One vote produced the 4.6 on this record, and one vote cannot produce a 4.6. A single grader picks a whole number of stars, so the only averages a solitary vote can generate are 4.0 and 5.0, with nothing available in between. Whatever that badge is measuring, it is not the one voter the counter reports, and the column below it carries five separate write-ups anyway. Two hours and twenty minutes from Penguin Audio, dated March 2020, read by the author. The audiobook underneath the broken number is a good one, and the number is the least interesting thing about it.
What We Made of It
Saltz writes this as a handbook and not as a memoir, which is the right decision and a rarer one than it should be. The book starts at the first spark of an idea and the immediate self-doubt that follows it, then works outward through what the copy names as the qualities that actually matter: originality, persistence, the balance between what you know and what you sense, and self-belief. The structure is rules, prompts and practical tips, which means it can be entered anywhere and does not require you to have read the previous chapter.
A hundred and forty minutes is short for a book of this ambition and exactly right for its method. Nothing here is a lecture. The prompts are meant to be attempted, the rules are meant to be argued with, and the length keeps the whole thing at the scale of a conversation with somebody more experienced who has decided to be useful. A five-star in the column describes itself as not much of a reader and reports being held throughout, which is a real endorsement of the pacing.
Register is the achievement. Writing about making art usually collapses into either mysticism or career advice, and this stays between them, giving practical instruction about materials and blocks and the art world's machinery without ever pretending the mystical part does not exist. The blurb that opens the description gets at it well, praising a book for people who want plain English and understand that practical talk can draw out what lies underneath. That is the tone, and it holds for the full runtime.
Why Listen to How to Be an Artist
Self-belief is the actual subject, and the column proves the point more convincingly than the copy does. The longest response comes from someone who studied theater design, has drawn since the age of nine, took long breaks, and has been stuck on painting for years, and reports that this book supplied hope. That is a specific person with a specific block, describing a specific effect. Books promising to unstick creative people are common; ones that produce a written account like that are not.
Jerry Saltz reads it himself, and for a book that lives on voice, that is close to essential. The whole appeal rests on a critic talking directly to you with enthusiasm and no condescension, and a hired reader would have to manufacture the conviction the author simply has. Two hours and twenty minutes is also a manageable assignment, so the energy never has to be rationed, and the prompts land as invitations rather than as items on a list being read out.
What Might Not Land
A four-star raises the problem this edition cannot solve. It describes the book as itself a work of art, incorporating masterpieces reproduced in color to make its points, and counts the printed edition at a hundred and twenty five pages, concluding that it is less a book to finish in an hour than one to return to repeatedly. Every element in that description is visual. The color plates, the page count, the design that invites returning to a specific spread: none of it survives the transfer to audio, and the description still advertises the result as a useful audiobook for artists of all kinds.
Another entry confirms it from the other direction, praising the way the pages are arranged and color coded as visible evidence of the author's own creativity. Two of the five responses are therefore grading a designed object. That does not make the audio a bad purchase, and it does mean you are buying the argument while leaving the artifact behind, which on a book aimed at visual artists is a specific loss worth pricing in before you decide.
Two smaller notes belong here. The same four-star misspells the byline outright, which is a fair reminder of how loosely a column can be attached to the book it is grading. And the description quotes the author's stature in the art world without ever describing the credential itself, so a buyer meeting this name for the first time gets a superlative and no context. The material stands up without it, but the copy is leaning on recognition it never supplies.
The Right Listener for How to Be an Artist
Working artists in a stall are who this is for, and the column keeps saying so in several different voices. One five-star describes it as accessible in small sips, taken alongside a meal or moved through quickly, and reports working with it in some way every single day, which is exactly how a book of prompts is supposed to function. Students finishing an arts degree and facing the practical questions will find the career material direct. Writers, performers and photographers are named in the copy too, and the advice generalizes further than the visual framing suggests.
Do not buy this edition for the pictures, because the pictures are the part that stayed behind. Anyone who wants the color reproductions, the layout or a physical object to keep on a work table should buy the printed version and use the audio as a companion. It is also the wrong choice for a listener who wants art history or criticism, since this is instruction aimed at people who intend to make something, and it never slows down to explain the canon it draws on.
Questions Listeners Ask
Why does this audiobook show 4.6 from a single vote?
It cannot, and that is the point. One grader awards whole stars only, which leaves 4.0 or 5.0 as the sole outcomes available and nothing at all between them. Five written responses are visible below the badge as well, so the counter and the column are plainly reporting different pools.
Does the audiobook include the illustrations?
No. Every visual element belongs to the printed edition: color reproductions used as part of the argument, a layout designed to be returned to, and a physical scale that invites dipping in and out. The audio keeps the instruction and the voice, and hands you none of the design.
Is it only for painters and visual artists?
Not at all. The copy names painters, photographers, writers and performers, and the advice on blocks, persistence and self-doubt generalizes past any single discipline. The examples lean visual because the author's own field is visual art; the underlying method concerns the act of making anything at all.
How long is it and does the author narrate?
Two hours and twenty minutes, published by Penguin Audio in March 2020, with Jerry Saltz reading his own text. That length suits a book built from rules and prompts rather than chapters, and an author-read edition preserves the direct, enthusiastic address that the whole approach depends on.
