Taschen Basic Art

Taschen Basic Art is one of the best selling art collection books, and is published by Taschen. Each book looks at a different artist, with a biography, and pictures of their work. The books were originally published as large, A4 books, but were later published (and still are) as smaller books. New titles are published regularly. A similar series entitled Taschen Basic Architecture, Taschen Basic Cinema and Taschen Basic Photographies was later released after the success of the Basic Art series.

In the spring of 2014 Taschen’s Basic Art Series received major criticism in Swedish media for its focus on male artists. The series consists of 95 books, 5 of which are of female artists. The artists Ditte Ejlerskov and EvaMarie Lindahl were the first to highlight the disparity with an art installation at Malmö Konsthall in Sweden.