The Accidental Masterpiece
dazzling and inspirational survey of how art can be found and appreciated in everyday life Michael Kimmelman, the prominent New York Times writer and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, is known as a deep and graceful writer across the disciplines of art and music and also as a pianist who understands something about the artist's sensibility from the inside. Readers have come to expect him not only to fill in their knowledge about art but also to inspire them to think about connections between art and the larger world - which is to say, to think more like an artist. Kimmelman's many years of contemplating and writing about art have brought him to this wise, wide-ranging, and long-awaited book. It explores art as life's great passion, revealing what we can learn of life through pictures and sculptures and the people who make them. It assures us that art - points of contact with the exceptional that are linked straight to the heart - can be found almost anywhere and everywhere if only our eyes are opened enough to recognize it. Kimmelman regards art, like all serious human endeavors, as a passage through which a larger view of life may come more clearly into focus. His book is a kind of adventure or journey. It carries the message that many of us may not yet have learned how to recognize the art in our own lives. To do so is something of an art itself. A few of the characters Kimmelman describes, like Bonnard and Chardin, are great artists.
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2recommend
2mentions
2people
2023–2024years
100% recommend
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What Hacker News says
- This year, I decided to read more fiction, and I like it.[1] Here are some of the interesting non-fiction books I liked;
- Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
- How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson
- The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- The TATAS: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation by Girish Kuber
- "we love listening to him talk about art because he also doesn't understand tact"
LOL thanks for posting this,
I love-hate this part, this is the state of things
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Galloway then wants reassurance about his first big art purchase,
Saltz pseudo-approves, saying, Well despite all your self-loathing you perfectly bought a painting that represents you
(Swisher is dead wrong, this response is masterfully tactful in the most New York way, brilliant)
How much did it cost, he asks, 6K?
Gallawoy says to add a zero and laughs nervously...
Then he adds, well the artist of the painting is just so stunning and brave and really he bought it to support the artist and all they represent...
So I look up the artist, it's Grayson Perry and I guess google images is enough said
MDIIAMDIRuined
god if this is what a 'sincere' purchase feels like, well i guess the hedgefunders don't seem so bad
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Ironically, modern art is the one field that I do not think it's wise to 'separate the art from the artist' without losing most of the magic, whereas films, music, books etc the works feel like contained mini-worlds, can be transmitted as complete, stand alone.
Modern paintings don't have the 'density' for that without the story/aura, so getting the right work with the right story to unlock it for you can feel really special.
(That ineffable specialness is what you're really buying imo, and yes it very well can be worth it)
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p.s. My favorite easy-to-read book for cynics trying to understand why 'who the artists is' matters so much in the 'aura' of art is The Accidental Masterpiece, by Saltz's competitor haha, Michael Kimmelman of nytimes
his short essays capture the 'essence' of different types of minds at work. A decade later I'll randomly think of the people from the book, tho I can't remember their names or the paintings per se. The feeling of exactly who I'm thinking of sticks with you.
Everyone who makes things probably wonders how other types of people make things, since it feels impossible to describe.
