The Accidental Masterpiece

Throughout my career teaching art, there's no phrase I've heard more often than 'I just can't do art', as if making art was akin to sprouting wings or instantaneously speaking French. The reality, I think, is that anyone can 'do art'. The caveat is our particular definition of what it is. Not everyone can draw realistically, nor should they spend undue time trying to; we need people's who are naturals at microbiology to start working on that rather than sweat through still life compositions.

Michael Kimmelman's book The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa provides hope for those of us who prefer a wider definition of what art actually is. In his words, "This book is, in part, about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece." He gives funny, strange, and memorable examples of people involved in 'art' and the value their unconventional approaches brought to the world. Chapter titles such as 'The Art of The Pilgrimage' and 'The Art of Staring Productively at Naked Bodies' provide the first hint of his approach.

In the chapter titled 'The Art of Making Art Without Lifting a Finger', he examines Sol LeWitt, an artist known for giving instructions on how to make an artwork rather than making it himself (ie, '24 lines for the center, 12 lines from the midpoint of each side, and 12 lines for each corner').

"[Sol LeWitt] didn't care about making precious one-of-a-kind objects for posterity. Objects are perishable, he realized. Ideas need not to be."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/design/09lewitt.html?pagewanted=all

In fact, collecting art is an act of art-making, argues Kimmelman. In the section The Art of Collecting Lightbulbs:

"The combination of public service and the strength of one's conviction is what defines an admirable collector."

In The Art of Finding Yourself When You're Lost, he relates the story of Frank Hurley, the expedition photographer on Earnest Shackelton's ill-fated 1914 expedition to Antarctica. After their ship was crushed by ice floes, Hurley had to decide which negatives (then on heavy, fragile glass plates) could be saved.

"I had to preserve them almost with my life, for a time came when we had to choose between heaving them overboard or throwing away our surplus food -- and the food went over."

After surviving several years living on the ice with his shipmates and the negatives, they were final rescued in 1917. Hurley's photographs remain some of the most haunting and inspiring ever taken.

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425812025/141083/frank-hurley-the-dying-sun.html

The most important part of Kimmelman's book is that it gives permission for all of us to be great artists -- even of our art, like the dentist Hugh Hicks, is the world's largest collection of lightbulbs.