The sadness of the underlying story in this novel is only matched by the beauty of the art that connects a girl and her grandfather to their life together. As they race against time to fill her memory with the best of over 500 years worth of Western art, Mona learns what it means to …
When I attended college in the early 1960s, I majored in history and minored in art history/appreciation (no drawing classes). When I saw a mention of An Exquisite Corpse by art historian Helen A. Harrison, I was hoping I would like it. In a word, it was awesome. The story takes place in New York …
This book is a poetic and scholarly treasure hunt. Cumming reconstructs the story of a bookseller and his quest to prove the existence of a long-lost Velazquez portrait of Charles I. John Snare, who worked as a bookseller and printer before claiming to have discovered a Velazquez painting at an estate sale (at which point …
“My goodness. This week, when a customer’s special order of two copies of Naifeh and Smith’s recent biography of the doomed painter arrived, I was almost overcome by a physical desire to abandon the register, take one of the copies to the back of the store, put on my headphones, and read. It’s a beautiful book—compact but …
