Customer Reviews

A Life in the Arts (Inner Work Book)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think I have become Maisel's best publicity agent since I have told every musician that I work with that they MUST get this book. Just having someone lay out for me the behaviors and personality traits that make up an artistic personality has taken a great load off my psyche. I've just finished the recording of my new CD and A LIFE IN THE ARTS was my bible during the incredible internal battles that I went through in pushin myself to the limit on this project. Great!

Eric Maisel encapsulates the tribulations of living within the artist's world, and provides common sense, practical, easy to follow exercises for the reader. These exercises give us an intimate understanding of our own frailties, and thus help us to face these, to accept them, and to overcome them. The intelligent person's guide to developing and maintaining one's creative self.

I have just finished reading A LIFE IN THE ARTS for the second time. Maisel's book has become an indispensable companion and has helped me to look at reality and to accept certain compromises, at the same time keeping my mission in full focus and never undermining my integrity. It is a great rarity when I am able to identify or relate to a book as I have to this one. A LIFE IN THE ARTS is a wonderful work of art.

I enjoyed the quotes, but this book is filled with artist bashing through and through, continually harping on the mental fragility of artists, their inability to get along with others, or participate in mutually supportive communities. The exercises promote feeling guilty and insecure about seeing the world in unusual ways and imply that curtailing creativity will lead to better adjustment. The last chapter actually gives advice to the artist about how to make a transition out of a life in the arts. UNBELIEVABLE! The organization "Artists for a Better Image" has a web site that lists negative stereotypes of artists in the media. The author parrots these stereotypes hook, line, and sinker. The book "Art & Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland is much, much better as a guide to an artist's self-understanding. "A Life in the Arts" by Eric Maisel is a good book for artists, especially aspiring artists, to avoid.

I purchased this book having spent a good hour and one half reading through it in a bookstore. The book described my life and I realize I have suffered some of the worst scenarios outlined in the book. I was disapointed in the last chapter as it did not offer a transition to a life in art along with the transition out of art. I believe this reveals Maisel's ultimate bias however he is entitled to draw conclusions of course. The book would have been more valuable to its readers less this omission as I am certain there are a significant number of would-be artists who have steered away from art and would like to make a stab at it. Reading a book like this is a step in that direction even if it stops short of the last chapter.

Alife in the Arts - what THE ROAD LESS TRAVLED was to seekers, this book is to artists-is,quite simply,for me. The Difinitive book on the full range of issues for anyone in the arts. It is a book that one can go back to at any point in one's journey, and glean something new.