By accident, I went into the bathroom at my local Barnes and Noble and saw a book next to the toilet called The Accidental Masterpiece - On the Art of Life and Vice Versa - by Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the New York Times.  I started reading the book and liked it so once I left the bathroom, I bought a fresh copy.  I'm half way through the book and this is what I noticed so far: First, I have not been able to put the book down - it's not a long book - The Accidental Masterpiece touches on so many of the the artists and movements I'm familar with (and some that i was not familar with); I think it's one of the best books about Art that I have read. I just learned, in the first chapter, The Art of Making A World,  that Pierre Bonnard was married to a woman named Marthe de Meligny who turned out to be a recluse whom Bonnard needed to adapt to - but which fueled his creativity (and isolation). In chapter 2, The Art of Being Artless, Kimmelman talks about what sketching and painting used to be for (until photography was invented).

"Cameras made the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available, and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well, becasue pressing a button required less concentration and effort than composing a precise and comely drawing." ".....our inherent laziness and to guarantee our satisfaction, a promise, if you think about it, that should be antithetical to the premise of making art, which presumes effort and risk."

Kimmelman then goes on to talk about Bob Ross, who he calls "the most famous artist on the earth".

"...His psychedelic palette dovetailed with his famously narcotic voice--a voice that, according to Ross's mysterious calculation, was the reason that the other 97 percent of viewers, from Akron to Ankara, from Harrisburg to Hong Kong, tuned in. "

Further on I noted something else -

"...Sometimes, as Ross knew, the artistic value of a painting, as with a family photograph, or any personal momento, is it's least important quality." "...that art is out there waiting to be captured, the only question being whether we are prepared to recognize it."

In the third chapter, "The Art of Having a Lofty Perspective", I learned that Mountains have not always been associated with Spirituality.

"In fact, our modern attitude toward mountains - to what we consider to their natural beauty - is a matter of conditioned learning, inherited through literature and theology, which has evolved during the last few centuries to encompass a notion of the sublime in nature: we have been trained on what to see and how to feel.  The evolution of the whole modern world exmplified by the evolution of our feelings towards mountains."

The author then talks about going to climb Montage Saint Victoire, Cezanne's mountain, and also Mont Ventoux- turned out that Kimmelman did not enjoy the climb or view as much as he thought he would.  It's strange that I'd be reading this in light of the interview I did a couple of weeks ago with Marsha Wooley - who teaches a landscape painting class around Montage Saint Victoire every few years, a trip I would love to go the next time she does it. I still have the rest of the book to read; if your going to read a book about Art, this is one of the better books I've found.