Novels about Art and Artistic Vision

The informal French language reading goup I belong to--called the Durochères because when it began more than 30 years ago all its members lived on avenue Durocher--just finished reading and discussing La beauté m'assassine, a novel about Delacroix (self portrait to the right.)  Written by Michelle Tourneur, it is told from the point of view of a young woman dying to become an artist, and who figures out a way to work in Delacroix's studio at a time when no woman could study painting seriously.

The book hasn't been translated into English, but those who read French will find it fascinating.  A good companion that deals with the artistic temperment and process is The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from Spanish (in French it's Le  Paradis, un peu plus loin), the novel tell two stories, that of Paul Gauguin (self portrait below) and his proto-feminist grandmother Flora Tristan. 

The painter, who deserted his wife and children to go print in Tahiti and environs, comes off as a thoroughly unpleasant, irresponsible person who (nevertheless? because of which? inspite of this?) painted some marvelous pictures.  His grandmother, married off when a teenager to a terrible man, escapes to South America, but ends up fighting for the independence necessary to rear her children away from her violent husband.  Along the way she writes a couple of muck-raking books about the conditions of the working class in England and Franc of the 1830s, and about the condition of women. 

Delacroix, at least in Tourneur's fiction, comes off as a more sympathetic character by 21st century  standards.  Both artists revel--frequently too much--in the flesh of young women, though.  Where to draw the line between artistic vision and lechery, beween beauty of form and colour and obsession with the flesh?  Don't know.  But these two books are good places to start a reflection on the topic.