Two Books
While I was on vacation last week I read two books, novels, about the art world.
The first one, Spending by Mary Gordon, is about a woman artist who is a respectfully successful painter in NYC. She meets a man who offers to be her muse. He is rich and pays for everything. He replaces her salary from her teaching job at a girls school so she can quit and give all her time to her painting. He buys her an apartment with lots of windows, a terrific view and great light where she can paint and he lets her use his summer home in Cape Cod as her own. He only uses it when she allows him to come there. If she needs to go to Rome to see paintings in museums, they go. Whatever she needs to do to create her paintings he gives her.
I'm not writing a book review by any means. I'm enjoying the fantasy. What if? How luscious.
The second book was The Art Fair by David Lipsky. This is about a woman artist, a mother of two young sons, who breaks into the New York art scene and is adored by her gallery owner because her sales are off the charts only to be dropped when her personal life interferes with the creation of her paintings. It's a twenty year climb for her to get back into the acceptance of her once adoring gallery owner's graces. The book is partly autobiographical as the story is based on the author's artist mother's experience.
While this book didn't have the fun flair of "what if," it did have the example of perseverance and tenacity it takes to keep pounding the pavement and sending out slides. The mother artist in this story always kept producing work and kept pushing to improve year after year. I was really taken with that. While the story was full of sizing up the art world and how to behave to certain people in this made up art scene, it did make the point of her single mindedness in always improving, always asking herself how she could make her paintings better and then making her paintings better.
Both books offered the light, relaxing vacation reading that I was looking for. And when I got home, there was an acceptance in the mail to an art exhibit I really, really wanted to get in. It was a great vacation.
The first one, Spending by Mary Gordon, is about a woman artist who is a respectfully successful painter in NYC. She meets a man who offers to be her muse. He is rich and pays for everything. He replaces her salary from her teaching job at a girls school so she can quit and give all her time to her painting. He buys her an apartment with lots of windows, a terrific view and great light where she can paint and he lets her use his summer home in Cape Cod as her own. He only uses it when she allows him to come there. If she needs to go to Rome to see paintings in museums, they go. Whatever she needs to do to create her paintings he gives her.
I'm not writing a book review by any means. I'm enjoying the fantasy. What if? How luscious.
The second book was The Art Fair by David Lipsky. This is about a woman artist, a mother of two young sons, who breaks into the New York art scene and is adored by her gallery owner because her sales are off the charts only to be dropped when her personal life interferes with the creation of her paintings. It's a twenty year climb for her to get back into the acceptance of her once adoring gallery owner's graces. The book is partly autobiographical as the story is based on the author's artist mother's experience.
While this book didn't have the fun flair of "what if," it did have the example of perseverance and tenacity it takes to keep pounding the pavement and sending out slides. The mother artist in this story always kept producing work and kept pushing to improve year after year. I was really taken with that. While the story was full of sizing up the art world and how to behave to certain people in this made up art scene, it did make the point of her single mindedness in always improving, always asking herself how she could make her paintings better and then making her paintings better.
Both books offered the light, relaxing vacation reading that I was looking for. And when I got home, there was an acceptance in the mail to an art exhibit I really, really wanted to get in. It was a great vacation.
posted by Kate at
8:27 PM
2 Comments:
Do you feel that The Art Fair was informative?
By
Janets Planet, at 8:31 PM
Yes, I do, but then, I was looking for tips as much as enjoying the story. What I found was just what all the art marketing books and teachers say. Keep sending your stuff out. Keep those you've already sent to updated with your new work.
By
Kate, at 12:07 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home