Want to know what books Michael Fried recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Michael Fried's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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Thomas Mann, John E. Woods | 4.04
Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul - and the ability to love his fellow man.
Leverkühn's life... more Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul - and the ability to love his fellow man.
Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and its nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius - both national and individual - and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist. less 
Alex RossThere’s an extraordinary sense of plausibility in how Mann described these fictional compositions of Leverkühn. (Source)
Alex RossThere’s an extraordinary sense of plausibility in how Mann described these fictional compositions of Leverkühn. (Source)
Michael FriedI almost surprised myself when I included this. But it’s a book I love. Writing during World War Two, Mann reflects on modernism in the arts, the tragic history of modern Germany and the persistence of Nietzsche in the German imagination. It’s a work of extraordinary intellectual seriousness and ambition. (Source)
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By investigating the important cultural figures who were close to the painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey allow the reader to enter not only the Rome where he lived but also the Rome of antiquity, which he admired and tried to reconstruct. The authors argue that Poussin's works were structured by his friendships, as well as by his study of ancient history and early Christian archaeology, his exploration of the poetry and mystery of ancient places, and his conception of his paintings as gifts rather than commercial objects. By looking into this rich... more By investigating the important cultural figures who were close to the painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey allow the reader to enter not only the Rome where he lived but also the Rome of antiquity, which he admired and tried to reconstruct. The authors argue that Poussin's works were structured by his friendships, as well as by his study of ancient history and early Christian archaeology, his exploration of the poetry and mystery of ancient places, and his conception of his paintings as gifts rather than commercial objects. By looking into this rich background, they also show how Poussin introduced into his theory and practice of painting a new concept of the inherent expressiveness of form that was quite different from the then prevailing conventions for depicting the passions and affections.
The first two chapters treat Vincenzo Giustiniani, the most sophisticated patron and art collector of his day, whose purpose and rationale for collecting ancient sculpture deeply influenced Poussin and the Flemish sculptor Francois Duquesnoy. Among other topics, the succeeding sections take up Poussin's deep readings of Montaigne and his friendships with the poet Giovanni Battista Marino, with artists such as Pietro Testa and Matteo Zaccolini, and with patrons and true friends, among them Cassiano dal Pozzo and Paul Fr�art de Chantelou, for whom Poussin painted a special self-portrait, which the artist said stood for The Love of Painting and Friendship.
-- "British Journal of Aesthetics" less Michael FriedI’ve included one art-history book. It’s a terrific study of a magnificent painter, French by birth, who lived and worked in Rome. Poussin was from the generation that came along after Caravaggio, and he represents a kind of recuperation of classical values after the truly volcanic upheaval caused by Caravaggio’s art and life. He famously remarked that Caravaggio was born to destroy painting. (Source)
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty | 4.13
Together with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty was the foremost French philosopher of the post-war period and Phenomenology of Perception, first published in 1945, is his masterpiece. What makes this work so important is that it returned the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. more Together with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty was the foremost French philosopher of the post-war period and Phenomenology of Perception, first published in 1945, is his masterpiece. What makes this work so important is that it returned the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. less Michael FriedYes. Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher from the 40s and 50s, a contemporary of Sartre and De Beauvoir. I read him for the first time in my early 20s before his works were translated. He represents so-called ‘existential phenomenology’. Of fundamental importance to him was that we are ‘embodied’ creatures, not disembodied perceptual systems and free-floating intelligences. He understood... (Source)
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The eighteenth-century French philosophe Denis Diderot—the principal intelligence behind the Encyclopédie and the author of idiosyncratic fictional works such as Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew—was also the first great art critic. Until now, however, Diderot’s treatises on the visual arts have been available only in French. This two-volume edition makes the most important of his art-critical texts available in English for the first time.
Diderot’s works are among the most provocative and engaging products of the French... more The eighteenth-century French philosophe Denis Diderot—the principal intelligence behind the Encyclopédie and the author of idiosyncratic fictional works such as Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew—was also the first great art critic. Until now, however, Diderot’s treatises on the visual arts have been available only in French. This two-volume edition makes the most important of his art-critical texts available in English for the first time.
Diderot’s works are among the most provocative and engaging products of the French Enlightenment. Moreover, their ruminations on many issues of perennial interest (invention versus convention, nature versus culture, and technique versus imagination; the complex relations between economic reality and artistic achievement) give them a rare pertinence to current debates on the nature and function of representation. All the celebrated pieces are here: the rhapsodic dream meditation inspired by Fragonards’ Corésus and Callierhoé; the incident-packed “excursion” through a set of landscapes by Joseph Vernet; the evocative consideration of the nature of ruins and historical nostalgia prompted by the first showing of works by Hubert Robert. But these famous passages can now be considered in their proper context, surrounded by meditations that are less well known but equally sparkling. The book also includes brief introductory texts and annotations by John Goodman that clarify the many references to contemporary Parisian culture, as well as an introduction by Thomas Crow that sets the texts in their historical and art-historical context. less See more recommendations for this book...
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Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism. more Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism. less 
Adam HaslettWhat I find so compelling about it is it offers a reading of Lear which strikes at the core of everyday experience. (Source)
Michael FriedCavell’s fundamental insight into Shakespearean tragedy is that it expresses the prevalence of a sceptical worldview – we cannot truly know what is in someone else’s mind. (Source)
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