ArtWork: Seeing Inside the Creative Process

by Ivan Vartanian

A book that equally illuminates and inspires, Art Work reveals the artistic notetaking habits of an astonishing range of artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, and other creators by granting rare access to the journal pages and other visual materials they use to capture and foster their work. Twenty-five creatorsincluding Wes Anderson, Ingmar Bergman, Louise Bourgeois, Will Self, Richard Serra, Blek le Rat, Tony Kushner, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Merce Cunningham, and othersare profiled through a generous selection of images and essays that give context to their work in general as well as to the project being illustrated. Materials featured encompass literal notebooks, a blizzard of Post-it notes, chalkboards, the marks recorded on the walls of a sculptor's studio, and beyond, demonstrating and exploring for students and artists the boundless range of the creative process.

Genres: Art

192 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2011

About the author

Ivan Vartanian is an author, editor and the founder of Goliga Books, Inc., a book-packaging company specializing in art, photography, and design. His publications on art include: Full Vinyl: The Subversive Art of Designer Toys, an overview of hundreds of the world's most popular miniature collectible figures and the inspired creators behind them, Andy Warhol: Drawings and Illustrations of the 1950s, which traces the artist's ten years of work as a commercial illustrator before his re-invention as a pop artist and impresario, Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors, a comprehensive chronology of the artist's rapid development as a master of human expression before his death at the age of 28, and Drop Dead Cute: The New Generation of Women Artists in Japan, a survey of contemporary drawing in Japan. His design books include: Now Loading . . . : The Aesthetics of Web Graphics, a survey of cutting-edge web design, Graphiscape: New York City and Graphiscape: Tokyo, a series of books about “found graphics“ that define the graphic sense of major cities, and TypoGraphics, a look at the overlap between graphics and type. His photography books include the monographs Studio Portrait: A Documentary of Yoshitomo Nara, Kamaitachi: Photographs by Eikoh Hosoe, and the anthology Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. Ivan Vartanian lives in Tokyo, Japan.

Reviews

[Volha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Covers diverse types of artists (painters, musicians, writers etc). Each artist is featured with good quality pictures and some text. However, since all chapters are written by different people, the quality of insight is uneven. Tadanori, Anderson chapters for example indeed give a glimpse into the process and are illustrated by quite revealing notebooks. Yamamoto's is totally opposite: just a generic praise to the great designer and pictures of him with models, nothing about process, source of inspiration or notes/archives. the rest somewhat in between, if you know nothing about an artist it might be interesting to discover.

One time read, recommend to borrow from library or an e-book copy.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. I don't think the features really come together, like maybe the editors weren't quite sure what they wanted the writers to focus on? As for the writing, some of it felt too perfunctory to shed any real insights. But the book itself and the photos are really nice, and not too expensive, so I don't regret purchasing this. I just don't recommend actually purchasing it, like maybe just flip through it in the bookstore or read it in the library if you can.

tl;dr = I liked the pictures, but didn't really care for the writeups.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a book to read on the toilet than anything else. There's great photos and obscure details on some fantastic artists, but only a couple of these articles have any kind of useful depth to them. I had gotten it specifically for the piece on Wojnarowicz but found it pretty useless and uninspiring.

[Jay Salvosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really nice especially for students who are curious about the various creative methods and poetics of artists.