It Speaks to Me: Art That Inspires Artists

by Jori Finkel

Fifty celebrated artists--from New York to New Delhi--on the eye-opening and thought-provoking art that inspires them.

Imagine your favorite artist leading you through a museum to the very work of art they can't stop thinking about. That's the experience at the heart of It Speaks to Me . In lively and intimate conversations, 50 acclaimed artists discuss artworks they find compelling from museums around the world. Together they bring to life a wide range of artworks, from a Rembrandt self-portrait to a 21st-century social-protest drawing, all beautifully reproduced in one volume that is itself inspiring. Highlights David Hockney on Edgar Degas, Shirin Neshat on Alice Neel, Marina Abramovic on Umberto Boccioni, Ai Weiwei on a Shang Dynasty jade, Nick Cave on Jasper Johns, Judy Chicago on Agnes Pelton, Do Ho Suh on Jeong Seon, Mark Bradford on Mark Rothko, and Gillian Wearing on Rembrandt.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

168 pages, Hardcover

Published May 28, 2019

Reviews

[Lagobond · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was far, FAR more interesting than I expected. I initially checked it out from the library to show to someone I know who has a strong interest in art. I stumbled across the book because it features a painting by Agnes Pelton (Awakening: Memory of Father) -- and prominently featured on the back cover, no less! We had just recently discovered and fallen in love with Pelton's otherwordly paintings. As she is not very well known, I was very excited to find anything at all about her at the library. I should add that while I have of course come across plenty of art in my life and visited some museums etc., and while there are certainly pieces I love, I never would have described myself as an "art lover."

I got the book back with slightly-surprised-sounding praise, because it is sort of a broad introduction to art, and not the kind of book most people would pick off the shelf after decades' worth of being immersed in the art world. So I decided to read the Agnes Pelton bit, and then I thought I'd see what's on the next page, and browse a little more, and then I started reading from the beginning... Before I knew what was happening, I was fully immersed. Turns out I have more of an interest in art than I ever realized! I read the whole thing cover to cover. It did take me a while since there's a lot of information to digest, especially since I went down the Google rabbit hole on some of the artists and art works that, well, spoke to me: Do Ho Suh's ethereal constructions, John Knight's The Right to be Lazy, Candida Höfer's photography, Nick Cave's Soundsuits, Ilit Azoulay's creations, Suzanne Lacy's The Circle and the Square.

I really enjoyed the format of this book: fifty artists each briefly discuss an art piece from their hometown that inspires them. Each art piece is featured on a full page, accompanied by the artist's musings. Many of the essays are very personal stories of childhood encounters with art, and their lasting impact on the artist. Some are forays into history, sociology, politics; some address more technical topics like perspective or choice of material. Each artist is assigned exactly one page for their chosen artwork, and exactly one page to talk about it. This book is like a tray of hors d'oeuvres: little nibbles, just enough to get the flavor and maybe try a different one right after.

There's a wide variety of art from around the world -- some artists and pieces that I had encountered before, and plenty that were new to me. Some I loved (see above and below). Others had me scratching my head or, at minimum, rolling my eyes: Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon, Percy and Ella Grainger's Toweling Tunic, Annette Messager's undignified use of animal corpses (wtf). Modern art can be truly ridiculous to the point of making me wonder who takes this stuff seriously: pieces like Gabriel Orozco's Accelerated Footballs (scroll down to see the beat-up balls on a terracotta tile floor), John Bock's When I'm Looking Into the Goat Cheese Baiser, Montien Boonma's Venus of Bangkok, or the "work" of Mikala Dwyer (I will spare you the links).

I spent an inordinate amount looking at some of the gorgeous pieces featured, at times using Google to find larger images: Jan Van Eyck's The Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele and Domenico Ghirlandaio's Portrait of a Young Woman (wow the textures of the brocade and lace in these two paintings!); Paolo Uccello's The Battle of San Romano, the remarkably "modern" looking Indus Valley Civilization male torso, Andrew Wyeth's incredibly realistic Northern Point, and some of Kishio Suga's installations. The Vietnamese sculpture of Buddha enchants me with its unmistakably human shape, so strangely modern in its current weathered appearance, so minimalistically elegant. I find it moving to think about the person who created this sculpture 1,500-ish years ago, and I marvel at the fact that the essence of this piece of art has survived all this time.

