No art theme ideas?
The Horse's Mouth - Joyce Cary (movie version starred Alec Guiness)
The Ebony Tower - John Fowles
Synopsis: Henry Breasley is an elderly painter whose secluded retirement is invaded by a brash young artist commissioned to write a biographical study of the great man. Breasley shares his home with two young English girls, both former art students, Diana and Anne. In this strange ménage, David is left in no doubt about his host's views on modern abstract art. However, he is puzzled by the old man's relationship with the girls, especially when he himself is attracted to Diana.
Freud at Work - Lucian Freud in Conversation with Sebastian Smee
Scumbler - William Wharton (he also wrote Birdy)
Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
Lust for Life - Irving Stone
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
The Unknown Masterpiece - Balzac
Leonardo's Swan's - Karen Essex
My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
Moon and Sixpence - Somerset Maugham
My Name is Red - Orhan Pahuk
For art: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein. Which is mostly about the art scene in Paris between 1910 and 1930. Kind of a ridiculous amount of name-dropping in this.
For frontiers: Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner. Simply fantastic, and about as important as Turner's essay.
I like
lust for life.
I read it before I ever saw a Van Gogh -- so I loved his paintings before i saw them ( I read it in high school )
I admit to only having seen the movie, but "The Girl With the Pearl Earring"?
That is exactly the type of thing I'm looking for.
Movie tie-ins are actually great because we have a film critic among us.
Wow, ask and you shall receive!
The Ebony Tower - John Fowles
Hah! I'm reading TFLW this month for our 19th-century England salon ("What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew").
My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
We read this for the short-lived Buffista book club, didn't we? I remember thinking I would never have picked it up otherwise, but I really liked it.
Are we looking at fiction or non-fiction. For NF my vote would be "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees" by Lawrence Weschler.
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
Isn't this a book? I think I have it on my history bookshelves.
On the art theme,
Song of the Lark.
Willa Cather is the answer to many things.
