Mason Currey

No hay persona más supersticiosa que la que busca la inspiración. En este libro se recogen las pequeñas manías que los escritores, artistas y creadores en general consideran indispensables para reali

Chaque jour à 14 h 30 pétantes, David Lynch s’installe au comptoir du Bob’s Big Boy à Los Angeles pour avaler 7 cafés très sucrés et une énorme glace au chocolat. Un shoot de sucre qui provoque une a

Utterly fascinating Daisy Goodwin, Sunday TimesBenjamin Franklin took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec painted in brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts - he believed alcohol was essential to his creative process.From Marx to Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey presents the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived. Whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstand or boxing, these people made time and got to work.Featuring photographs of writers and artists at work, and filled with fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining stories of the personalities behind it, Daily Rituals is irresistibly addictive, and utterly inspiring.

That word, "vacation," makes me sweat.Coco Chanel on taking a breakYou must do it irregardless, or it will eat its way out of you.Zora Neale Hurston on writingOne has to choose between the Life and the Project.Susan Sontag on choosing artFrom Vanessa Bell and Charlotte Bronte to Nina Simone and Jane Campion, here are over one hundred and forty female writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, poets, choreographers, and filmmakers on how they create and work.Barbara Hepworth sculpted outdoors and Janet Frame wore earmuffs as she worked to block out noise. Kate Chopin wrote with her six children swarming around her whereas the artist Rosa Bonheur filled her bedroom with the sixty birds that inspired her work. Louisa May Alcott wrote so vigorously skipping sleep and meals that she had to learn to write with her left hand to give her cramped right hand a break.From Isak Dinesen subsisting on oysters, champagne and amphetamines, to Isabel Allendes insistence that she begins each new book on 8 January, here are the working routines of over 140 brilliant female painters, composers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers and performers.Filled with details of the large and small choices these women made, Mason Curreys Daily Rituals Women at Work is a source of fascination and inspiration.An admirably succinct portrait of some distinctly uncommon lives - Meryle Secrest

Many of us are drawn to a life in the arts but daunted by how to balance that ambition with the very real need to pay rent and put food on the table. It is impossible to become an accomplished painter, composer, or novelist without spending time experimenting, making false starts, absorbing criticism, reading, talking, and moping about the house. All this time must be purchased, one way or another. Is the history of art and ideas just a history of rich kids?The answer, of course, is no. William Carlos Williams was a family doctor. Franz Kafka was an insurance man, as were Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens. Grace Hartigan temped. James Joyce mooched off his brother; Christopher Isherwood ingratiated himself with a wealthy uncle. Virginia Woolf and Louisa May Alcott were determined to make their writing pay no matter what. And their material circumstances had an impact on all of their creative outputs.From family money to jobs to colorful schemes, Mason Currey, author of the acclaimed Daily Rituals, explores both the well-worn and unlikely paths forward for the up-and-coming artist. Making Art and Making a Living is an entertaining and thought-provoking examination of the collision of creative ambitions with real-world necessities and of the messy, glorious, torturous compromises that gifted individuals have patched together when facing the eternal dilemma of an artistic life.

