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The Muralist: A Novel, by B. A. Shapiro
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When Alizée Benoit, a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her arts patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends and fellow WPA painters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who, while working at Christie’s auction house, uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt?
Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner workings of New York’s art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism.
As she did in her bestselling novel The Art Forger, B. A. Shapiro tells a gripping story while exploring provocative themes. In Alizée and Danielle she has created two unforgettable women, artists both, who compel us to ask: What happens when luminous talent collides with unstoppable historical forces? Does great art have the power to change the world?
- Sales Rank: #23735 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.21" h x 1.15" w x 5.15" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Review
“B. A. Shapiro makes the radical, varied, and sometimes enigmatic world of abstract expressionism altogether human and accessible in her smart new historical thriller. …It has more emotional ballast and is more skillfully written than what one customarily finds. The novel evokes the horror and sorrow of the Holocaust in just their tedious administrative tasks of retracing steps, of sifting through wreckage. Shapiro also does a wonderful job of restoring complexity to the historical moment and stripping away the clarity of retrospection.” —The Boston Globe
“Shapiro’s plotting is deft, and the anonymous paintings and Alizée’s disappearance add mystery and intrigue to the tale. Like her well-received 2012 novel, “The Art Forger,” this new story takes us into the heart of what it means to be an artist. …vibrant and suspenseful. As tens of thousands of modern-day asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Africa surge into Europe, and pictures of their mistreatment are broadcast around the world, “The Muralist” is a grim reminder that history continues to repeat itself.” —The Washington Post
“B.A. Shapiro captivated us in 2012 with her “addictive” novel The Art Forger. Now, she’s back with another thrilling tale from the art world, set right on the brink of World War II.” —Entertainment Weekly
“The Muralist is, like What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman or Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, a historical novel that brings the 20th century to life…” —USA Today
“Shapiro follows the enthusiastically received The Art Forger (2012) with an even more polished and resonant tale. [Her] novel of epic moral failings is riveting, gracefully romantic, and sharply revelatory; it is also tragic in its timeliness as the world faces new refugee crises.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Shapiro’s writing pulses with energy…. The Muralist brings the time period and setting to life. Readers will appreciate Shapiro’s seamless integration of fact into the story and will feel immersed in a time when the world tipped into chaos. Art, history, and mystery — an intriguing and satisfying blend.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“In The Muralist, novelist B.A. Shapiro deftly layers American art history, the facts of World War II and the fictitious stories of Alizee and Dani. …The Muralist is a compelling mystery. …The Muralist elevates Shapiro to an even higher plane and is sure to be a crowning touch in an already celebrated career.” —BookPage
“In this noirish intrigue and fine-art detective story, Shapiro ably intersects the early years of the abstract expressionist movement, the Roosevelts, institutionalized anti-Semitism that denied American visas to Jewish refugees, the relentless run-up to World War II, and the generational losses of the Shoah. Mystery and historical fiction lovers…will find this a riveting read.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Engaging … Shapiro convincingly portrays the work of the artist as an agent of expression and hope in a world of despair.” — The New York Jewish Week
“[Shapiro] knows how to craft a page-turner. The Muralist is certainly an engrossing tale. Perhaps it will also send a few readers to the Museum of Modern Art for a fresh look at the craft of Rothko, Pollock, and their contemporaries. That would be a wonderful, and very un-abstract, mingling of art and real life.” —New York Journal of Books
From the Back Cover
“B. A. Shapiro weaves a spellbinding mystery . . . With this starry cast (Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Krasner, even Eleanor Roosevelt), fans of Shapiro’s earlier art-mystery hit, The Art Forger, will not be disappointed.” —William Landay, author of Defending Jacob
New York, 1940. The country is teetering on the brink of war. A new art movement called Abstract Expressionism is burgeoning. European refugees are seeking asylum from rising fascism. Amid political turmoil, a promising career and a love affair are interrupted when a brilliant young artist vanishes . . . and today, seventy years later, another struggling artist, her great-niece, is piecing together the truth about her disappearance—and about so much more.
