The Work of Art
How Something Comes from Nothing
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
“The book is a visual feast, full of drafts, sketches, and scribbled notebook pages. Every page shows how an idea becomes a finished design.” —Ari Shapiro, All Things Considered
From former editor of New York magazine Adam Moss, a collection of illuminating conversations examining the very personal, rigorous, complex, and elusive work of making art
What is the work of art? 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. From first glimmers to second thoughts, roads not taken, crises, breakthroughs, on to one triumphant finish after another.
Featuring: Kara Walker, Tony Kushner, Roz Chast, Michael Cunningham, Moses Sumney, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Sondheim, Susan Meiselas, Louise Glück, Maria de Los Angeles, Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, Twyla Tharp, John Derian, Barbara Kruger, David Mandel, Gregory Crewdson, Marie Howe, Gay Talese, Cheryl Pope, Samin Nosrat, Joanna Quinn & Les Mills, Wesley Morris, Amy Sillman, Andrew Jarecki, Rostam, Ira Glass, Simphiwe Ndzube, Dean Baquet & Tom Bodkin, Max Porter, Elizabeth Diller, Ian Adelman / Calvin Seibert, Tyler Hobbs, Marc Jacobs, Grady West (Dina Martina), Will Shortz, Sheila Heti, Gerald Lovell, Jody Williams & Rita Sodi, Taylor Mac & Machine Dazzle, David Simon, George Saunders, Suzan-Lori Parks
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A panoply of artists offer a rare peek into the mysteries and mundanities of the creative process in this captivating compendium. Former New York magazine editor Moss (coeditor, New York Stories) asked writers George Saunders and Louise Glück, filmmaker Sofia Coppola, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, chef Jody Williams, and others to walk him through "in as much detail as they could muster" the life span of a single piece of art, providing along the way such "physical documentation" as annotated pages and coffee-stained napkin drawings. Profile subjects tell of building failure into the process, painting over canvases, and working in longhand to write "freer." George Saunders gave himself six months to "just goof around" as he waited for another book's release date before something "kicked... open in my head" and he started work in earnest on what became Lincoln in the Bardo. Elsewhere, Louise Glück speaks of the often-maddening value of patience ("you can will things, but whenever I've tried to do that, the poem just goes to hell"). Moss concludes on a fascinating note, musing that while "artists don't have more interesting dreams than the rest of us," they do possess "an unusual ability to cross over—to get entrance to that inarticulable place, and then to capture what they can make use of." It's a must-read for creatives of all stripes.
