Log In
Or create an account ->
Imperial Library
Home
About
News
Upload
Forum
Help
Login/SignUp
Index
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Step One: You Are a Total Amateur: Things to Think About Before You Even Get Started
1. Don’t Be Embarrassed
2. “Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge.” —Albert Einstein
3. “Tell Your Own Story and You Will Be Interesting.” —Louise Bourgeois
4. Recognize the Otherness of Art
5. Art Is Not About Understanding . . . Or Mastery: It’s About Doing and Experience
6. Embrace Genre
7. Recognize Convention—and Resist Constraint
8. Cast Your Nets into the Waters
9. Develop Forms of Practice
10. Get Lost
11. Work, Work, Work
12. Start Now
Step Two: How to Actually Begin: An Instruction Manual for the Studio
13. Start Working When You Wake Up
14. Make Your Mark
15. Get Some Perspective
16. Imitate . . . Then Separate
17. Use Your Studio
18. Picasso and Matisse at the Border
19. Embed Thought in Material
20. Art Is a Flatworm
21. Listen to the Wildest Voices in Your Head
22. Find Your Own Voice: Then Exaggerate It
23. Clear the Studio
24. There Are No Wasted Days
25. Know What You Hate
26. Finish the Damn Thing!
Step Three: Learn to Think Like an Artist: This Is the Fun Part
27. All Art Is Subjective
28. Look Hard. Look Openly.
29. Artists Are Cats. Art Is a Dog.
30. See as Much as You Can
31. The Cézanne Rule
32. Art Is a Verb
33. Learn the Difference Between Subject Matter and Content
34. Be Inconsistent
35. Make Strength Out of Weakness
36. Own Your Guilty Pleasures
37. Make Art for Now, Not the Future
38. Chance Is the Lucky Bounce of the Imagination
Step Four: Enter the Art World: A Guide to the Snake Pit
39. Have Courage
40. Don’t Define Yourself by a Single Medium
41. No, You Don’t Need Graduate School
42. Be a Vampire; Form a Coven
43. Accept That You’ll Likely Be Poor
44. Define Success
45. Art and Therapy
46. It Takes Only a Few People to Make a Career
47. Learn to Write About Your Work
48. There’s No Such Thing as “Fear of Success”
Step Five: Survive the Art World: Psychic Strategies for Dealing with the Ugliness (Inside and Out)
49. You’ve Got to Want It
50. Make an Enemy of Envy
51. Deadlines from Heaven
52. Learn to Deal with Rejection
53. How to Recover from Critical Injuries
54. Overnight Is Overrated
55. Having a Family Is Fine
Step Six: Attain Galactic Brain: Cosmic Epigrams from Better Heads and Mine
56. “Art Is a Lie That Tells the Truth.” —Pablo Picasso
57. “Artists Do Not Own the Meaning of Their Work.” —Roberta Smith
58. Art Doesn’t Progress
59. What You Don’t Like Is as Important as What You Do Like
60. You Must Prize Radical Vulnerability
61. You Are Always Learning
62. Be Delusional
63. Oh, and Once a Year, Go Dancing
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
About the Author
← Prev
Back
Next →
← Prev
Back
Next →