- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Harper (Feb 7 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0061732311
- ISBN-13: 978-0061732317
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#203,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > By Topic > Creativity
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Spark is a beautiful book, enjoyable and filled with life...You will find yourself contemplating the origin of the little lights, the sparks, which show themselves only when someone special looks within.” (Philadelphia Inquirer )
“This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.” (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin )
“Through enlightening conversations, these creative individuals demonstrate how they lift raw materials out of familiar contexts and create art that changes how we perceive the world.” (Publishers Weekly )
“Burstein offers enlightening answers from the culture’s heavy hitters, as well as the process by which they stoked these embers into a roaring fire, and how you, yes, you, might too.” (Vanity Fair )
“Spark is an encyclopedia of inspiration plucked from today’s most revered creators, leaving you not with a one-size-fits-all blueprint to creativity but with a petri dish of eclectic insights for you to distill, cross-pollinate and fertilize into a richer understanding of your own creative life.” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings )
“How better to learn about creativity than to talk with some of the world’s most creative people.” (Detroit Free Press )
“This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.” (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin )
“Through enlightening conversations, these creative individuals demonstrate how they lift raw materials out of familiar contexts and create art that changes how we perceive the world.” (Publishers Weekly )
“Burstein offers enlightening answers from the culture’s heavy hitters, as well as the process by which they stoked these embers into a roaring fire, and how you, yes, you, might too.” (Vanity Fair )
“Spark is an encyclopedia of inspiration plucked from today’s most revered creators, leaving you not with a one-size-fits-all blueprint to creativity but with a petri dish of eclectic insights for you to distill, cross-pollinate and fertilize into a richer understanding of your own creative life.” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings )
“How better to learn about creativity than to talk with some of the world’s most creative people.” (Detroit Free Press )
Book Description
How did Richard Ford's cat influence his work as a novelist? HOW is Chuck Close's portraiture driven by his inability to remember faces? What pivotal moment helped Rosanne Cash understand the healing power of the stage?
Creativity is an elusive subject. We enjoy its fruits—movies, novels, paintings, songs—but rarely are we privy to what happens in the creative process. In Spark, Julie Burstein traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman. Burstein pulls back the curtain to reveal the sources of these artists' inspiration and the processes that bring their work into being.
"These artists may not change lead into gold," Burstein writes, "but they lift materials from their familiar contexts, combining, reshaping, transforming them into works of art that change the way we see the world." Spark is an invaluable resource for the aspiring writer and artist, but the need for creativity extends well beyond the world of paintbrushes and typewriters. Creativity is integral to business, parenting, education, science, and, perhaps most poignantly, our personal relationships. Rarely do books on creativity illuminate and inspire; this marvelous volume will help you find a spark of your own.
Inside This Book
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The process by which to 'ignite' creative and innovative thinking that has breakthrough impact,
By
This review is from: Spark: How Creativity Works (Hardcover)
I have read and reviewed most of the books published during the past decade whose authors focus on leadership and/or management of creativity, innovation, and/or collaboration within a business context. I think Julie Burstein's book is one of the most valuable. Others have their own reasons for thinking so. Here are three of mine.First, she reviews research on breakthrough creative/innovative thinking that revealed business lessons previously shared in sources she duly acknowledges. She supplements that valuable material with what was revealed during more than one thousand interviews conducted for Studio 360. In a series of chapters with a rigorous discussion of a major theme in each, she focuses on 3-6 exemplars in each chapter (a total of 35 "individual case studies") who have much of value to share about how creativity has worked for them. For example, "Engaging Adversity" (Chapter 1), "Imagination's Wellspring" (Chapter 5), and "Reweaving a Shattered World" (Chapter 8). The variety of perspectives provided in each of the nine chapters invests the narrative with a multidimensional texture appropriate to the complexity of the nutrition, gestation, ideation, and refinement process. Business leaders would be well-advised to master the skills of a world-class gardener. I also admire how skillfully Burstein inserts relevant digressions (footnotes, anecdotes, clarifications, etc.) to supplement the primary narrative. The reader learns about, for example, the death of Donald Hall's wife and how he dealt with it within and beyond his art; why "the forces of gravity are integral part of Richard Serra's monumental steal structures" (each weighs several thousand pounds but each is free-standing, "designed to balance on a slim edge"); and how an encounter during a highly contentious faculty meeting at the University of Pennsylvania led to a "creative partnership" between architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown that spanned 50 years during which they married and raised a son. As Burstein demonstrates time and again, breakthrough ideas (however brilliant) have their greatest impact when anchored in human experience. I have other reasons, to be sure, but will offer only these two. However, I presume to suggest to those who read the book that they be alert for Julie Burstein's observations and suggestions with regard to (a) the barriers to the creative process and how to overcome them, (b) how important it is to engage adversity with courage and then conquer it with cunning, and (c) why throughout the entire creative process, passion and determination tend to be more important than inspiration. When asked if he was always painting, Henri Matisse replied, "No. But when my muse visits me, I better have a brush in hand."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (33 customer reviews) 38 of 41 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Thin, Sometimes Interesting Profiles,
