The Work of Art: How something comes from nothing byAdam Moss
#34 - The Work of Art: How something comes from nothing - 5*!
Adam Moss
I LOVED this book! You get the idea of what this book is about in the first two pages:
The book is made up of 43 vignettes, or profiles, of artists of various kinds: painters, writers, chefs, cartoonists, directors, and more.
In this guided tour inside the artist’s head, Adam Moss traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal entries, napkin doodles, and sketches that were their tools, Moss breaks down the work—the tortuous paths and artistic decisions—that led to great art. (Penguin RandomHouse Books)
Besides being super interesting, it was fun to read. You can see in the photo below that the pages had red arrows pointing to the images being discussed, and footnotes right on the page where they were cited. The footnotes were fun, too. It felt like Adam Moss was talking directly to you, sort of showing you around as if you were together in person.
Each vignette had what he called a “stamp” of the artist, with their name, occupation, and the work being discussed. The artists would dig up the notes, drafts, sketches, earlier versions of the work, anything that they created on the way to it becoming the finished piece.
I’ve always been fascinated by artists and how they can come up with and create their art. I go to writing festivals to listen to authors tell us how they conceived of their books. I listen to online discussions with artists, podcasts, interviews. I feel lucky that there are so many ways available now to learn the stories of their imagination-to-art process.
The book is quite large, thankfully, since the photos of the art and drafts could sometimes be hard to read since they had to fit on the page. I used Google quite often to find out more and see more examples of their creations. Each vignette is only a few pages long, which made it easy to pick up and put down. Highly, highly recommend!