In a culture inundated with the best of the best, the top ten of anything, the latest and greatest, blockbusters and bestsellers, it is difficult to find books that can teach and inspire an artist and an art lover alike. There are books about art history, art theory, biographies of great artists from the past, opinions about good and bad art, technical books about making art—it goes on and on.
Books that delve into the making of art by the artists themselves are important and refreshing. Many know of The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, where he writes about his joys and struggles with both painting and living. Ways of Seeing by John Berger is a classic, opening the reader to different ways of thinking and looking at art. Two essential and inspirational books that examine artistic creativity are Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations and The Work of Art by Adam Moss.
The painter, Philip Guston, is an expansive and deep thinker. His views are wide-reaching and precise. In this compilation, we can read how he thinks and creates, how he looks at art, how he makes art, his views on the art world, and so much more. The book consists of interviews with Harold Rosenberg, Morton Feldman and others; talks Guston gave at Yale and on panels in Chicago and Philadelphia; his writings in ArtNews, books, and his studio notes.
Each section is insightful and concise, offering unique perspectives into the making of art and the art world. “My quarrel with much modern painting is that it needs too much sympathy.” He talks about how to know when a work is finished: “Decisions to settle anywhere are intolerable… But you have to rest somewhere.”
Guston’s observations in the book are as relevant today as when he voiced them in 1944, all the way through to when he died in 1980. “The canvas is a court where the artist is the prosecutor, defendant, jury, and judge. Art without trial disappears at a glance: it is too primitive or hopeful, or mere notions, or simply startling, or just another means to make life bearable.”
His exacting views about art and the art world were held under the same scrutiny he applied to his own work. He never settled for the comfortable, the easy, always going deeper into what the work could be, never a static point. “In the beginning, it’s the dialogue–between you and the surface… I work to eliminate the distance or the time between my thinking and doing. Then there comes a point of existing for a long time in a negative state, when you are willing to eliminate things that have been looking good all the time; you have a measure–and once you’ve experienced it, nothing less will satisfy you–that some being or force is commanding you: only this shall you, can you, accept at this moment.” This is the mystery of creation that every artist grapples with. What is this being, this force, that hovers around the edges or inside a work of art?
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Guston studied and revered two painters above all others: Piero Della Francesca and Rembrandt. Piero, he felt, was “so remote from other masters… A different fervor, grave and delicate… like a visitor to earth, reflecting on distance, gravity, and positions of different forms.” He often talked about Piero’s paintings that were of places that don’t exist, that belong to a world that Guston had never seen before in his life. He wanted to paint like that but didn’t know how. He felt that Piero’s The Baptism of Christ was not a picture we see, “but the presence of a necessary and generous law.” About Rembrandt, he said, “There’s an ambiguity of paint being image and image being paint, which is very mysterious… the plane of art is removed. It is not a painting, but a real person—a substitute, a golem. He is really the only painter in the world!”
Philip Guston was born in 1913 and died at the age of 66. He averaged forty paintings a year through 1978. A remarkable feat for one who said, “The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make.”
There are scores of other art books that offer similar insights into art and artists, from Writing After Art: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Artists by Richard Shiff and Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored by Tom Lubbock to The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism: Selected Writings by Elaine De Kooning and Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait edited by W. H. Auden, but for anyone interested in the process of creativity, The Work of Art by Adam Moss, published in 2024, is essential reading.
Moss is the former editor of New York magazine and is now painting. Because he was struggling with how to paint, feeling that he wasn’t any good at painting, he decided to interview artists to uncover their process of creating. The book contains forty-three conversations he conducted. A variety of artists included are: the visual artist Kara Walker, cartoonist Roz Chast, poet Louise Glück, painter Amy Sillman, fashion designer Marc Jacobs, cook/writer Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat), choreographer Twyla Tharp, writers Sheila Heti and George Saunders, puzzler Will Shortz, sandcastlers Ian Adelman and Calvin Seibert and many others.
Each artist selected one work they had created and walked Moss through the process of creating that work. Using scribbles, notebook entries, journals, and photographs, the reader is taken on a mysterious journey through the mind of the artist in the throes of creation. There are similarities, such as self-doubt and procrastination, as well as moments of revelation and ecstasy. Throughout, you witness the duality of creation. The ways an artist absorbs and rejects. Allowing in and kicking out. Opening and closing off. Soft and hard, yin and yang, highs and lows.
Focus, fantasizing and faith are all elements each artist struggles with. Tony Kushner takes us through the dream that, through many versions, became Angels in America. The composer Nico Muhly asks himself, “What can I do that hasn’t been done before? How can I write something meaningful and not just, like, show off shit?” Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright, makes a promise to herself that she’ll show up every day, no matter what. Screenwriter and director Sofia Coppola said, “When you’re working, there’s so much self-loathing.” After making many movies, she also said, “… because I’ve done it enough, I don’t despair too much. I think, We’ll get through it. I’ll turn it into something.”
Throughout the book, Moss comments with footnotes, highlighting his own thoughts about what the artist is saying or his thoughts in retrospect. He has a delightful rapport with the artists and is a lively, intensely interested listener. You can see why they open up to him and trust him.
In the excellent epilogue, Moss writes: “People who try to encourage creativity don’t dwell on skills or stress how many years of training are integral to the making of art, maybe because to say so seems undemocratic. But skills for these artists are like an athlete’s body memory integrated early, making the rest possible. Most of the time, before making anything, you have to know how. Craft matters. Studying the masters matters. Experience matters. There are no shortcuts.” Amen to that.
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