Lists

05/28/10

Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art
by Liza Kirwin
7 x 10", Paperback , 208 pages
$24.95

There is something cool/illuminating about seeing the process behind an artist's work--the diagrams, early sketches and notes. And for me, perhaps even more so, there's a thrill in seeing the way an artist or writer whom I admire deals with the more mundane, day-to-day details of her life: the grocery lists, address books, doodles, to-dos and schedules. Liza Kirwin, manuscripts curator at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, has collected notes and lists from some major artists (Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Vito Acconci) and historical moments (Paula Cooper's pre-gallery opening to-do list, an early version of Ludwig Sander's list of members of The Club-an art discussion group who's members included Ad Reinhart and Willem de Kooning) into this very nice looking book. Franz Kline's humble taste in food and enormous appetite for booze give me tender feelings toward him. Adolf Konrad's great attention to sartorial detail makes me jealous/psyched. In a list of expenses torn out of a notebook and given to Sam Wagstaff, Gordon Newton includes $5 for "Bad Habits." If only mine cost so little. I pour over this book with both a voyeur's sneaky excitement and an eye for art historical details.

The collection is also a show entitled To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art and it runs through Sept. 27 at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture's Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington DC.

Lists is available directly from Princeton Architectural Press, Amazon and your cool neighborhood bookstore.

Spreads from the book.