gender inequality, presents her work as man’s. Or rather, three men. Predictably, she finds success, but the story isn’t over once she reveals her identity. It’s only then that things start getting interesting.

8. How to See by David Salle

Art criticism usually falls on a (very broad) spectrum. On one end, there’s writing in major newspapers and magazines, meant for the uninitiated. On the other, there’s writing you practically need a masters in contemporary art to understand. How to See by David Salle (an artist himself) is either right in the middle of such a spectrum or off it altogether. It never feels like he’s toning down his language, but he doesn’t alienate either. The result is a collection of essays that teaches the reader (not to be trite) how to see. After reading, you might just find that you can’t look at art the same way, like you’ve inherited Salle’s eyes, his touch, and the decades he’s spent in front of the canvas.

7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Say what you will about this mega bestseller (and critics have said it all), The Da Vinci Code brought serious national attention to the art world, granting it unprecedented (if not a bit unfounded) intrigue. It’s telling that Brown chose da Vinci to center his conspiracy thriller on; the artist carries an aura that is, to put it crassly, bankable. This isn’t to say he wasn’t one of history’s most talented artists, just to point out that sometimes a name can overshadow work. Sometimes an artist gets so much of our attention we forget to look at the paint.

6. Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari

Not exactly a beach read, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects is a seminal work. It’s hard to earn a serious degree in art without having to make your way through Vasari. And “make your way” is exactly how most readers approach the text; the version in front of me contains 1,000 mostly image-less pages. Regardless, Vasari is famous for practically inventing art historical writing, as well as bringing attention to some of the artists we find foundational today—da Vinci, Fra Angelico, and Correggio, to name a few.

5. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

All art is political, as the saying goes. Kazuo Ishiguro realizes this adage with a story that is both timeless and ruthlessly rooted in time and place. The protagonist is an artist, Masaji Ono, who chose to forsake physical beauty as a subject, and instead chooses politics. His work helps push his country, Japan, into World War II. Told years later, An Artist of the Floating World is Ono’s attempt to make sense of his younger self, and the decisions he made that irrevocably come to define his life.

4. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Vermeer has a way of inspiring storytellers. Tim’s Vermeer (one of our top 5 movies about art) comes to mind, right after Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. The novel takes the subject’s thousand-mile stare as a starting point and paints an entire world, that of 17th century Delft, Holland. Ultimately about temptation, restraint, gender, class, and sexuality, Girl with a Pearl Earring mixes the best of historical fiction with all of the makings of a great story.

3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch is immensely popular for good reason; the novel deftly combines an addicting plot with meaningful meditations on topics like fate, love, and art. The story pivots around an act of terrorism, through which Theo, the 13-year-old protagonist, loses his mother. The rest of the plot (unraveling years later) more or less hinges on a single painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Carel Fabritius, one of Rembrandt’s only students to develop a unique painting style. Though at the time of release it received mixed reviews, it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014.

2. Ways of Seeing by John Berger

If you just happened on this book, you might have thought it was self-published by someone without much design chops. That’s intended. Berger doesn’t ask for us to not judge a book by its cover—the opposite in fact: to judge everything you can see, just with a fundamental understanding of the history of media, popular culture, and art itself. Ways of Seeing was adapted from a televised series of the same name, which consisted of four 30-minute episodes). Both are worth “seeing,” together or apart.

1. History of Art by H.W. Janson / The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich

Who wants a tie? No one, but these two should be recommended in tandem. Each has persevered for decades, finding itself on Introduction to Art syllabi across the world. History of Art by H.W. Janson and The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich were both published in the middle of the 20th century (1962, 1950), and both do a heroic job of distilling the essence of art history into a manageable length (both between 400 and 700 pages, depending on the version). If there is a difference, it’s that The Story of Art is both wider read and hasn’t been subjected to as much feminist critique. It also starts with perhaps one of the most famous two sentences in the history of art criticism: “There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.”