Modern Art - Hardcover

Toynton, Evelyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883285186 ISBN 13: 9781883285180

Publisher: Delphinium, 2000

Synopsis

Belle Prokoff is the formidable widow of the tormented Clay Madden -- an alcoholic, Montana cowboy who blazed through the New York art world and revolutionized it. Blunt, fierce, and scornful of the world's hypocrisy, Belle, a painter herself, has passionately protected her husband's memory since his death in a car accident three decades earlier.

Full of vivid characters and intense confrontations, this highly charged tale moves towards its startling conclusion as Belle battles Madden's would-be biographer and changes forever the lives of the people in her orbit. Inspired by certain principal events in the lives of the artists Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, this beautifully written novel imagines dialogue, events, and characters in a fictional universe.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Belle Prokoff is the last of a famous generation of painters for whom art was a secular religion -- worth any amount of struggle and sacrifice for its promise of redemption. She is also the widow of Clay Madden, who revolutionized American art, became a near-mythic figure, and died in a drunken car crash. Blunt, fierce, and scornful of the world's hypocrisy, Belle has passionately protected her husband's memory in the three decades since his death. She has also persevered with her painting while the denizens of the fashionable art scene fawn over her not for her own work but for the valuable Madden canvases she clings to as the last relic of her tormented marriage.

Now, facing the prospect of her impending death, Belle is confronted with another kind of threat: an unscrupulous biographer is snooping around her past, working on a sensational book about Madden's life. Before her battle to silence him spirals out of control, she is forced to make her peace with people and events that have haunted her for decades.

But Modern Art is not just Belle's story. It is the story of all those still living in Madden's shadow, from his flamboyant ex-dealer to a paranoid drug-addict who sees himself as Madden's spiritual son. It is the story of Paul, a younger painter aspiring to Madden's greatness but so obsessed with the art world's neglect of him that he becomes a victim of his own bitterness. And it is the story of Lizzie, a naive romantic who has made Paul the center of her existenbce -- a mistake Belle recognizes all too well when she hires Lizzie as her live-in companion.

Inspired by the lives of Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner, this elegaic, impassioned novel creates a fictional universe full of vivid characters and intense confrontations. It is a tale of betrayal and longing, renunciation and self-discovery: the age-old conflicts of love and art.

About the Author

Evelyn Toynton's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, The American Scholar, Art and Antiques and other publications. She is at work on another novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Delphinium
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1883285186
• ISBN 13: 9781883285180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180