With fall just around the bend, the art world is packing away its light summer reading and getting ready to tuck into more substantive tomes. Here are some forthcoming art publications you should save space for on your bookshelves.

“Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art,” Apsara DiQuinzio, University of California Press, September

As the art world becomes increasingly global, shifting from culture capitals like New York and Berlin to burgeoning hotbeds in Beirut and Cluj, this promises to be a must-read on the future of the art world as it evolves and disperses across a digitally connected landscape.

“Ai Weiwei: According to What?,” Mami Kataoka, Prestel, October 1
This catalogue features the Chinese artist’s most significant works since the year 2000, charting his rise in the international art world and the burgeoning importance of contemporary Chinese art. Ranging from photography and video to sculpture and architecture, it’s a primer on the recent output of one of the world’s most important artists.

“Forgetting the Art World,” Pamela Lee, MIT Press, September
Written by Stanford University professor Pamela M. Lee, this book confronts the fact that a certain era of the art world is in eclipse. Lee confronts art’s place in the recent tide of globalization, arguing that the work of art is both “object and agent” of globalization.

“Mike Kelley,” Eva Meyer-Hermann, Prestel, December 25
Posited as the definitive work on the late artist, this hefty volume will tackle the diverse practices of Mike Kelley’s career, following his death earlier this year. Curator Eva Meyer-Hermann will bring an engaged perspective to the book, which includes an annotated plate section and a revised biography and bibliography.

“Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings,” Tobias G. Natter, Taschen, October
This is the year of Klimt, as the artist posthumously celebrated his 150th birthday, and what better way to mark the occasion than with the definitive collection of his sensuous gilded paintings, and re-prints of all the artist’s known letter correspondence.

“Daido Moriyama,” Kazuo Nishi, Phaidon, Fall 2012
Hot off a retrospective at SFMOMA, the haunting Japanese street photographer has left an imprint in the world of photography with his signature snapshot style, explored in depth in this black and white monograph.  

“Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces, 1960-2010,” Ed. Lauren Rosati and Mary Anne Staniszewski, MIT Press, September
With the recent publication of “112 Greene Street: The Early Years” by Jessamyn Fiore and the New Museum’s upcoming “Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969-1989,” New York’s underground, DIY art scene is a hot subject, and we’re sure MIT’s newest book will help portray the scene more fully.

“Barry McGee,” Ed. Lawrence Rinder and Dena Beard, D.A.P./University of California,Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, September
Published to coincide with McGee’s first major museum show, this is a promising monograph of the typographically-inclined San Francisco street artist’s work.

“Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Age of Cultural Production,” Nato Thompson, Melville House Books, November
Thompson has been busy publishing books this year, from his title “Living As Form” on socially engaged art (the catalog for the Creative Time project), and he is fast proving himself as the authority on art and activism.

Neoludica Art and Videogames 1966-2011, Luca Traini and Debora Ferrari, Rizzoli, September 4
Contrary to Roger Ebert’s opinion, video games emphatically are art — and this book demonstrates why and how. The volume will chart video games’ relationship with the arts, examining how games have influenced the work of artists and vice-versa. There’s so much left to be learned about video games as a discrete art form, but this should provide a start.

To see this list along with cover art from each title click the slide show.