More of Mason Curreys irresistible Daily Rituals, this time exploring the daily obstacles and rituals of women who are artists--painters, composers, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers, and performers. We see how these brilliant minds get to work, the choices they have to make: rebuffing convention, stealing (or secreting away) time from the pull of husbands, wives, children, obligations, in order to create their creations.From those who are the masters of their craft (Eudora Welty, Lynn Fontanne, Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie Curie) to those who were recognized in a burst of acclaim (Lorraine Hansberry, Zadie Smith) . . . from Clara Schumann and Shirley Jackson, carving out small amounts of time from family life, to Isadora Duncan and Agnes Martin, rejecting the demands of domesticity, Currey shows us the large and small (and abiding) choices these women made--and continue to make--for their art: Isak Dinesen, "I promised the Devil my soul, and in return he promised me that everything I was going to experience would be turned into tales," Dinesen subsisting on oysters and Champagne but also amphetamines, which gave her the overdrive she required . . . And the rituals (daily and otherwise) that guide these artists: Isabel Allende starting a new book only on January 8th . . . Hilary Mantel taking a shower to combat writers block ("I am the cleanest person I know") . . . Tallulah Bankhead coping with her three phobias (hating to go to bed, hating to get up, and hating to be alone), which, could she "mute them," would make her life "as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water" . . . Lillian Hellman chain-smoking three packs of cigarettes and drinking twenty cups of coffee a day--and, after milking the cow and cleaning the barn, writing out of "elation, depression, hope" ("That is the exact order. Hope sets in toward nightfall. Thats when you tell yourself that youre going to be better the next time, so help you God.") . . . Diane Arbus, doing what "gnaws at" her . . . Colette, locked in her writing room by her first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars (nom de plume: Willy) and not being "let out" until completing her daily quota (she wrote five pages a day and threw away the fifth). Colette later said, "A prison is one of the best workshops" . . . Jessye Norman disdaining routines or rituals of any kind, seeing them as "a crutch" . . . and Octavia Butler writing every day no matter what ("screw inspiration"). Germaine de Stael . . . Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . George Eliot . . . Edith Wharton . . . Virginia Woolf . . . Edna Ferber . . . Doris Lessing . . . Pina Bausch . . . Frida Kahlo . . . Marguerite Duras . . . Helen Frankenthaler . . . Patti Smith, and 131 more--on their daily routines, superstitions, fears, eating (and drinking) habits, and other finely (and not so finely) calibrated rituals that help summon up willpower and self-discipline, keeping themselves afloat with optimism and fight, as they create (and avoid creating) their creations.

Aislarse por completo o celebrar fiestas multitudinarias, recurrir a los estupefacientes o a la vida saludable, renunciar a los hijos o dejar que pululen por el estudio... Los modos de enfrentarse a la creacion son innumerables, como refleja el ironico y sagaz testimonio de las protagonistas de este libro.Pintoras, compositoras, escultoras, cientificas, cineastas e interpretes revelan las pequeñas y grandes decisiones que tuvieron que tomar en su vida cotidiana. Nos muestran como han logrado vencer los obstaculos que afronta cualquier artista, pero tambien los que tenian por el hecho de ser mujeres: la conciliacion familiar, la presion social o la intendencia del hogar.Aparecen, entre otras, Pina Bausch, Nina Simone, Diane Arbus, Louisa May Alcott, Dorothy Parker, Grace Paley, Marlene Dietrich, Susan Sontag, Marie Curie, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Patti Smith, Joan Didion...

Más de ciento sesenta escritores, pintores, científicos o inventores desfilan por estas páginas, bajo una luz nueva: la que nos deja ver sus rituales, manías, tics y rarezas a la hora de trabajar (o de no trabajar). El que se encerraba en una habitacion forrada de corcho y solo tomaba en todo el dia dos tazas de cafe con leche y dos croissants (¡y a veces uno solo!). El ama de casa que se levantaba a las cuatro de la madrugada para escribir antes de llevar los niños al colegio. El que dijo "soy como un medico en la sala de urgencias y la urgencia soy yo". El que se traga cada dia medio bote de anfetaminas encerrado en el estudio, y el que pinta con los hijos jugando alrededor. El buen oficinista ("escribo cada dia media pagina, y al cabo de un año eso ya es algo"), y el que pasa meses sin trabajar pero un dia escribe ochenta paginas de un tiron, y apenas corrige luego. Empezado (en forma de blog) un dia en que su autor no encontraba las ganas de trabajar, este libro podra evitarle hacer algo productivo durante muchas horas, y le dara mas de una idea para organizarse una vida creativa o todo lo contrario.

Aislarse por completo o celebrar fiestas multitudinarias, recurrir a los estupefacientes o a la vida saludable, renunciar a los hijos o dejar que pululen por el estudio... Los modos de enfrentarse a la creacion son innumerables, como refleja el ironico