The Work of Art is an essential twenty-first century roadmap for turning your creative work into a thriving business. Featuring brass-tacks useful information for creative entrepreneurs of every skill set, this book covers topics from personal branding, budgeting, and mental health, to guidance on clearing the hurdles that come forth as you rise to steady success. Heidi Luerra is the Founder & CEO of RAW: natural born artists, the world's largest independent arts organization. For almost 20 years, Heidi has worked with artists of all creative genres. Starting her own clothing line at a young age, she earned her business stripes the hard way. Over the past decade, Heidi has grown RAW to a worldwide operation in over 80 cities with over 200k artists in the RAW community (so she's got some stuff to say). Heidi offers no-nonsense advice (because who needs the fluff?), warnings against common creative pitfalls (because we don't have to fall for them), and real step-by-step action guides (because creative success takes planning). Heidi uses her own personal stories and sloppy mistakes (perhaps even oversharing) to demonstrate key lessons for creatives, including patience, persistence and best practices. She also profiles 15 working creative entrepreneurs from an array of artistic fields who have arrived at their own rewarding success. You'll travel along the path of what it really looks like to charge in the direction of your dreams. The Work of Art is cheeky, fun, and as honest as it gets.

Why is this art? The world of contemporary art can seem intimidating, absurd, and self-obsessed, while the sums of money exchanged are baffling. Writing on contemporary art is often tortured and confused, ignoring the important questions: What is contemporary art? How does it relate to money and power? How is it made? Will it survive? To answer these questions, Katya Tylevich and Ben Eastham offer a series of short biographies on eight great works of twenty-first century art by Martin Creed, Barry McGee, Camille Henrot, Marina Abramovic, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, Erwin Wurm, Michaël Borremans, and Gregory Crewdson. They follow these paintings, films, installations, experiences, experiments, sculptures, and performances through all the key stages of their existence so far – from the delicate quiet of the studio to the grand chaos of the art world. A funny, engaging, personal guide through the world of art today, My Life as a Work of Art takes as its starting point the only really important thing: the work of art itself.

A USA TODAY, WASHINGTON POST, AND PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER! The path to your life's work is difficult and risky, even scary, which is why few finish the journey. This book will help you discover your life’s work to live a life that matters with passion and purpose. It’s about the task you were born to do, your true life’s work. Bestselling author and entrepreneur Jeff Goins explains how the search begins with passion but does not end there. Only when our interests connect with the needs of the world do we begin living for a larger purpose. Those who experience this intersection experience something exceptional and enviable. Though it is rare, such a life is attainable by anyone brave enough to try. Through personal experience, compelling case studies, and current research on the mysteries of motivation and talent, Jeff shows you how to find their vocation and what to expect along the way. In The Art of Work, you’ll learn: The seven stages of calling to discover your life’s work How accidental apprenticeships differ from mentoring and why taking action is key How believing The Myth of the Leap can prevent you from achieving your dreams To live The Portfolio Life and how it can lead to your greatest satisfaction and best work Our hearts crave connection to a meaningful calling. The Art of Work illuminates the proven path for anyone who wants to embrace that calling and build a body of work they can be proud of.

Everyone is as unique and beautiful as a classic work of art, whether you are Great Wave Off Kanagawa “with the power of the sea,” or Starry Night, “a galaxy of love.” Lift the flaps to reveal classic works of art beneath! Accompanying each masterpiece is a creative, colorful, and kid-oriented illustration, depicting children in a scene analogous to the one in the famous work. Every spread includes a loving poem about what makes you a unique work of art—just like the classic paintings and sculptures underneath the flaps! Children will be delighted to learn about the work of famous artists, like Mary Cassatt and Vincent van Gogh, in this die-cut picture frame format. Each classic painting or sculpture is labeled with the title, the artist, and the year the painting was created—providing an early exposure to worldly works of art!

In The Work of Art, Anthea Callen analyzes the self-portraits, portraits of fellow artists, photographs, prints, and studio images of prominent nineteenth-century French Impressionist painters, exploring the emergence of modern artistic identity and its relation to the idea of creative work. Landscape painting in general, she argues, and the “plein air” oil sketch in particular were the key drivers of change in artistic practice in the nineteenth century—leading to the Impressionist revolution. Putting the work of artists from Courbet and Cézanne to Pissaro under a microscope, Callen examines modes of self-representation and painting methods, paying particular attention to the painters’ touch and mark-making. Using innovative methods of analysis, she provides new and intriguing ways of understanding material practice within its historical moment and the cultural meanings it generates. Richly illustrated with 180 color and black-and-white images, The Work of Art offers fresh insights into the development of avant-garde French painting and the concept of the modern artist.

Celebrating art and interpretation that take on social challenges, Doris Sommer steers the humanities back to engagement with the world. The reformist projects that focus her attention develop momentum and meaning as they circulate through society to inspire faith in the possible. Among the cases that she covers are top-down initiatives of political leaders, such as those launched by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, and also bottom-up movements like the Theatre of the Oppressed created by the Brazilian director, writer, and educator Augusto Boal. Alleging that we are all cultural agents, Sommer also takes herself to task and creates Pre-Texts, an international arts-literacy project that translates high literary theory through popular creative practices. The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller's thinking runs throughout Sommer's modern-day call for citizens to collaborate in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.