It is nearly impossible to be a wunderkind for nearly 50 years, but somehow Adam Moss has pulled it off. It helps to look eternally youthful, but what does the trick for Moss is to be eternally curious, a trait that served him well as the founder of 7 Days, a weekly guide to the cool side of New York that lasted only two years yet managed to win a National Magazine Award shortly after its demise, in 1990. Moss would go on to collect so many more Ellies (named after the award itself, an elephant stabile by Alexander Calder) as the editor of New York magazine from 2004 to 2019 that he could have opened his own wildlife park (for the record, the herd would number 41).
His new book, The Work of Art, is Moss at his most curious and engaging as he interviews 43 artists about how they came to create a specific piece. Will it surprise you that the book itself is its own beautiful work of art, given the author’s famed eye for design and graphics? The Work of Art is seductive, enthralling, and a joy to read.
