The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book: an actual unsolved art heist being solved by a professional art copier, is pretty interesting.

Note: evidently copying art isn't illegal, nor is it illegal to sell copied art, it's just illegal to sell it claiming that it's original.

However, the story itself was a little sloppy. It feels very much like a first novel (which I think it is). The verb tenses would change mid-paragraph. Not often, but enough to be annoying. Claire (the protagonist) would say things like, I'm not a dupe, but then she'd do something where I'd just want to shake some sense into her. She and her art dealer both say they've fallen in love with each other, but it doesn't feel like love. It feels like they're just sleeping together. In the beginning of the book, you're introduced to a bunch of Claire's friends, but most of them are really just pointless characters. I think the author was trying to give Claire a believable number of friends, but had nothing for them to do. And Claire does this whole volunteer thing at a juvenile detention facility that really doesn't serve much purpose, unless it's supposed to be foreshadowing or ironic juxtapositioning or something, but it's really just something random for Claire to do. And the dialogue was stilted in places.

However, all of that being said, the premise of the book was interesting enough to carry it, and all-in-all it was an enjoyable read.

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Midnight in Paris

Last night, my mom and I watched Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson. It's a Woody Allen film, which really tells you just about everything you need to know about it.

The basic premise of the movie is that the protagonist, Gil (Wilson), is dissatisfied with his life and imagines a better world/time/place...in Paris in the 1920s. He somehow time travels back to that era and meets a number of cultural icons of the time, including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, and Picasso.

In his real life, Gil is surrounded by some really annoying people  one of them being his fiance, with whom he has no real chemistry.

During one of his time travel/fantasy escapades (the movie isn't clear on exactly what is happening...is he really traveling in time, is it his imagination...it really doesn't matter), he and Picasso/Hemingway's lover Adriana travel further back in time, to Paris in the 1890s, which Adriana thinks is preferable to Paris in the 1920s. It is this experience that awakens Gil to the fact that the present is always less pleasant than the past seems because life isn't always pleasant, but that a person shouldn't try to live their life in the past.

Gil returns to the present, decides to live in Paris, breaks up with his fiance, and presumably lives happily ever after, or at least happier ever after.

I enjoyed the  movie. It was good, but not great, but on another level, I found it relatable. I mean, who hasn't been dissatisfied with their life, or some aspect of it, and imagined themselves in a better time or place? The Virginia in my imagination is taller, thinner, and has way better skin and hair.

I think this is also the premise behind fan fiction (or at least one of the premises)...fan fiction allows the reader to insert him or her self into the story, and therefore allows the reader to escape their own life for a while, yet to do so in a way that they still control.

In the movie, what was more unbelievable to me, wasn't that Gil was managing to travel back in time, it was that no one in his present life seemed to understand this sense of yearning for something more/fuller/bigger that comes from feeling unfulfilled. I mean, isn't that just human nature? Otherwise, how would we grow at all?

A new very short story

She placed her foot, jumped, and pivoted, performing a muddled revolate. She connected with the ball. He ran home, delighted by her timing and physicality.

This is a story in 25 words. It's actually a different scene in the same larger story as my 10-word story.

This is what I end up doing every time I try to read my magazine, The Writer. I start reading an article, am inspired to write something, spend a bunch of time youtubing videos of dance moves (I knew what the move looked like, but not what it was called), and then write a blog post. I still haven't finished reading about Paper Lantern Lit.

This doesn't say exactly what I want it to say. I've been debating the placement of the and in the first sentence. I thought about: She placed her foot, jumped, pivoted, and performed a muddled, revolate. But I wanted to make it seem like two separate actions were occurring in a very short time frame. And I'm not sure if three sentences are too choppy for such a short amount of writing. I also wanted to include a second adjective, sloppy, to describe the revolate, but I couldn't figure out any other word that could be removed besides home, and just he ran seems like a silly thing to say. And I wanted to express that the "he" in the story is giddy with excitement about this girl, but he wouldn't be giddy by her timing and physicality. He could be made giddy by her response (like if he asked her on a date and she said yes), but it doesn't really work in this format. And his being giddy, while important, is secondary to her athleticism. (You're going to have to trust me on this one.)


