More Summer Reading: In the Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark

Clare Clark's novel In the Full Light of the Sun is set in 1920s Berlin, when the German people are suffering from the after effects of WWI--skyrocketing inflation and food shortage--and Hitler and his Nazi party are rising to power. The political tension at first serves in the background of this story, but increases in intensity throughout the narrative.

I am drawn to works of fiction that deal with the art world, particularly the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. I loved the novel Season of Migration by Nellie Hermann, which accounted for Van Gogh's time aspiring to a career in the ministry, serving in a coal-mining town. I also encourage (beg) anyone who hasn't seen the amazing film Loving Vincent to do so--preferably on the big screen.

Van Gogh is not a character in this novel; his paintings, however, take center stage (or lots of museum wall space). Clark pulls together a number of characters. The story opens with Julius, a wealthy art critic, whose wife leaves him, taking their son and his prized Van Gogh painting. The blank spot on the wall torments him. He develops a professional relationship bordering on friendship with Rachmann, an art collector who opens a gallery with his brother. They manage to collect before unknown Van Gogh painting from a mysterious source in Spain. Rounding out the narrative is Emmeline, an art student in Berlin despite her mother's wishes whose path crosses with both men.

bBased on actual events, this one of many intriguing art stories that come out of Europe around the time of the second world war, when forgery was a crime on par with the stolen art of this time period.  Clark captures the human dynamics when money and egos are at stake and greed, deception, and attraction intersect.

More Summer Reading: In the Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark

Vincent Van Gogh's Starless Nights: Nellie Hermann's The Season of Migration

I have been endlessly fascinated by Vincent Van Gogh, but I find that the more I learn, the more I need to search. When I was in high school, Don McLean's "Vincent" moved up the radio charts. In fact, the song was used at the high school graduation in 1973. Whenever I visit art museums, I am drawn to his paintings, particularly the two Starry Nights--the most famous one in New York and the darker one at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.
I am challenged when I try to accept that the man who created such beauty lived such a life of despair. Even Woody Allen used Van Gogh's life as fodder for his dark humor in his classic piece, "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists," from his collection Without Feathers.

Nellie Hermann's novel The Season of Migration sheds light on a part of Van Gogh's life with which I was unfamiliar--his attempt to serve as a minister like his father. The story alternates between the account of Vincent's long arduous walk to see his brother Theo in Paris and his letters he wrote to Theo but never mailed while living and working in the mining town where he had been sent to preach.

The story is dark, giving a glimpse into what might have haunted this man many thought mad. (He did cut off his own ear, after all)Despite the gloomy existence in the Belgian coal mining town, Hermann executes some beautiful, almost poet passages of description, particularly when Vincent decides he must go down into the darkest depths of the mine where the members of his congregation and community work. Through Vincent's written account of the experience to Theo, Hermann places the reader in the claustrophobic passages in the mine, so hot that some of the miners work naked.

Hermann's Van Gogh still struggles to develop his artistic skills, driven as he is to draw. The author also nudges readers to want to explore the actual letters Van Gogh wrote his brother and the eventual inspiration that left the world with paintings that display his mark of tortured genius.

Vincent Van Gogh's Starless Nights: Nellie Hermann's The Season of Migration