Art Work
On the Creative Life
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The much-anticipated new book by artist and New York Times bestselling author Sally Mann about the challenges and transcendent pleasures of the creative process
“Erudite, frank, and funny.” —Amor Towles, bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway
Art Work, by photographer and writer Sally Mann, offers a spellbinding mix of wild and illuminating stories, practical (and some impractical) advice, and life lessons.
Written in the same direct, fearless, and occasionally outrageous tone of her bestselling memoir, Hold Still, this new book reaffirms Mann as a unique and resonant voice for our times and is destined to become a classic.
Illustrated throughout with photographs, journal entries, and letters that bring immediacy and poignancy to the narrative, Art Work is full of thought-provoking insights about the hazards of early promise; the unpredictable role of luck; the value of work, work, work, and more hard work; the challenges of rejection and distraction; the importance of risk-taking; and the rewards of knowing why and when you say yes.
In sparkling prose and thoughtfully juxtaposed visuals and ephemera, Art Work is a generous, provocative, and compulsively readable exploration of creativity by one of our most original thinkers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This winsome memoir from photographer Mann (Remembered Light) offers practical guidance for artists. Peppered with anecdotes from a lifetime of professional wins and losses, Mann's advice is both conventional ("If it were easy, everyone would be doing it") and unexpected ("I pragmatically decided that insecurity... could be my friend"). Excerpts from journals and letters shed light on life events and preoccupations that inspired Mann's work, and dispel the myth that "when not making art, they are drinking absinthe with friends and vacationing on St. Barts." Elsewhere, Mann shares "failed pictures" from her photographic memoir, Hold Still, to counter assumptions that "you get better as you go, not repeating the mistakes of the past," and plunges into thorny questions of selling out, recalling a time she accepted a free trip to Qatar to take the emir's portrait but refused further payment ("Artistic true north is variable"). Similarly delicate balances—between light and shadow in photos, humility and chutzpah in life—provide the account with a running theme. Throughout, Mann is a clear-eyed, self-deprecating guide, framing her many mistakes as part of a lifelong creative practice. In the process, she reminds readers that there's nothing static about still photography. This entertains as much as it enlightens. Photos.
