• How to Be an Artist

  • The New York Times bestseller
  • By: Jerry Saltz
  • Narrated by: Jerry Saltz
  • Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)

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How to Be an Artist  By  cover art

How to Be an Artist

By: Jerry Saltz
Narrated by: Jerry Saltz
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Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz is here to explain to you how to bring art and creativity into your life, with irreverent, inspiring and priceless pieces of advice on getting on in art.

As the witty and passionate chief art critic for New York magazine, Jerry Saltz is often approached by artists, both amateur and professional, asking him for advice: How do I get started? How do I get better? Is what I'm doing even art at all? They want to know, in short, how to be an artist.

Now, expanding on his viral cover story for New York magazine - and drawing on his decades of immersion in the art world - Saltz has the answers. How to Be an Artist is an indispensable book of practical inspiration for creative people of all kinds. Brimming with dozens of brand new rules, prompts, exercises and tips designed to break through creative blocks, ignite motivation and conquer bad habits, this book is designed to help artists of all kinds - painters, photographers, writers, performers - realise their dreams.

Includes such advice as:

  • Make art for now, not the future
  • No, you don't need graduate school
  • Recognise convention, and resist constraint
  • Get lost
  • Listen to the wildest voices in your head
  • Know what you hate (it's probably you)
  • Finish the damn thing!
  • How to recover from critical injuries
©2020 Jerry Saltz (P)2020 Octopus Publishing Group

Critic reviews

"I wish I had read these rules 40 years ago and carried them around like a bible. By chance or design I've followed most of them at some point but it took me a lifetime as an artist to find what worked. They are the generous, loving, enthusiastic, bullshit-free advice of a master communicator, just reading them makes me want to charge back into the studio." (Grayson Perry)

"Being an artist is a lonely pursuit - 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of your life. Most of the time it hurts. This book will help the pain." (Tracey Emin)

What listeners say about How to Be an Artist

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Worth it

It was worth the read/listen. The author narrated very well. The book was reassuring and informative. Keeping the one star just coz I want to keep room for betterment. Hehe.

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best bok I've read 2023

full of short concise ideas, definitely re read and the train idea is genius .

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