The Work of Art

I WAS STANDING in the gift shop of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, ipping through the book Gehry Draws, when I came across the scribble you just passed a couple of pages back. It was more or less the rst intimation the building s architect, Frank Gehry, had of the museum, which became an architectural icon the moment it was built; it s been compared with a boat, a sh, an artichoke, and Marilyn Monroe. I happen to love a doodle, and the scribble was a compelling little doodle in its own right, but what was so striking to me was how much it resembled the cockamamie (and extraordinary) structure I had come to Bilbao to see.

As I looked at the scribble and at the walls, and then back again at the drawing, an image out of a Pixar short popped into my head: the doodle shimmied to life to become the building it imagined, which now surrounded me. Gehry talks about these scribbles (his word for them and there are many, just like this one) as his way of thinking aloud. And for a brief moment, I was right there with him when he had that rst electric thought envisioning the place. It was one of those eeting associations you hardly register. I moved on.

And yet I d had a similar experience while I was still upstairs in the museum, at an exhibit of Alice Neel paintings that had been traveling around the world. Among them was a picture of a man named James Hunter, called Black Draftee (James Hunter).

As the story goes, Hunter came for a sitting, then went to Vietnam; he never returned to her studio. Neel looked at what she had applied to the canvas in that one meeting and declared the painting nished. I m nuts about a lot of her work, but on that day as I was tooling around the galleries, I kept circling back to this painting. I was stuck on it. The interrupted portrait of Hunter was haunting, but what really got to me was the implied portrait of Neel the artist, painting the picture. So there I was with her, too, experiencing the sit- ting as she experienced

Adam Moss

The Work of Art is a case study in creativity featuring preeminent artists of our time. Vanity Fair

The book is a piece of art. It s a beautiful object. Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show

Gorgeously illustrated . . . Fabulous insights into the artist s work. NBC, "Today in New York"

A panoply of artists offer a rare peek into the mysteries and mundanities of the creative process in this captivating compendium . . . 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. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

In this handsome book, [Adam Moss] interviews more than 40 creators in all disciplines who walk me through, in as much detail as they could muster, the evolution of a novel, a painting, a photograph, a movie, a joke, a song, and to supply physical documentation of their process. Many of the creators are well known, including Stephen Sondheim, Louise Glück, Twyla Tharp, and George Saunders . . . The book is amply illustrated, with sketches for dress designs, notes on animation, preliminary concepts for buildings, doodled ideas on coffee-stained napkins, and more . . . this is an inspiring work, especially for anyone struggling to create art and wondering whether the slogs and endless false starts are worth the effort. An encouraging book dedicated to the pleasures and agonies of making art. Kirkus Reviews

The Work of Art by Adam Moss is a handsome, strikingly designed, color-glossy book of interviews with all manner of artists . . . Moss s voice is distinct sympathetic, appreciative, confessional, generous, curious, humorous as he compares the anguish and achievements of others with his own continuing struggles to be a painter . . . The book is clearly a work of love . . . WSHU Public Radio