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| The Accidental Masterpiece : On the Art of Life and Vice Versa | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Kimmelman
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 74869
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Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.6 x 1.1
ASIN: B000FZDKNY
Publication Date: August 18, 2005
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Product Description
In his widely acclaimed national bestseller The Accidental Masterpiece, Michael Kimmelman climbs mountains, treks into the desert, and even nearly drowns as he pursues art?s truths. He explains that great artists like Bonnard and Chardin?but also obscure obsessives, paint-by-number enthusiasts, amateur shutterbugs, and collectors of strange odds and ends? can show us how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
Worth the read... February 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With The Accidental Masterpiece, New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman has stepped over, around and through what we are "supposed" to know, guess or pretend we understand about art. Kimmelman's work has created a comfortable and safe jumping off place for anyone who dreams of producing artwork by illuminating the more (secret and disavowed) mundane aspects of creativity and the resolve of those who feel the relentless drive to create.
Of Kimmelman's ten chapters I chose the seventh as my favorite - decided the moment I read its title one-hundred or so pages in. Chapter 7, "The Art of Finding Yourself When You're Lost", provides a vivid snapshot of photographer Frank Hurley who pursued his passion for his art by joining an expedition into Antarctica in 1911. The expedition itself failed, trapping Hurley for 15 months on the frozen sea. After almost 500 days without encountering dry land the ship's crew and the members of the expedition spent several more months on the utterly desolate Elephant Island before being rescued. Hurley was able to save a combination of 120 film plates, photos and movies but was forced to leave over 400 others behind. Once returned home , he chose not to attend a homecoming celebration in favor of developing his carefully guarded film. After returning from this adventure, Hurley went on to photograph WWI and to travel the world pursuing his art but never produced any work as compelling as his dramatic Antarctic record.
The point Kimmelman makes with this chapter is that it is crucial to make the most out of what's at hand rather than letting a lack of means, supposed failure or even immense hardship derail our work. Trapped with minimal resources, Frank Hurley photographed Antarctica and produced a body of work that is still considered his best despite the fact that the majority of his career occurred after the expedition.
The Accidental Masterpiece is a siren call for the "amateur" who, as Kimmelman reminds us, "...in the original sense of the word, [is] a lover, someone who does something for the love of it, wholeheartedly." (Pg. 5) The author topples a myriad of pedestals that art has been shoved onto by allowing for ordinary things and ordinary people to shine with extraordinariness. From a light bulb collecting dentist to the "Mr. Rogers of oil painting", Bob Ross, we are to understand that everyone has the creativity gene. The much maligned Ross was, like Kimmelman, the champion of the everyday artist:
"Ross thereby touched on a basic reason for making art - to
have a place to indulge your id and comfort your ego, an area of
authority..." (Pg. 34)
"In death [Ross] still reportedly reaches 500 million households...
satisfying...this craving to be creative, and providing comforting
escape from worldly woes." (Pg. 35)
This book exemplifies my favorite Anais Nin quote,acknowledging the growing (and often unrewarded) ache that most of us feel at many of the liminal points in life:
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more
painful than the risk it took to blossom."
excellent anecdotal reviews March 26, 2007
Very fun reading, and he touches on some of the big guns in art today, ones that are often difficult to describe, much less review critically. Kimmelman has a smooth, scholarly manner making his work accessible and insightful. If you're looking for rigorous analytical parsing of contemporary art, this is not your destination.
 art for the rest of us January 17, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
When I lived in Moscow and would visit St. Petersburg, a visit to the Hermitage Art Museum was always an obligatory pleasure. Ditto for New York; the last time my wife and I traveled there we visited the Metropolitan Museum. But at both museums I felt a pronounced sense of dislocation, like I somehow lacked the knowledge, the experience, or the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate fully the exhibits we saw. We enjoyed much of what we saw, but we still saw a lot of "art" that caused me to resonate with Harry Truman's judgment that Churchill's works were "damn good" because "at least you can tell what they are and that is more than you can say for a lot of these modern painters." Were the artists and their work pretentious, or was I just ignorant?
Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, has written an unpretentious book that genuinely appreciates that common dilemma for both artist and amateur. He moves the reader beyond Truman's humorous but ill-informed notion, and does so in a manner that does not condescend toward the reader or dumb down his subject. His book is eminently accessible and written with a deft touch, itself a textual work of art that is a pleasure to read. Yes, he takes you through the world of professional artists like Matisse and Michelangelo, the brilliant and the bizarre, but he also gives equally serious attention to the artistic impulse in the likes of dentist Hugh Hicks who had a collection of 75,000 light bulbs, a prisoner named Ray Materson who learned how to do exquisite embroideries of his beloved New York Yankees, painting by numbers that I tried as a child, and the homemade quilts made by poor black women in remote Gee's Bend, Alabama ("...some of the most miraculous works of modern art that America has ever produced."). Although a professional critic, Kimmelman imparts an infectious sense of wonderment and enthusiasm that democratizes art in the best sense of that term.
Art can transform our lives by helping us to live more fully and attentively, and not only by engaging the sublime but by appreciating the mundane and the utterly ordinary. Humanity's creative impulse hints at something beyond and greater than ourselves that emerges not despite but even because of restraints, conflicts, and confinement. Beauty, in Kimmelman's view, clearly has a spiritual element that helps us to "slow our systems" so that we can live as we ought. Through appreciating art, "we may learn something about how to conceive of our own ordinary existence--about how to live and die, more constructively or at least more alertly." Which is to say that even, or especially, one's life can be a creative act of art and beauty.
this book will enrich your perspective on the world around you September 22, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I simply can't avoid the cliche -- this book changed my life. This book is, as Kimmelman hopes, a good read for anyone who picks it up, but it's so much more than that. I am an art history major at a university, and I was impressed with Kimmelman's ecclectic choices for artists. He merely references Picasso and Michelangelo, not wasting time or detailing a name that is common even to the most common of men. Kimmelman takes -- often times -- eccentric artists who devoted their entire lives to some form of art. When people think of art, they think of oil on canvas or they think or Italian architecture or modern sculpture. They think of GENRES of art, whereas Kimmelman points out that all of life is an art. Everything that we do, what we say, who we say things to... everything and everyone is part of the greatest canvas of all, our own personal lives.
Kimmelman was -- somehow -- able to clearly express his thoughts and views with both enthusiasm and fact. He is a wonderfully gifted writer, and I learned more about myself, life in general, and art, than I have in my entire 22 years of existence. Each chapter held a refreshing look on the world, and I was deeply touched by many of the stories. My favorite chapter was The Art of Maximizing Your Time, and the story of Charlotte Salomons.
You don't need to be an artist or to have studied art in order to "get" this book. You simply have to be human, to exist in a world of beauty and heartache. Kimmelman illustrates this point by retelling a story of artist Jay DeFeo:
DeFeo once described a waking dream in which, reborn as someone else in the future, she wanders through room after room of a museum and suddenly finds The Rose, restored, a person staring intently at it. She walks up to the person. "You know," she says, "I did that." (p. 130)
Seriously. This book changed my life, and it will change yours.
good start but cut some corners September 9, 2006
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I would not consider myself an expert in art and especially modern art. I appreciate art and have visited museums and even made it a point to see some exhibitions but beyond that I would consider myself a "sideline appreciator". I picked up this book in the classic effort to broaden my horizons and learning something new, different. I am probably exactly the type of reader the author and publisher would hope by this book.
With that being said this book is not written for people like me. The book is broken into a series of essays with a common theme, art presents itself in ways people often overlook and art is created as byproduct of how people choose to live their lives and in a sense live to create art. If it sounds confusing it's because it is. Some of the people profiled truly created things for the sake of it never expecting anyone to appreciate it or even know about it...just driven from within. Other artists profiled are quite well known, ( within the art world) and make their living at it.. not exactly the accidental masterpiece the title implies.
Almost The entire focus of the book is what would be considered Modern Art .(.Evidently before the modern era the accidental masterpiece was nonexistent.) The book could have been much more informative if there was more images of the actual art that was being described. I often had to go the internet to take a look at what was actually being described. Furthermore, the author has annoying habit of stringing together names of artists when making a point as if anyone reading the book would know those names and have reference point. (needless to say they were always Modern Artist).
As a result of these internet searches I discovered that one of the chapters was essentially lifed from a magazine article that the author had written in 1999. The book is published in 2005. It struck me as odd that he would take a six year old article and then edit it and without telling the reader. The book is not being marketed as reprinting of previous work. I just felt the author cut and pasted from his old work and six years after the fact has it published as if the dialogue and events recently happened.
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