Susan Vreeland on Why I Love to Write Fiction About Art (includes giveaway)

Art as My Muse

Art provides me with rich opportunities for expression, for plots, for sojourns into history, for development of characters. I'm exhilarated whenever I describe a painting or its effects because it enables me to participate in the art world. Studying paintings has increased my powers of observation of the appearance, color, and shape of things so that my written descriptions can be more precise and vivid.

I have a philosophical reason for writing about art: its effect on the imagination. Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world one time period, our own, we can experience other times, other cultures which offer a window to other lives. Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race. When there is no imagination of others' lives, there's little chance for human connection. Lacking that, compassion doesn't develop. Without compassion, then community, commitment, kindness all shrivel. Individuals can become isolated, the isolated can turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the form of civil and international violence. Art and history, combined into literature, are antidotes to that.

There is a name for what I do: ekphrasis, a Greek term meaning the use of one art form to describe or interpret something created in another art form. It's as old as Greek sculpture and pottery depicting myths.

The ekphrastic writer can use an artwork as a metaphor to enrich the text. For example, in my story "The Yellow Jacket," (Life Studies) the young Armand models for van Gogh in his studio. When he sees the painter's "Café Terrace on the place du Forum" with its swirling, diamond-like stars, he is reminded of the sparkles in Jacqueline's eyes. He knows that there are more stars beyond the edge of the canvas, and we complete the analogy that there will be more women in Armand's life than Jacqueline whom we know he will lose. Yellow light pours out of the café in the painting, and we hope that he recognizes its hopeful import.

In Luncheon of the Boating Party, ekphrasis allowed me to deliver an elaborate narrative surrounding a moment painted by Renoir, fourteen people enjoying each other on a terrace overlooking the Seine. Researching his models, his very real friends, I was able to use them as characters to narrate events in their lives--an elopement, an episode backstage at the Folies Bergère, a duel, a crisis among the Impressionists, a confession, a rivalry between two women for Renoir's affection, a feminist demand for equality. This allowed the novel to illuminate the vibrant, fast-changing world and mores of late nineteenth-century Paris which readers could more easily grasp by virtue of the painting.

In a similar fashion, in Clara and Mr. Tiffany, about the women who created the famous Tiffany leaded-glass lamps, I was able to depict the vast social difference between the Gilded Age of uptown Manhattan and the flood of immigrants into the Lower East Side. I saw the lamps as a bridge between poverty and tenement living and the rich industrialist families who purchased the lamps. Thus, those lamps have become an icon of an important moment in New York history.

In Life Studies, "Of These Stones," expands the historically true event of boys throwing stones at Cézanne and his work. It explores the issue of hypocritical religious extremism gripping an older brother and making him cruel to his contrite younger brother who, through seeing Cézanne's landscapes and fruit, grasps what Cézanne told him, that he painted to express "the spectacle God spreads before our eyes" and "to receive the Father's blessing." What the younger brother experiences is the power of art to heal.

In my story "The Things He Didn't Know," a construction worker in an art museum sees "Three Marys Grieving the Loss of their Lord," and notices in one of the Marys seems to be longing for something she couldn't have. He says, "This one loved him differently. This one knew all along he wouldn't be there. He'd be gone." It helps him to get over the loss of a girlfriend not right for him.

"A Flower for Ginette" illustrates a deepening moral sense. Monet's gardener steals a scrap of a water lily painting that Monet intended for burning, and gives it to his wife. Later realizing that Monet had a right to choose what remained of his work, the gardener prays that "God would not let him stumble and break a leg and die in the dirt track, would not let his heart stop beating before he could get home to build a little fire of kindling in the grate and place on it the slice [of painting]."

My writing is full of epiphanies experienced before works of art. I'm grateful to have discovered such a generous muse.

Useful Links:

Tour Schedule - http://tlcbooktours.com/2012/03/susan-vreeland-author-of-clara-and-mr-tiffany-on-tour-mayjune-2012/

Read an excerpt of the book at Random House Readers Circle:
http://www.scribd.com/RHPG/d/47185618-Read-an-Excerpt-from-Clara-and-Mr-Tiffany-by-Susan-Vreeland

Susan's website: http://www.svreeland.com/

Susan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/susanvreeland


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