Dark Academia books about Art

I love dark academia, but particularly love it when it’s combined with art. As an art historian and an avid reader of dark academia, it feels doubly delicious when they’re combined together. See below a list of books that I’ve collected that combine these two elements!

Don’t Let the Forest In is a beautiful YA gothic dark academia about two boys at a boarding school - one of them writes stories about fairy-tale creatures, the other draws them - and together they discover the creatures come to life in the forest beyond the school. It’s got gorgeous prose, unrealiable narrators and actual art in between chapters. You need it in your life.

Well, they tell you to write the book you want to read, and that’s exactly what I did here. This is about a struggling artist who uses a supernatural muse to further his career. It has an art school backdrop, a dive into the art industry as a whole, and focuses on the competitiveness of upcoming artists and their desperation to be successul. There’s a speculative thread running through it - a supernatural muse - which aids the examination of a timeless relationship: an artist and a muse. Who is really in control?

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

It would be silly to write a blog about creepy art books and not include this. It’s a classic for a reason, and examines the idea of art being persuasive throughout. It’s about vanity and choices and the facades we show to the world as well as the secrets we keep hidden.

I picked this up because I love the tagling - “a picture is worth a thousand nightmares”. The Macabre is clever and unique, focusing on a young artist who must destroy the paintings his ancestors created. It combines magic with the real art world, and it has that dark academia setting in the British Museum.

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