The artists' discussion of the pieces (as well as the brief intro to their own work at the end of the book) also ran the gamut. Most of the entries were inspiring, educational, and at times even amusing (Ilit Azoulay on the Ivory Pomegranate). Others were boring, unrelatable/unappealing (to me), or self-centered (John Baldessari). But for the most part I was quite taken with these creators' thoughts about other people's creations, and the various things they taught me about not just the art world, but the world in general; and their own contributions. I'm grateful to the author for introducing me to a wide variety of art I might not have come across otherwise. I also love the format of the book, it feels and looks great and has a nice heft. It's beautifully made, as befits the topic.

P.S. There was some strong competition, but Canadian artist/trash hoarder Liz Magor managed an amazing feat: she gets my own personal Thanks, But No Thanks Award -- BOTH for the worst write-up AND for the dumbest piece of art featured in this book (Carton II). Her musings on the eight-sided Tlingit box strike me as simultaneously pretentious, insensitive, and (I'm guessing) culturally uninformed. But I suppose everyone is entitled to making useless stuff and having an opinion -- including Liz Magor and yours truly, author of this review.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a strong tendency among many people to want to downplay the influence of others, and this book features a wide variety of artists (most of whom are very unfamiliar to me, although a few of whom have works that I have read about or seen before) who are willing to open up about the art that they find especially intriguing and inspirational to them.  There are definitely some strengths of that approach with this book, and it is clear that the editors of this book wish not only to talk about the art that has inspired artists but also to plug the artists who are willing to promote other artists, some of whom are truly great artists throughout history that even such a philistine as I am can recognize.  That doesn't mean that this book is perfect, because it definitely has some flaws, not least in the joy that the book takes in writing about some pretty terrible art on the part of the people selected, as well as in the way that the book demonstrates the common artistic fondness for heathen art and architecture as opposed to biblical works.

This book is a bit more than 150 pages long and it can be divided roughly into two parts.  After an introduction the first part contains around 50 artists in the contemporary world who are willing to write about art that has inspired them.  Some pick obscure artists of the last 150 years, while others strike out and pick, for example, an Aztec statue of Coatlicue from a Mexican who obviously has some identity issues, and another who picks an Aztec sun stone with similar issues likely.  One person picks a Tlingit box, another pick various historical artifacts like Diego Velasquez' workshop, a Chola dynasty statue of Shiva Nataraja, as well as a nude male torso from the obscure Indus River Valley civilization.  Others pick familiar paintings by such artists as Jan van Eyck, Paul Cèzanne, Rembrant, and Umberto Boccioni.  The second part of the book, which takes up about 50 pages, discusses the art of the contributors and their own approach and careers, most of which were not as interesting to me as they likely were to the artists themselves.  After that comes acknowledgements, museum credits, and photograph credits, as there is a lot of photography here.

Among the most notable quality of this book is the way that one ends up finding far more out about the people who are choosing the art that inspires them than we do about that art itself.  That is a frequent complaint that one can have about a book.  Part of the problem of influence is that what aspects of art resonate with us helps us (and others) uncover who we are.  And the artists in this book are by and large interested in fairly ordinary things, like deconstruction rather than creation, fashionable identity politics, and the like.  There is a lot that this book could have offered that was more striking and unusual than what it did, but given the way that the work is geared towards talking about what influences contemporary artists, most of whom don't have very impressive art themselves, the end result is perhaps unsurprising in that.  It is perhaps surprising and praiseworthy that so much of the book involves people talking about Old Masters as well as various important arts of the artist like making replicas of other paintings.  For how else is one to become a good artist except by imitating other good artists and then mastering and striking out for oneself.  Far too many contemporary artists want to be unique before becoming skilled.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think what I liked best about this book was how it made me look at these pieces, both the familiar ones & those new to me, from a new perspective. I also liked that there was information about the contributors, including a picture of one of their pieces of art, which was a nice introduction since I was not familiar with many of them - for every Judy Chicago or Edmund de Waal who I knew about there was a Do Ho Suh or Mounira Al Solh I didn't. And, of course, it is always wonderful to see great art, even if only in a book

[Sharon Larson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give it a higher rating, but it’s my own insecurities in my art that cause a lower rating. There are so many styles of art that aren’t presented in this book. I kept wondering where the watercolor artists were. I was hoping to find something more current, but instead I feel like the focus was on art history.

[Marty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a surprise. I expected a pretty art book.
That did not happen. Instead I learned about different artists and different types of art, and I was altogether fascinated!