The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman

The Italian Teacher is destined to be one of my favorite reads of the year.

Tom Rachman's character Pinch is the son of a philandering, larger-than-life artist, Bear Bavinsky. Bear is charming and unreliable.

Pinch spends his entire life trying to get his dad's attention and approval. He imitates his dad, smoking a pipe early. In a one day lesson Bear teachers Pinch the fundamentals of painting and Pinch dreams of following in his father's footsteps.

Bear abandons Pinch and his mother, once his model, for the next model to pose for him; he leaves a string of women behind him and seventeen neglected children.

Bear routinely destroys any canvas he deems subpar. And he decides to stop selling or showing his art, a plan to drive up the values of his canvases. He becomes a legend, a tantalizing mystery in the art world.

Pinch feels a failure, unable to get what he needs from Bear. He flounders through his life, searching for an achievement that would finally elicit real love and approval from his father. His dissertation is on Caravaggio because his father once praised him; his dad doesn't remember doing so. Pinch ends up teaching Italian and foreign languages in London.

Not only is he unable to settle on a career, he loses his college girlfriend when she agrees to pose nude for Bear, which drives Pinch crazy: he knows his dad too well. He later marries a woman and again is too possessive and loses her. He finally moves in with a coworker, sharing a house.

His college friend Marsden comes in and out of his life, but is always reliable and can be counted on.

Too late, Bear corrects Pinch: he never said Pinch was a bad artist, just that he didn't have the personality and selfishness to BE an artist.

Pinch's life is sad, miserable, and heartbreaking. So, you ask me, why would you ever want to read this book about a loser? The story has an unexpected turn and a truly comedic ending

Of all his children, Bear chooses Pinch to be his confidence man, even leaving his estate and paintings to him. He believes Pinch understands and supports his intention.

 Pinch hatches a scheme that is the greatest scam of all time, a joke on the whole world of art, a way to keep his seventeen half-siblings happy, and still keep his promise to his dad.

And then...another reversal gives Pinch a place in the art world he so desperately desired. The novel left me laughing. It is a brilliant reversal.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Italian Teacher
by Tom Rachman
Viking
Publication Date: March 20. 2018
ISBN: 9780735222694
Hardcover $27.00

Vintage Dresden Plates and an Antique Fabrics Mystery

My weekly quilt group had fun learning about early 20th c fabrics by studying vintage Dresden Plates quilt pieces and a set of cut fabrics circa 1905.

 Cathy had Dresden Plates made by her grandmother.

The blocks inlcuded a marvelous selection of 1920s and 1930s fabrics. Each plate included two solids across from each other. Don't you love the orange in the block below?

The black and white fabrics struck as less usual in Depression era quilts.

The prints included abstracts and florals.

The black on white ground with yellow flowers struck everyone.

This pink is more fuschia than the Bubble Gum pink I connect to 1930s quilts. Note the yellow fabric.

The second quilt we looked at was also a Dresden Plate. Karen had an antique quilt top that she took apart to make her Dresden Plate. She had a photo of the original top and an original block.

The original quilt top

She was in the process of hand quilting the completed top. She used yellow sashing to match a vintage quilt she had liked. We noted how alike the yellow was to the color in Cathy's Dreden Plate blocks made by her grandmother!

Karen showed us how she made paper templates to cut the old fabrics. She left the templates on until the Dresden Plates were appliqued, then pulled them out.

Karen showing the templates 

The templates and extra fabrics are shown below.

Dresden Plate templates

Karen's antique fabrics were very interesting. I was sure they dated to the first fifteen years of the 20th c with some from the late 19thc. But how to 'prove' it?

The fabrics included indigo, double pink, black, and madder browns in checks, stripes, and various prints.

 This pink print has a wonderful optical design.

Some of the fabrics were very thin.

Turkey Red!

This print had a puce ground with light brown stripes and white spots.

Indigo

There were a number of checks, some with light grounds. And black and white prints.

 I noticed one paper template among the fabrics.

 There was part of an illustration on one side and writing on the other.

I saw the name Delacroix, the famous French painter, that appeared to be under an illustration. And an article by Alice Viola, with her last name only partially left. She wrote that Mr. Fournier had returned to Paris to work. Was the paper from a magazine about art?

I shared photos of these fabrics and the template on the Facebook group Quilts-Vintage and Antique. I heard from Eileen Fry who commented that the article was written by Alice Viola Guysi, born in 1863 and died in 1940. Guysi was a native of Cincinnati who taught art in Detroit schools and the Detroit Museum of Art. She was a contemporary of Alexis Jean Fournier and they both painted in the American Barbizon style.

Fournier was from Minneapolis. He made trips to Paris in 1893, 1895, and 1901.
That indicated that the template paper was printed after one of Fournier's later trips to Paris. We can conjecture that the fabric pieces are from the same time frame, dating them from the late 19th to first few years of the 20th c.

I was interested to discover  Fournier's association with Elbert Hubbard and the Roycroft arts community of East Aurora, NY. Fournier was one of the most prolific Arts and Crafts painters. His murals grace the Roycroft Inn.  He moved to East Aurora late in life.

I found that Guysi exhibited in the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Alice Violet Guysi's painting exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair

Read an article by Guy from School Arts at
https://books.google.com/books?id=bT2hAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=Alice+Viola+Guysi&source=bl&ots=4fw872jxRm&sig=aTBgwVBKKNnhUdVgdchtMtsDbPc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgrOTN-IPVAhWCSD4KHaa9ARkQ6AEIQTAH#v=onepage&q=Alice%20Viola%20Guysi&f=false

Read more about Elbert Hubbard and his death on the Lusitania at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/04/dead-wake-last-crossing-of-lusitania-by.html

Land of Enchantment by Liza Wieland

A moving and beautifully constructed novel, Land of Enchantment explores the relationship between art and life, mothers and daughters, women and men. After I had finished the book, I turned back to the beginning to study how the author developed the story and its themes. It's that kind of novel.

Brigid Long Night's language is color and form. After the tragic deaths of her Navajo/German parents she is employed by Georgia O'Keefe. New Yorker Julian Granger visits O'Keefe he and Brigid have a brief affair. Father Edgardo helps Brigid find a home for her baby and Brigid goes to New York City to start an art career that culminates in an installation at the World Trade Center.

Sasha Hernandez has lost her adoptive parents. She knows her mother is the famous artist Brigid Schulman. A film student in New York City, she captured the falling bodies from the World Trade Center on 9-11. She meets Rodney, a psychologist whose friend Henry Diamond has been searching for information about his sister Nancy who jumped from a collapsing building.

Wieland's book comes at the story from multiple viewpoints, utilizing first person and third person narratives, weaving the characters together in a complex interrelated web.

At times I was so moved I shuddered and turned away and inward, remembering that day, those images, the shock and resulting disassociation.

Art is compulsion for these characters: Brigid the painter, Sasha the film student, Nancy Diamond the playwright, Henry Diamond artist. It is how they process life.

I was greatly impressed by this book.

"We have art in order not to die of the truth." Frederich Nietzsche

Syracuse Press through NetGalley provided me the e-book for a fair and unbiased review.

Land of Enchantment
Liza Wieland
Syracuse University Press
Publication Date March 15, 2015
ISBN: 9780815610465
$24.95 hard bound