By Brian Sholis

Wonderment in the 16th and 17th centuries came to be perceived as a kind of middle state between ignorance and knowledge," writes Michael Kimmelman, the chief art critic of The New York Times, about midway through The Accidental Masterpiece. The book, comprising loosely connected essays whose titles all begin with "The Art of," is meant for readers who are curious and interested, if not exactly well informed about art history. Kimmelman's clear, conversational writing style is employed to examine figures as diverse as the painter Pierre Bonnard and his wife Marthe; a dentist and obsessive light bulb collector named Hugh Francis Hicks; a young German-Jewish woman named Charlotte Salomon who died in the Holocaust and left behind, unexpectedly, a 1300-page visual diary of her life; and Wayne Thiebaud, the popular painter of sweets and, more recently, sweetly colored landscapes and San Francisco street scenes.

The book's subtitle, "On the Art of Life and Vice Versa," indicates the order in which it addresses its two subjects. There are precious few of Kimmelman's opinions on art and artists in these pages. Instead, the chapters are meant to guide us toward two main lessons: first, that art mirrors life, and second, that "art provides us with clues about how to live our own lives more fully." This kind of commonplace sentiment is spread throughout the book.

Most often, Kimmelman's own experiences lead the way: Here he is not a critic, but an amateur enthusiast. (One could make the argument that, despite memorably baring his teeth a few times this spring, the two roles are often blurred in his daily newspaper writing as well.) In this way Kimmelman takes us to the top of Montagne Sainte-Victoire because it is the mountain that Paul Cèzanne painted most often and onto the frozen salt flats of Utah because avant-garde director Matthew Barney was making a film there at the time Kimmelman visited. Inevitably, the writing is more in the manner of a travel writer like Peter Matthiessen or an essayist like Joseph Epstein than like a great art critic like Erwin Panofsky.

This allows Kimmelman to wear his erudition lightly, sprinkling the text with references to art historians, cultural critics and novelists. Indeed, the selected bibliography at the end of the book would make for a fascinating and surprisingly diverse year of reading for a determined autodidact; condensed as it is between these two covers, it makes for an entertaining if somewhat slight read.