The Work of Art

From museums to headphones to cinema screens, art is consumed and celebrated daily, but it’s rare for the process behind the artwork to be highlighted. In The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing (Penguin Press), former New York magazine editor Adam Moss examines the incredibly personal, rigorous and complex process of making art in a series of conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time. Pentagram created a design for the book that immerses readers in these discussions, weaving together journal entries, napkin doodles, sketches, outtakes and other background material to break down all the work that goes into making great art.

The Work of Art profiles almost 50 people from a wide variety of disciplines, including the artist Kara Walker, filmmaker Sofia Coppola, playwright Tony Kushner, composer Stephen Sondheim, illustrator Roz Chast, cook/writer Samin Nosrat, artist Barbara Kruger, poet Louise Glück, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, choreographer Twyla Tharp, architect Elizabeth Diller, fashion designer Marc Jacobs, photographer Susan Meiselas, crossword puzzle maker Will Shortz, and many others.

The Pentagram team collaborated closely with Moss on the design. To put all of the artists on equal footing, the interviews are arranged in no particular order; there is no hierarchy or grouping by discipline. Each chapter is treated like an academic journal, where the reproductions of chaotic scribbles, marked-up contact sheets and half-finished thoughts are arranged like treasured museum artifacts. The effect is like being dropped into a stream of artistic consciousness. No matter what page you open to, there are multiple points of entry into the content: sidebars, images, infographics, side-by-side visual comparisons, spot illustrations, fragments of letters, emails and text messages, and other details and asides.