The next Books & Beyond (BAB) meeting is on Tuesday, April 29th at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion will be law/legal books and films.
If you’d rather attend online, register for a Zoom link: https://oneallibrary.org/event/11282322
If you’re looking for suggestions, visit the Shelf Care page
of the Library’s website and scroll down to the Books & Beyond row: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations
Last night, BAB met to discuss books and films about art
topics!
(The BAB participant noted that this was an incredibly academic title.)
Featuring an enlightening introduction by the book's translator, Michael T. H.
Sadler, providing generational and cultural context for Kandinsky and his
work, Concerning the Spiritual in Art gives testimony to the
mind and creative expression of Kandinsky and other artists of his generation.
This seminal and thought-provoking book exploring the heart of the artistic
endeavor belongs in the library of every serious artist and student of modern
art.
Understanding Art: The Hidden Lives of Masterpieces
Works are removed from their frames and set up for curators,
historians, restorers and scientists to view and discuss freely. The five major
artists whose pieces are examined include: Raphael, Rembrandt, Poussin, Watteau
and Leonardo.
The Art Detective: Fakes, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures by Philip Mould
What separates a masterpiece from a piece of junk? Thanks to
the BBC's Antiques Roadshow and its American spin-off,
everyone is searching garage sales and hunting online for hidden gems,
wondering whether their attics contain trash or treasures. In The Art
Detective, Philip Mould, one of the world's foremost authorities on British
portraiture and an irreverent and delightful expert for the Roadshow,
serves up his secrets and his best stories, blending the technical details of
art detection and restoration with juicy tales peopled by a range of eccentric
collectors, scholars, forgers, and opportunists.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Roman emperors used to wear togas dyed with a purple color
that was made from an odorous Lebanese shellfish–which probably meant their
scent preceded them. In the eighteenth century, black dye was called logwood
and grew along the Spanish Main. Some of the first indigo plantations were
started in America, amazingly enough, by a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza.
And the popular van Gogh painting White Roses at Washington’s
National Gallery had to be renamed after a researcher discovered that the
flowers were originally done in a pink paint that had faded nearly a century
ago. Color is full of extraordinary people, events, and
anecdotes–painted all the more dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney
Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian's
list of the ten most important paintings ever made. Often referred to by the
subject of its central panel, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, it
represents the fulcrum between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also
the most frequently stolen artwork of all time. In this fast-paced, real-life
thriller, art historian Noah Charney unravels the stories of each of these
thefts. In the process, he illuminates the whole fascinating history of art
crime, and the psychological, ideological, religious, political, and social
motivations that have led many men to covet this one masterpiece above all
others.
What the Ermine Saw: The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth
Five hundred and thirty years ago, a young woman sat before
a Grecian-nosed artist known as Leonardo da Vinci. Her name was Cecilia
Gallerani, and she was the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan.
Sforza was a brutal and clever man who was mindful that Leonardo’s genius would
not only capture Cecilia’s beguiling beauty but also reflect the grandeur of
his title. But when the portrait was finished, Leonardo’s brush strokes had
conveyed something deeper by revealing the essence of Cecilia’s soul. Even
today, The Woman with an Ermine manages to astonish.
Despite the work's importance in its own time, no records of it have been found
for the two hundred and fifty years that followed Gallerani’s death. Readers
of The Hare with the Amber Eyes will marvel at Eden
Collinsworth’s dexterous story of illuminates the eventual history of this
unique masterpiece, as it journeyed from one owner to the next–from the
portrait’s next recorded owner, a Polish noblewoman, who counted Benjamin
Franklin as an admirer, to its exile in Paris during the Polish Soviet War, to
its return to WWII-era Poland where—in advance of Germany’s invasion—it
remained hidden behind a bricked-up wall by a housekeeper who defied Hitler’s
edict that it be confiscated as one of the Reich’s treasures.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love
story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is
a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of
16th-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish
writers.
The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed
artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his
realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because
figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a
dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn't know the full
scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen
miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery - or crime? - lies in the
half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical
puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art,
religion, love, sex, and power.
Anita De Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
In 1985 Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is
found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it
isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time
Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On
College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved
out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are
the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same
opportunities is no secret.
But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a
well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the
social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon
Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship,
which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. Moving back and forth
through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de
Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love,
and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the
rarefied world of the elite.
Gabriele by Anne Berest (this title will be published April 22, 2025)
The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a
brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from
the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named
Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a
Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating.
Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five
years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a
fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the
avant-garde.
As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution,
and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia,
Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of
seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and
ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?
Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona,
London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious,
uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the
mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Italy, 1347. While Brother William of Baskerville is investigating accusations of heresy at a wealthy abbey, his inquiries are disrupted by a series of bizarre deaths. Turning his practiced detective skills to finding the killer, he relies on logic (Aristotle), theology (Thomas Aquinas), empirical insights (Roger Bacon), and his own wry humor and ferocious curiosity. With the aid of his young apprentice, William scours the abbey, from its stables to the labyrinthine library, piecing together evidence, and deciphering cryptic symbols and coded manuscripts to uncover the truth about this place where "the most interesting things happen at night." Adapted to a famed film starring Sean Connery.
The Swan Thieves by
Elizabeth Kostova
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlow,
devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but
ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the
National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed.
Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a
journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a
tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.
The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert Edsel
At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuhrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture. Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis. Adapted to a famed film starring George Clooney.
Leviathan by Paul Auster (not available in the JCLC, request from Interlibrary Loan)
“Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a
road in northern Wisconsin.” So begins Peter Aaron’s story about his best
friend, Benjamin Sachs. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he
admired, a world he shared. And then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that
might or might not have been intentional, Sachs disappeared. Now Aaron must
piece together the life that led to Sach’s death. His sole aim is to tell the
truth and preserve it—before those who are investigating the case invent an
account of their own.
Loving Vincent (2017)
Mystery surrounds the death of famed painter Vincent van
Gogh in 1890 France.
---
If, like me, you found yourself curious about Noah Charney
and The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, learn more here: https://www.artcrimeresearch.org/our-work/
Title descriptions pulled from Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes.
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