“I am a great fan of B. A. Shapiro, especially her new novel The Muralist. It is a tantalizing mystery, as well as an involving meditation on the meaning of art over time.” —Scott Turow, author of Identical
“An expertly constructed, riveting tale of art, politics, love, and consequences in the Depression Era. I admire so much the way she vividly brings to life this passionate world of the past—it rings with originality and authenticity. What a compelling read!”—Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins
About the Author
B. A. Shapiro is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller The Art Forger. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University and lives in Boston with her husband, Dan, and their dog, Sagan. Her website is www.bashapirobooks.com.
Most helpful customer reviews
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Very ambitious book...
By Jill Meyer
B.A. Shapiro's novel, "The Muralist", tries to be many things. Is it an historical mystery, a look at the art world in the late 1930s and WW2 years, an intimate look at two generations who come to terms with the losses in the Holocaust, or all of the above? Shapiro writes in two periods of time and goes back and forth between the two. Some authors can carry it off, but I thought it was confusingly done here.
The story of the muralist is the tale of a young French-American artist, Alizee Benoit, involved in the Abstract Impressionism movement in New York. She's gaining recognition as an artist and works and lives with other artists. Her lover is Mark Rothko and her closest friend is Lee Krasner. (B.A. Shapiro combines both real and fictional characters in her book). But Alizee is also trying to get her Jewish relatives from France and Germany. A subplot is the voyage of the refugee ship St Louis which was turned away from docking in Cuba and the United States and the on-going anti-Jewish policies of the Roosevelt administration. But she has a friend in First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, an admirer of her art work. Then Alizee disappears, never to be seen again.
The other part of the back and forth is set in 2015. The lead character is Danielle, who is Alizee's great niece. She's works for Christie's auction house and is trying to trace her great aunt from her disappearance during the war. She has a few art clues to help her in her search. The problem with the book is that B.A. Shapiro tries to do too much. There are so many characters and plot points that the reader can get lost. While I appreciated the effort, I wish she had done a bit less.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
A poignant exploration of morality, resourcefulness and imagination
By Bookreporter
The art world --- one of temperamental artists, sharp-eyed critics, sophisticated gallery owners and dusty museum archives --- is a rich setting for a novel. Whether this view of the art world is accurate may be beside the point as it is a culture that is foreign and intriguing to many readers. In her latest book, THE MURALIST, B. A. Shapiro appeals to just those readers in telling a tale of a passionate and brilliant young artist caught in the political maelstrom of the early 1940s in the US and Europe. This perspective is connected to that of another woman in the art world, decades later, trying to solve a mystery that happens to be very personal indeed.
It is 1939, and Alizée Benoit, a Jewish American artist of French descent, is working on mural projects for the WPA along with artists like Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Her life in the art world, surrounded by so many talented painters, is one of hard work, poor living conditions and late night discussions about Abstract Expressionism over drinks. But Alizée, who lived with her beloved family in France for seven years after the deaths of her parents, is filled with sorrow and a sense of loss that she rarely shares with even her closest friends. When she gets word from her family in Arles that the Nazis have begun to make things beyond difficult and dangerous for them and all the Jews across Europe, Alizée begins to work at finding ways to bring them to America.
Alizée’s job at the WPA brings her into contact with Eleanor Roosevelt, who soon becomes a fan of her work and an important patron. Her desperation to rescue her family, tempered somewhat by her affair with Rothko, both inspires her to paint in bold new ways and to put herself in dangerous situations to effect change at home and abroad. As her art evolves and her activism increases, her friends grow more and more afraid for her mental health. She eventually agrees to a voluntary commitment at a psychiatric hospital but then is never heard from again.
Seventy years later, Alizée's great niece, Danielle Abrams, is working at an auction house and finds some hidden canvases that she believes were painted by her aunt. Having grown up mesmerized by the story of her great-aunt's talent and disappearance, Dani becomes ever more obsessed with finding out what really happened to her in December 1940 and proving that she had a major impact on the work and style of the American Abstract Expressionists. Connecting family legend with art history and examples of paintings and murals, Dani travels from New York to France in search of her aunt and in hopes of establishing her legacy. Confronted at every turn with the devastation of the Holocaust and the realities of the creative life in the US, Dani's journey remains one of hope and family.
