Greenburgh Public Library Blog

Art in Fiction or Fictional Art?

When I was 13, I took some oil painting lessons with a local artist. That’s it. I have no other artistic training. I never even took Art History 101 in college. When I come across novels featuring art I often seek out the images described in the books. When I read Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore I went online to look at Van Gogh, beyond "A Starry Night." When I read The Art Forger I followed it with a book of Degas ballerinas. I even borrowed some Django Reinhardt CDs after I read The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto. I consider it an effective portrayal of a work of art if I’m inspired to learn more.

These are some of my favorite novels featuring artists and their work. The books share a certain literary complexity, tackling social issues like adoption, abortion, women’s rights, the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s, mental health, and the cost of creative genius. When an author can vividly bring art to life, it adds dimension to the story as much as a well-written character. 

Since there's no museum featuring these artistic masterpieces, you'll have to settle for the masterful descriptions by these authors.  

Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg

Featuring Lillian Preston, photographer, and the 1960's NYC art scene

 

Feast Your Eyes addresses issues as personal as single mothers sharing childcare, and as large what constitutes obscenity. This novel is framed as the catalog notes to Lillian Preston’s posthumous photography exhibition, along with journal entries and letters. The notes are written by Samantha, Lillian’s daughter. 

In 1955, Lillian Preston left Cleveland for New York City to pursue her dream.  She’s invented a new kind of timed camera, and also uses a unique technique for her street photography, holding her camera unobtrusively at her waist. According to the author, many of the photographs she describes are real photos, though the photo most central to the story is entirely invented. 

In an interview with Ari Shapiro, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, Goldberg spoke a bit about her process: 

"The wonderful thing about describing a photograph is you don't need the rights to it, because you're not putting the actual picture in the book," she says. "And so I actually lived with street photographers for five, six years, and I had five or six books of street photography on my desk at any given time. So some of these photos, they're just, I just took them. The work of Vivian Maier is in here, the work of Garry Winogrand is in here, the work of Diane Arbus is in here, the work of Louis Faurer is in here.

As a reader, I’m fascinated by Goldberg’s ability to draw a story from a photograph. To me, it’s an uncomfortable process, like those psychological tests: “Tell me what’s happening in this picture.” Not only did she create a fully developed back story for photographs she viewed during her research, but she seamlessly invented other photos to propel the plot and deepen the characters. 

Bonus: Goldberg has a knack for describing artwork. She created a fascinating piece for Miriam Naumann, the mother in Goldberg’s 2000 novel Bee Season. There’s a scene near the end which evokes the strong desire to see the installation Miriam creates. Unsurprisingly, the movie didn’t do it justice. 
 

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Featuring Mia Warren, photographer and multimedia artist

 

This was the hottest book of 2018. I had countless brief conversations with readers at the circulation desk, but not one mentioned Mia Warren’s art. I was fascinated by her creative process and how it related to her nomadic lifestyle. Race and class are the largest themes of the book, but Mia’s talent raises her standing in the eyes of the reader, if not the other characters. Her artwork sounds surreal, existing in dimensions that would be impossible in real life.

Bonus: an extremely satisfying description of a high school prank.

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Blunt
Featuring the work of Finn Weiss, painter

There’s so much going on in this book--misdirected first love, sibling rivalry, homophobia and the AIDS crisis-- and a painting lies at the center of the telling. Finn Weiss paints a portrait of his nieces, completing it just days before his death from AIDS. The painting is valued at a million dollars, and locked in a bank vault for safekeeping. Greta, 16, and June, 14, have access to the vault, and with each visit June notices small alterations to the painting.  As June takes the train from Westchester to visit New York City and develops a secret relationship with Finn’s partner, Greta gradually falls apart.

Tell The Wolves I'm Home won the Alex Award in 2013 by the Young Adult Library Services Association. This award is given to books written for adults that appeal to adolescents. 

The Ecliptic by Benjamin Wood

Featuring Elspeth "Knell" Conroy, painter along with an eclectic mix of creative companions

 

This novel takes place at an artists’ retreat on Portmantle, a mysterious island which can be reached only by private ferry from Istanbul. Each artist’s residency is sponsored by a patron who pays all related expenses, sometimes for decades. Totally cut off from the outside world, writers, painters, sculptors, and architects work in the solitude of private studio-cottages, gathering only for meals, and to share their work when they are ready to leave the island. When 17 year-old Fullerton arrives, the retreat is thrown into turmoil.

This is the most "literary" of these novels, and the tone of the novel matches the mysterious setting.  As Knell's story slowly unfolded, I was coveting a ferry token to see a staging of MacKinney’s play, see a rendering of Pettifer's cathedral, and view Knell’s experimental paintings. 

I know I'm not the only person who’d love to see Kya’s illustrations of marsh life in Where the Crawdads Sing, or see the films mentioned in Why We Broke Up. The artists and the artwork described are completely fictional, existing only on the page. These books drive me to learn more, but there are no resources beyond their words and my imagination. I’m thankful for the vision of authors who can use words to paint pictures that exist only in their minds.