Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime

Hampl, Patricia

ISBN 10: 0151015066 / ISBN 13: 9780151015061

Published by Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2006

Signed by the author on the title page, with no date or inscription. Crisp, clean pages; square, secure binding, hard cover only mildly shelfworn at spine ends. Unclipped dustjacket shows a tiny chip and wrinkle at the spine head, otherwise well-kept, now protected in a clear sleeve. 215pp.; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 066970

Synopsis:

Just out of college, Patricia Hampl was mesmerized by a Matisse painting she saw in the Art Institute of Chicago: an aloof woman gazing at goldfish in a bowl, a mysterious Moroccan screen behind her. This woman seemed a welcome secular version of the nuns of Hampl’s girlhood, free and untouchable, a poster girl for twentieth-century feminism. In Blue Arabesque, Hampl explores the allure of that woman, immersed in leisure, so at odds with the increasing rush of the modern era. Her tantalizing meditation takes us to the Cote d’Azur and North Africa, from cloister to harem, pondering figures as diverse as Eugène Delacroix, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Katherine Mansfield. Returning always to Matisse and his obsessive portraits of languid women, Hampl discovers they were not decorative indulgences but surprising acts of integrity.
 
Moving with the life force that Matisse sought in his work, Blue Arabesque is a dazzling tour de force.

About the Author:

PATRICIA HAMPL is the author of four memoirs—A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, I Could Tell You Stories, and Blue Arabesque—and two collections of poetry. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime
Publisher: Harcourt, Inc., Orlando
Publication Date: 2006
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: First Edition; First Printing.