A few weeks ago in Chicago, I saw a wonderful Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at the Art Institute. It was arranged roughly chronologically, each room both a different stage and style in Lichtenstein’s work and a deeper, novel-like exploration of the artist himself. You never know when you’re going to have a unique experience of the art like that when you’re going into a museum or a new exhibit. And I had no idea that I’d have one when a friend scooted this quirky little book across a table towards me.
People just love Maira Kalman’s illustrations. I told Kelly that I was reading this book (it took about a day), and she got so excited to show me Michael Pollan’s book, Food Rules, in which he and Kalman collaborated for an illustrated version of his popular, no-nonsense, list of back-to-basics rules about eating that is a lovely read—or just good for the curb appeal and approachability of the art. Here is Kelly’s November blog post about that book. People have already bought two of them since we put them on display near the front desk about a week ago.
This is a case of an artist who knows her medium so well because she’s put in her ten thousand hours, the requisite amount of time that Malcolm Gladwell famously explores in Outliers. This is also one of those exciting cases in which the artist was born outside of the U.S., and has a hint of that untraceable sensibility that the rest of us can sniff out at page one. It makes for some of my favorite art, visual and of the written type. Kalman’s style is to intertwine hand-painted illustration and an episodic storyline (hand-written signature font) to patiently share her detail-oriented and gracious perspective on all things earthly. The key element here is empathy. It is shameless compassion with which she paints the way people wear hats, the funny piece of paper that she finds on the sidewalk, or a bowl of berries fed to her by an aging friend.
Her illustrations for other books shine with this empathy, but this one stands apart because it is a kind of memoir, with each observation reflecting back on the story of the author herself. It reminds me a little of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking in that sense. This is a book in which we are graciously invited to try on Maira Kalman’s eyeballs and see her person, her history, and her suffering. Somehow I found a way to personally connect my own feelings of uncertainty having just graduated from college with hers about life around age 58. And isn’t that sort of exactly what we’re digging for when we pick up any book?
Visit Kalman’s New York Times blog for a sampling of her work. It contains a year’s worth of a column she wrote about democracy in America at kalman.blogs.nytimes.com.
The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman, Penguin Books, $20
by Whitney
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