Shapiro takes great liberties with the lives of American artists like Rothko, Krasner and Jackson in order to tell her story. However, THE MURALIST is evocative of life creatively and fervently lived, if not of accurate details of time and place. It is unfortunate that she succumbs to typecasting Alizée as the unstable artist, though her references for that type are quite clear. The language, especially in the sections that Dani narrates, is very casual, sometimes jarringly so, but the novel flows nicely between the protagonists, highlighting the differences and the similarities found between them and the worlds they inhabit. THE MURALIST is a poignant exploration of morality, resourcefulness and imagination.
Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Abstract Art and The Holocaust, American side
By Amazon Customer
With THE MURALIST. B. A. Shapiro brings us back to the world of art, previously featured in THE ART FORGER. This time the area is Abstract Expressionism, the featured time frame is 1939-1940 and 2015, and the settings are New York and Europe. The book includes historically accurate information about some people and events, mixing them with fictional characters and situations. I frequently went to Google to see if something was real or fiction. Usually it was real.
While working at Christie’s Auction House in New York in 2015, Danielle Abrams discovers three 2' x 2' panels hidden in sleeves behind paintings by Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack. As she tries to determine their origin, against the wishes of her employer, she learns about an aunt, Alizée Benoit, who disappeared in 1940 and was never again heard from. Dani’s family had never mentioned her.
She learns that Alizée was a painter in New York at the time of her disappearance. Among her close friends and co-workers in the WPA/FAP projects of that time were Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. She begins to think her aunt was the painter and sets out to find if that is true and if there are more of them.
As part of the New Deal recovery program, Franklin Roosevelt began the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to give people gainful employment and help the US infrastructure at the same time. The FAP (Federal Art Program) was one of the areas included. Artists such as Rothko, Pollock and Krasner were among the hundreds, if not thousands, employed. The artwork had to meet the committees requirements as to subject matter and style, mostly were traditional. The program was cancelled suddenly in the early 1940s. The artists were fired and their works, dumped. Some were sold at four cents a pound to junkyards. Others were left of sidewalks for people to take or to go into the trash.
One of the themes of the book is explaining abstract art. Abstract Expressionism was”the first true American school of art, when we begin to export our artistic ideas to Europe instead of vice versa.” As Alizée explains to Eleanor Roosevelt, “It goes deep. Much deeper than just a picture of what we can already see. It’s not easy to make sense of–or to paint–but when you do, there’s nothing like it. It’s magical, really. Interpreting what’s going on inside....And then putting it on the outside. The real experience of living.”
The second major theme, the one that drives Dani’s search for her aunt’s story, is what was happening to the Jews who were trying to escape from Europe in the days leading up to World War II. Alizée was French and most of her family still lived there. Desperate to get them out, she tried many avenues to get visas for them to come to the United States. However, US immigration laws were very restrictive and powerful people, including Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy, wanted to keep them that way. Many of the people who did escape were very well known and had spoken out against the Third Reich. Many of them were not Jewish.
The biggest barrier was Breckinridge Long, the assistant secretary of state who oversaw visas. Against the wishes of Congress and the President, he did all he could to prevent issuing visas. (To read a memorandum, go to https://www.facinghistory.org/rescuers/breckinridge-long-memorandum) He was more interested in keeping immigrants out than helping them get it. He deliberately did not approve ninety percent of the visas allocated for refugees from German-occupied countries. Had he granted them 190,000 people would have escaped the Nazi massacre.
In addition, Congress defeated a proposed bill to allow more refugee children to come to the US. One Congressman, however, secretly rescued hundreds of Jews. If word got out, he would have been thrown out of Congress and possibly into jail. That Congressman was Lyndon B. Johnson. For more information about him and this program, go http://lyndonjohnsonandisrael.blogspot.com/
There are many books about the Holocaust. THE MURALIST looks at it from a different angle, the US reaction to saving refugees as well as explaining Abstract Expressionism. Well written and very informative. I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished reading it.
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