Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime

Just out of college, Patricia Hampl was mesmerized by a Matisse painting she saw in the Art Institute of Chicago: an aloof woman gazing at goldfish in a bowl, a mysterious Moroccan screen behind her. This woman seemed a welcome secular version of the nuns of Hampl's girlhood, free and untouchable, a poster girl for twentieth-century feminism. In Blue Arabesque, Hampl explores the allure of that woman, immersed in leisure, so at odds with the increasing rush of the modern era. Her tantalizing meditation takes us to the Cote d'Azur and North Africa, from cloister to harem, pondering figures as diverse as Eug ne Delacroix, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Katherine Mansfield. Returning always to Matisse and his obsessive portraits of languid women, Hampl discovers they were not decorative indulgences but surprising acts of integrity.

Moving with the life force that Matisse sought in his work, Blue Arabesque is a dazzling tour de force.


Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 10/01/2007
ISBN: 9780156033114
Pages: 215
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 7.96h x 5.32w x 0.65d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 11/04/2007 pg. 36