Judy

Dear Art Conversation Visitors,

I thought some of you might be interested in this post made to Art Education list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/art_ed.../message/15582

Add to this list Art History Mysteries by Ian Pears (recommended by an art teacher). She said his book The Portrait was excellent.

Judy Decker

Judy

I forgot to leave you the link to Art History Mysteries by Ian Pears:

Art History Mysteries by Ian Pears:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-History-My...R3FSEIFG2UTGDY

Judy Decker

John

Great list! Also, my wife is currently enjoying "My Name is Red", by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. He's apparently a Nobel prize winner, although the name doesn't ring a bell for me. It's a murder mystery of a kind, set among medieval manuscript illuminators.

Walter

That's a mouth-watering list that makes me want to run to the library today.

Here's one to add: "The Tragic Muse" by Henry James. The novelist's protagonist, Nick Dormer, abandons a political career to devote himself to art. (His lady friend is an actress-- thus the "tragic" in the title.) James considered the novel one of his half dozen or so best. I would not count it in so august a group -- I think James liked this novel because he was habitually stage struck and the story deals with the theatre-- but it is a good read nonetheless. The Jamesian command of language is most noteworthy.

Yet another for the list would be George Du Maurier's "Trilby." Again we are dealing with painters, and the theatre also comes into play, this time in the form of a singer rather than an actress. DuMaurier's command of language is--- errrrr-- somewhat less impressive than that of James. Interesting tidbit: James encouraged DuMaurier to write this novel while the two were on a walk. Neither had any idea it would turn into a raging popular hit.

Unregistered

I was on a panel a couple of years ago at College Art Association where we discussed the uses of literature in the teaching of art history. As a medievalist, I talked about how Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose makes such a great entry for students trying to understand how a Romanesque portal was intended to engage its medieval viewers. But I'd also like to add Barry Unsworth's "The Ruby in Her Navel" which isn't only about art, but evokes both the appearance of and the discourse about many medieval buildings, objects, and works of art in medieval Sicily.

Unregistered

A new novel that has an artist as the main character and delves into what it means to be an artist is Jeff Vande Zande's

Landscape with Fragmented Figures

It's out this year from Bottom Dog Press.

Unregistered

Charles Willeford is mostly known as a noir mystery writer, but many of us feel that is too restrictive a classification in his case. This book was my launching pad for devouring other novels about art.

Unregistered

I liked Burnt Orange Heresy too. A good one about a modernist painter is The Vivisector by Patrick White.

Would be interested to learn of any novels about conceptual art or conceptual artists.

ivafoster

What about [u]Naked Came I[u] about Rodin? I believe it is a biography.