Please let me know if you have any suggestions on this one.

Buying art from children?

I started this back when I worked at my old job...I guess I saved it because I thought I'd have more to say, but I really don't.  This is it.

We have this thing at work (wow, that's a brilliant way to start a post)...let me try again...there's a guy at my company is also an artist, and he has a relationship with an art school in San Diego...I think it's an actual school for artistically gifted children.  Anyway, we have a bunch of their art hanging in one of the halls at work.  It's a little sad because it's in the facilities hall, and not one everyone walks down all of the time, but I pass the art on my way to the gym. 

There's this really cool, what I am going to call, pictorial map of Africa.  It's not a real map at all because it doesn't have anything labeled on it, but it has drawings of things that represent parts of Africa on it.  I think it's really cool because it tells more of a story than a regular map.  In fact, I guess the best image I can use to explain it is a treasure map where they show the sharks that you have to avoid, and the strong winds or whatever. 

So like I said, it's really cool.  So I asked the guy at work if the art was for sale, or if the school sold prints of it, like greeting card sets and what have you.  He said they could talk to the student and see if the student wanted to sell the piece.  As you know, I'm all about owning original art.  But this isn't exactly what I had in mind.  Not because it's not good, and not because it's done by some random kid I don't know, but I have some sort of issue I can't quite articulate about buying art from a kid.  Like maybe I'm validating them too soon, or maybe the kid won't do something productive with the money, or maybe the success will go to the kid's head, or I'm really not sure.  Something in my gut just says not to buy it from the student.

But I don't think I'd have any of these qualms if I was buying it from the school as part of a fundraiser or something.  Am I nuts here, or do I just lack the vocabulary to explain my feelings?

Yes, I am something of an art snob

I have been thinking a lot about art lately.  Captain America wants to buy some art to decorate our house.  I recently helped a friend hang art in her bedroom.  She bought her art at World Market.  Don't get me wrong: I love World Market.  I just don't think that the mass-produced decorations you can buy there are "art."  I'm not saying they're ugly or anything.  My mother bought us some prints there that hang in our living room.  But we never use the word "art" to describe them.  Yes, someone created them, but then they were mass-produced.  Thus rendering them not art.  As far as I'm concerned, if it's not the original, it's not art.  It can still be lovely, unique, or whatever other adjective you use, but once it's been copied, I just don't see how you can call it art.

Captain America wants to hang some art in our living room, and all I can think is, we can't afford art.  We can afford my friend Eric, who makes glassworks.  (this site is a little weird...he's been working on it, but sometimes you have to click in to enter it.)

And then Costco came out with this really cool component of their photo center.  They own the digital rights (or something like that) to tons of artwork that they can print on canvas, or almost anything else you want, and then you go to Costco to pick it up.  Pieces like Monets and Picassos.  It's really very cool.  And did I mention you can print it on canvas, so you don't have to have a framed poster of something (by the way, because I am so ridiculous about this, I refuse to own framed posters of art.  I mean, who am I kidding?  A poster is absolutely not art.  And, no, the irony is not lost on me that this sentence is located right next to an ad for a poster of art.).

Anyway, this Costco stuff looks really nice.  And I have found Costco's products to be of great quality.  So now I'm suffering from this inner turmoil.  I don't want the art in my house to feel like a lie.  But is it really a lie if I already know it's not the original.  I can get Monet's Water Lilies, which I L.O.V.E.  I LOVE them so much that when people tell me they don't really care for impressionism, or it just doesn't do anything for them, I actually wonder if I'm in a bad dream?  Has their brain been eaten by a space alien?  Have I entered some sort of alternative reality where Monet is not the most brilliant painter of all time?

Really, though, if I got a print of the Water Lilies, who would think I owned the original?  I'm not sure I'd even want to.  I don't know how to care for something like that (assuming we find some sort of work around to how I'd afford it or where I'd put it).

The more I think about it, the more I feel like it should be okay for me to buy Costco's canvas prints of digital images of art that I LOVE.  After all, it's not like I can jet off to the New York MoMA whenever I want to see them.