The Evanescent Art of the Sandcastle

Beside him was Adam Moss, his former boss, who features Adelman’s sandcastles in his new book, “The Work of Art.” After leaving his post as the editor-in-chief of New York magazine, in 2019, Moss devoted himself to painting, but his ambition outstripped his ability. “I kind of just wasn’t any good,” he said. On a trip to Spain, he was in the gift shop of the Guggenheim Bilbao and saw one of Gehry’s squiggly sketches for the building. In the galleries, he’d been enraptured by an unfinished portrait by Alice Neel. Frustrated in his own work, he decided to demystify the artistic process by interviewing more than forty artists working in different disciplines, including Stephen Sondheim, Kara Walker, and Sofia Coppola. While writing the book, Moss had lunch with Adelman, who had designed New York’s digital publications, and found out about Adelman’s sandcastle sideline. “I had been talking to all these other artists who were basically making things that would last forever,” Moss recalled. “It was the making that consumed them, and many were kind of indifferent to the results. So I thought, Well, sandcastles are a pure example, because they disappear.”