By Ann Arbor Reader - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Spark: How Creativity Works (Hardcover)
I don't mean to be unkind here because I appreciate the concept and organization of this book. I wanted to like it much more than I did.Still, after shelling out good money for the hardcover, I'm ultimately disappointed by what's here. To me, it feels insubstantial, and I wish I had looked through it carefully in a bookstore before purchasing. Each of the features here (exploring the creative process of several different writers, artists, musicians, etc.) feels quite brief. Some of the profiles are as short as 2-3 pages and come full of journalistic exposition/background. This is fine in theory, but when I buy a book that promises "How Creativity Works" in its subtitle, I'm hoping for deeper, richer quotations from the profiled artists and less background filler. Do I really need to read, for example, that "[Kevin] Bacon, who starred in films like Footloose, JFK, and Apollo 13, is also renowned as the central character in the trivia game 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...'" (And, no offense, but can Kevin Bacon really help us understand how creativity works? Don't get me wrong--I really like the guy's work, but this just isn't what I hoped for.) Even the longer pieces still feel thin and full of sound bites, rather than concerted reflection on creativity. You may enjoy it if you're looking for brief, breezy slices of NPR-style interview. But if, like me, you were hoping for some sustained dialogue and thinking from these artists, you may want to save your money. 12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique Lives Produce Creativity,
By Terri J. Rice "ricepaper" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spark: How Creativity Works (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
I am so excited about this book. It is fascinating to read how successful artsy people excelled.One of the artists interviewed said, "If you wait for clouds to part and be struck with a bolt of lightning, you're likely to be waiting the rest of your life. But if you simply get going something will occur to you." I was struck by the fact that overcoming adversity in some way was often the key to creativity. Chuck Close, a very famous portrait painter, had to overcome prosopagnosia- the inability to recognize faces. Imagine! because he could not recognize individual's faces he became a portrait painter. He drew a grid on photographs and took the face square by square and created these wonderful portraits, and in the process was able to recognize faces from his artwork. And when you think proopagnosia is enough of a detriment for this portraitist, he has a spinal aneurysm which leave him paralyzed from the neck down in a matter of hours. The tragically beautiful way that Donald Hall, already a great poet, became greater was through the death of his much younger wife, Jane Kenyon. The grief and mourning that Hall captures in his poetry, Without, is something no human being could fake. When the artist was confined in some way, either by placing his/her own parameters or confined from something beyond his/her control, the art was better. Ben Burtt, the noise behind Star Wars and Wall-E, limits himself in that the noises he 'invents' come from everyday life and are not simply digitally or electronically produced. The hum of the saber came from the hum of an interlock motor on a projector coupled with the sound from a broken microphone passing by a television set, picking up a buzz from the television. On and on, I read of these amazing artists who became amazing because they were willing to go through the trials with which their lives had confronted them, and they produced triumphant, glorious art. Or Ang Lee, a first son of Chinese parents, he was expected to go to college and excel in that way. And yet, he could not push his love of theatre and movies out of his mind. Across the world, James Schamus was growing up watching and loving movies. These two men manage to connect and go on to make incredibly artistic films. These stories come by way of Public Radio International's weekly broadcast, Studio 360, hosted by Kurt Anderson. Never heard of it before, I am glad to be introduced via this book. You will be inspired. 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Plain and simple, don't buy this book,
By ChrisStemp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spark: How Creativity Works (Hardcover)
I don't often comment here on amazon, but this one really prompted me to let everyone know what they are getting themselves into. First of all, the hardcover is around $25 and for that much I have some expectations. Second, the book promises to tell you how creativity works but instead just reads as if it's a transcript from interviews done on a radio show years ago from a lot of people that you've probably never heard of. I don't like sounding harsh, but I was REALLY disappointed with this book. The introduction seems great, I do believe that Julie has a good background to write about the subject of creativity and has some valuable insight; however, she rarely imparts her own wisdom. Instead it seems like just a ploy to use her past interviews to make some money through book sales. It's not worth your time, you won't gain much at all.
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