The Forgery of Venus: A Novel
William Morrow - William Morrow
Release date: 2008-04-01
Hardcover
Author: Michael Gruber
American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Fiction, Fiction - Espionage / Thriller, Mystery/Suspense, Suspense, Fiction / Suspense, Art forgers, Forgeries, Painters, Painting
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The Forgery of Venus: A Novel
Date undefinedI'm a sucker for novels about art forgery and faked antiques. I've thoroughly enjoyed Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy series and Iain Pears Art History mysteries featuring Jonathan Argyll and the Italian art theft squad. So seeing "The Forgery of Venus" was a no-brainer for picking up, but this book was more than an art scam rip-off; it's a kaleidoscope look inside the "hero's" head that makes this a masterpiece read.
Artist Chaz Wilmot has little regard for modern painting technique: "Anyone can do a figure in oils. If you screw up, you just paint over it, and who cares if the paint is half an inch thick. The thing is to catch the life without trying, without any obvious working." When someone says that he's painting like Velásquez, Chaz agrees. "I can paint like anybody except me." So Chaz takes on the challenge of recreating (not restoring) a Tiepolo fresco so successfully no expert can tell the difference. Then, later, he creates a "lost" Venus by Velásquez, while channeling the dead artist--living within the artist in 17th Century Spain and Italy--until he is so mixed up that "I had no idea who I was."
"There were possibilities, I had those,... I might be Chaz Wilmot, hack artist, forger of a painting now hailed as one of the great works of Velásquez, hiding out from criminals. I might be Chaz Wilmot successful New York painter, now insane and under treatment... Or I might be Diego Velásquez, caught in a nightmare. Or some combination. Or someone else entirely. Or maybe this was hell itself. How would I tell?"
So who is he? Does it matter? The transitions from being Wilmot to being Velásquez are so smooth that it takes the reader a moment to realize which one is speaking.
"I run blindly, tripping and bumping into people...and then I am swept up off my feet and held, a man in black, a broad hat and a cassock, a priest...and I say my name, Gito de Siva,...and he says he will take me home, and I am glad to be saved but also terrified that I will be beaten and so I struggle in his arms. The priest says, hey, take it easy, buddy! And I find myself struggling with a UPS man in a brown uniform."
"I lay down...and chewed (the drug infused sponge),...and I was sitting in psych class...and the professor gabbing on about human existence, and I was ignoring him...and drawing a girl across the aisle...I'm working with a soft pencil on cartridge paper, using my thumb to blend it in...as the professor drones on, though now his voice slips into a lower register and he's reading from the lives of the saints...and I'm drawing the king of Spain...in front of me His Majesty and a tall canvas I have primed with glue and black-lime mixture, and over that a priming of red earth, 'tierra de Esquivias,' as they do here in Madrid. I am painting his face."
Then there are Chaz's descriptions of painting technique: "I stretched a big canvas, over five by seven feet. I sized it with glue mixed with carbon black, and when it was dry I put on a thin layer of iron oxide, red lake, and carbon black, mixed with powdered limestone. Paint like Velásquez, prep like Velásquez." "The paint was thin, the fine canvas almost showing through, the brushwork free as a swallow in the skies, the palette simple, not more than five pigments." "(T)he handling of the satin of the 'camauro' and the 'manteletta' and the dense fall of the 'rochetta,' white but made of every color but white..." "I lay in the shadows on the white cloth--not white in the painting, of course, only fools paint it so with actual white paint..." "I brush in thin tints...always thin so that the white of the underpainting shows through..." "...using smalt with calcite on the dress, touches of lapis...I want transparency and speed; I'm working with the paint thinned to a milky liquid, a few back-and-forth swashes..."
It's invigorating, absorbing. And I find my fingers itching, my mind composing a scene, and I want to dig out my old box of paints, pull an unused canvas from the closet, and start painting again. This is my first reading of Gruber, but it won't be my last.
The Forgery of Venus: A Novel
Date undefinedHaving enjoyed Gruber's "Book of Air and Shadows", I was looking forward to "The Forgery of Venus" and I was not disappointed. The story grabbed me from the very beginning and didn't have a slow spot all the way through.
The book has an unusual perspective, the first person narration is presented as a recording made by artist Chaz Wilmot, Jr. for a friend and is a recounting of his experiences and memories of his involvement with the discovery (or is it forgery?) of a previously unknown Velzaquez painting. The beginning and end is written from the perspective of the friend and the middle is the playback of the recording.
"The Forgery of Venus" reminded me of some of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's books. I'm not sure if it is because of the Spain/Velazquez component or because if the way the narrative is presented, or if it is the story itself, but I felt like it had a similar flavor, expecially to "The Flanders Panel" and "The Nautical Chart."
I enjoyed every page of "The Forgery of Venus" though I did feel a bit of a let-down at the handling of the ending. Ambiguous endings can challenge the imagination or just make the reader think "Come on, I want to know what really happened!" and for me I wanted to know!
The Forgery of Venus: A Novel
Date undefinedI have liked everything Gruber writes (especially Night of the Jaguar and Tropic of Night). He is smart, imaginative, his ideas are provocative and go outside the boundaries of our current socialization. This book tackles the springs of creativeness. His artist hero is a great imitator of old masters. He is not a forger but a reinventor of new art in old techniques. The artist merges with Velasquez after taking a new drug being tested and ... Read the book, it's worth it.
