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monkeelino 's review for:
Landscapes
by Christine Lai
Selected because it was Two Dollar Radio's longlisted submission for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness US/Canada Prize.
The Fall of Anarchy, JMW Turner
It took me a bit to get into this book, but it seemed to quietly burn hotter and hotter as the pages turned. It starts out as kind of a journal cataloging culture and nature against the backdrop of a decaying Earth as a young couple struggles to preserve JMW Turner's estate. It craftily employs its titles in a number of manifestations: landscapes of the physical world, the art world, human relationships, the self, history... It manages to be slowly ruminative while escalating a series of issues in dialogue with one another (possession, desire, destruction, violence).
And the narrative continually seeks this truth, returning to particular artworks, losses, or one very specific trauma to try and make sense of it, to contextualize, and to preserve. Archiving, writing, and painting intermingle as routes toward saving the past from time but seeking a way of doing so that does not merely anchor us to that past. You can almost feel time slowly dissolving as the present melts into the future and even the artworks referenced become more contemporary as the book proceeds with our main character, Penelope, tracing the artistic representation of violence against women throughout history and having it resonate with her own experience of being a woman.
I fear I have left much out of this review giving you little sense of the actual book itself (and nary a mention of Julian, who looms like a monstrous husk of a human). In part, I'd say this is a strength of the book itself, its furtively evading easy categorization and synopsis. What can I say? By the end, I found myself quite beguiled. (And surprised it didn't make the prize shortlist.)
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WORDS, ARTISTS/ARTWORKS, & PHRASES THAT SENT ME RESEARCHING
runinenlust | Norham Castle, Sunrise (Turner) | perianth | The Fall of Anarchy (Turner) | Berthe Morisot | Paula Modersohn-Becker | Francesca Wooman | Untitled (Rape Scene) Ana Mendieta | capriccio | Stendhal syndrome | ruderal | The Rape of Porsepine (Turner) | shunga drawings | Judith Slaying Holofernes (Artemisia Gentileschi) | Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred b’twwen the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (Kara Walker) | Doris Salcedo
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Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred b’twwen the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, Kara Walker
The Fall of Anarchy, JMW Turner
"There was a time when catastrophe seemed far away. We glided through the seasons confident that each calendar year would yield the same degree of heat and cold, the same blossoms and migrating birds. Then change became visible. In aerial photographs, the earth, cracked, burnt, and striated by the lines of industry, resembled a painting, and some saw beauty."
It took me a bit to get into this book, but it seemed to quietly burn hotter and hotter as the pages turned. It starts out as kind of a journal cataloging culture and nature against the backdrop of a decaying Earth as a young couple struggles to preserve JMW Turner's estate. It craftily employs its titles in a number of manifestations: landscapes of the physical world, the art world, human relationships, the self, history... It manages to be slowly ruminative while escalating a series of issues in dialogue with one another (possession, desire, destruction, violence).
"The truth of any single thing, Celia said in response, requires time and continual return."
And the narrative continually seeks this truth, returning to particular artworks, losses, or one very specific trauma to try and make sense of it, to contextualize, and to preserve. Archiving, writing, and painting intermingle as routes toward saving the past from time but seeking a way of doing so that does not merely anchor us to that past. You can almost feel time slowly dissolving as the present melts into the future and even the artworks referenced become more contemporary as the book proceeds with our main character, Penelope, tracing the artistic representation of violence against women throughout history and having it resonate with her own experience of being a woman.
"I have never known the lasting truth of any work of art—I do not even know if such a truth exists—but while studying those pieces, I reached a new understanding, one that tied together all the analyses I had read of the female nude and the male gaze in Western art. Because for once, I stood in front of the artworks as the figurative body depicted."
I fear I have left much out of this review giving you little sense of the actual book itself (and nary a mention of Julian, who looms like a monstrous husk of a human). In part, I'd say this is a strength of the book itself, its furtively evading easy categorization and synopsis. What can I say? By the end, I found myself quite beguiled. (And surprised it didn't make the prize shortlist.)
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WORDS, ARTISTS/ARTWORKS, & PHRASES THAT SENT ME RESEARCHING
runinenlust | Norham Castle, Sunrise (Turner) | perianth | The Fall of Anarchy (Turner) | Berthe Morisot | Paula Modersohn-Becker | Francesca Wooman | Untitled (Rape Scene) Ana Mendieta | capriccio | Stendhal syndrome | ruderal | The Rape of Porsepine (Turner) | shunga drawings | Judith Slaying Holofernes (Artemisia Gentileschi) | Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred b’twwen the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (Kara Walker) | Doris Salcedo
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Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred b’twwen the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, Kara Walker