Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting - Softcover

Hustvedt, Siri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568986181 ISBN 13: 9781568986180

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006

Synopsis

Bestselling novelist Siri Hustvedt's inspired collection of essays on painting is now available in paperback. In Mysteries of the Rectangle, Hustvedt concentrates her narrative gifts on the works of such masters as Francisco Goya, Jan Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin, Gerhard Richter, and Joan Mitchell. Through her own personal experiences, Hustvedt is able to reveal things hidden until now in plain sight: an egglike detail in Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace and the many hidden self-portraits in Goya's series of drawings, Los Caprichos, as well as in his famous painting The Third of May. Most importantly, these essays exhibit the passion, thrill, and sheer pleasure of bewilderment a work of art can produceif you simply take the time to look.

About this title

About the Author:

Siri Hustvedt is a novelist whose books include The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and What I Loved. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

These wonderful essays capture Hustvedt's thoughtful, intensely personal and aesthetically charged responses to art. At first, Hustvedt's choice of artists seems random or disjointed, but it becomes apparent that her work is driven by a deeper logic that unites these painters: still life, the power of dreams and the struggle to truly see the world-she finds a profound engagement with these themes in each of the artists she treats, whether it be the cityscape-bottles of Giorgio Morandi, the vertiginous monsters of Goya, the abstract masses of Joan Mitchell or Gerhard Richter's ghostly photo paintings. Hustvedt writes with few technical or academic trappings, and the effect is that of an intelligent, articulate art-lover speaking about paintings she has looked at and thought about for a lifetime. As with Montaigne's essays or Proust's criticism, this expository character is hard-won. Hustvedt is well versed in the theory and scholarship on these artists, something she keeps below the surface in all but the last two pieces. This delightful book will interest anyone who enjoys art, whether casually or professionally, and Hustvedt's elegant prose makes for an engrossing read even for readers unfamiliar with the art under consideration.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1568986181
• ISBN 13: 9781568986180
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 202