Introduction
How can beauty be defined? Do you know why collectors collect art? This is what you will learn more about when you read Michael Kimmelman’s literature. You will find everything around turning into art. Ask yourself if art can compare with raising children. Do you know art may require more sacrifice than raising children? That art may be initiated despair and efforts than sickness and death?
The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa is a powerful little book about arts. Written by Michael Kimmelman, this book explains how our lives are full of arts. The author is a renowned critic of arts who shows the readers were to identify art and feel delighted. Have you ever heard of accidental art? Michael introduces art that occurs by accident. He exemplifies this with conventional thinking citing light bulbs, double-exposed photos, and medical paraphernalia as accidental arts. However, it is funny why you would want to read this book. Unless you love art, you will certainly not enjoy it. However, if you love art the author engages you through insights into how you should perceive objects you see now and then.
The author, Michael Kimmelman remains a New York Times most reputed book reviewer. He is a looked up at for his great insight about arts and music. Michael is a pianist who understands more about art than any other artist does; He understands an artist’s world and perspective from the inside. Penguin published The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa in paperback in 2006. A contemporary art book draws much of its insight from both fiction and reality. It is the author’s perspective about arts and our daily life that brings about a flow of various art contexts. Throughout the 256 pages, you will learn many interesting things about the arts. Philosophical musings and gently poked surprises make the book interesting.
A review of the chapters
The book begins with the experience of French painter, Bonnard. It is a moment from the life of Pierre Bonnard. Bonnard in 1893 saw a fragile leaving a tram. He named her Marthe and they become lifelong partners. Marthe became a great inspiration for Bonnard’s greatest works. A keen reader will identify a missing link between where art comes from. It is intentional of Kimmelman to make the reader trace the art to less promising circumstances a reason why he titled his book ‘the accidental masterpiece’
In his initial chapters, Michael begins to explore art as one of the most inspiring and fulfilling aspects of life. Art is more of life’s greatest passion, everyone experiences tranquility through art, and he projects. Michael emphatically through chapters one and two explains how life and art go together. He emphasizes embracing art as part of life. Art is described as everywhere event and reality. This perspective aims at reassuring us that, life art, and life link together at heart. However far and everywhere, with eyes wide open, you will see, find, and experience art. Nevertheless, you have to see art to recognize it.
As the title of the book projects, the accidental masterpiece is an art. This art seeks to identify how life is a cabinet of unique artistic projections, nature, and situations. It is difficult to understand a book from such a perspective; however, the author can inform his audience that art is everywhere, every time. In his initial chapters, Michael Kimmelman talks about how people should reason about art and conventionally perceive art. Here, Michael talks about accidental art, which is the captivating title of his masterpiece. Accidental art is mentioned and named. The 75,000 light bulbs, medical wonders, gumball machines, double-exposed photographs, actually everything that is around us but unique is described as art. To understand art, you need to be an art enthusiast. His chapters are a collection of things, situations, and artistic projections based on philosophy.
Kimmelman does not use poetry in his art bubble rather admires how Bonnard drew out her bath. Apart from Pierre Bonard, Michael brings Bob Ross aboard. He explains how Ross made significant contributions to society. Ross is renowned for the ‘happy little trees’ which Michael speaks little of. Hugh Francis Hicks is brought to the picture gently and in a philosophical approach. Hicks is the artist behind the 75,000 light bulbs and other artistic projects. These artists represent a unique brand of art and Michael delivers his perception about the uniqueness of art just all right.
Science art follows suit after Michaels’s expose on accidental art. Scientific art in Kimmelman’s book refers to art emanating from scientific practice. The message is delivered through the medical odds at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Michael Kimmelman at every chance stresses that every passing moment is art encouraging people to conceptualize art.
The author defines art as a vital human aspiration. He identifies how art is placed across our daily schedules, every minute; each moment is packed with art. Our movement, our way of life, how we look at things, their movement and nature, all artistically surround us. Here, Michael makes us understand that art is a serious human endeavor. He makes you realize that art is a passage to a broader view of life. How we perceive life is portrayed as a channel or a sort of passage to larger nature and life complexes. Through such channels, you can experience and perceive life clearly; allowing you to comprehend what it is, your role as a living being, and how to plan for life for you are a human being.
This book brings you to understand that life is a journey through which you master to recognize every detail about your surroundings, actions, and reactions. You realize that these details are artistic and from Michael’s perspective, they are arts you should be aware of almost every moment they happen. That way, you will find life very inspiring and satisfying. In the book, the author brings on board the context of two artists Bonnard and Chardin who he draws out as great artists. Through their accomplishments as artists, the author can explain to the reader how one should recognize art present in our day-to-day life. Other characters in the book are not exactly art enthusiasts but explorers and collectors of unique and strange artifacts’.
Charlotte Solomon, one of these explorers and obscure obsessive of art. This girl accomplishes a great deal when she creates a masterpiece. This masterpiece is about the world and comes before her death. She developed this art about the world in her life as an artist. How accidental art comes through Charlotte Salamon is intentional of Michael. She is a withdrawn shy Jew who fled to South France from Germany during the dreadful Jew holocaust. She was captured and killed at Auschwitz. Michael can connect the reader with Charlotte as she experienced the pain of exile in France between 1940 to 1942 where she authored 1300 literature of grotesque pictures and paragraphs. Michael describes this artistic purge as something that squeezes life into a ‘tour de force
Besides these artists, we are introduced or rather reminded of the cabinet of wonders. The Wunderkammer, better known as the cabinet of wonders is a metaphor for life art. It is a 17th-century European art, which has cabinets. Each cabinet has drawers. Each drawer means something unique. The drawers are like a chest of promises. These things are unique and exotic. The cabinet represents the universe, which is diverse and full of unique things.
Just like the book brings you different art personalities. Yoko Ono and Ray Johnson are part of Michaels’s purge about art. These two were performance artists who accomplished a lot. Yoko and Johnson made art out of human motion and actions. Johnson plotted his death through this knowledge about human emotions and actions. Jay DeFeo was a canvas painter. She dedicated days of her life to painting ‘the rose’ on canvas. DeFazio painted the rose until it was packed with layers and layers of paint. Finally, the ‘the rose’ weighed a ton making it a unique art.
This book is a great philosophical teaching about how you should perceive life. Each event in the artist’s life is projected as accidental. Michael Kimmelman has handpicked each artist’s life and experiences to make the artistic progenies of the situation look accidental. Though accidental, the art comes to being that is truly profound about the author’s objective the way. This book is a great read. Based on its philosophical approach to events relating to life and how they are artistic, it is ideal for people who love art.
This book itself is a progeny of the Wunderkammer for it is a myth of art. The book is a self-contained cabinet full of surprises and unique things. Reading this book allows you to imagine your chests of wonders. You feel art and embrace it as part of life. Does Michael Kimmelman’s, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa provide you with an inspiring feeling about art? If you are an art enthusiast, you will immensely enjoy this book. What you need to know is that art is life, it is in life, and it is our life. This is what the author hoped to accomplish. This book is ideal for artists who want to rediscover themselves. It inspires and helps one rediscover the greatness of art and the value of art as a talent. There are philosophical musings, which add more panache to the meaning of art and how life relates, depends, and reacts to art.