Art in novels: “the art we produce lives in queasy balance with the art we can imagine, the art the room expects”

 

Peter Harris is an art dealer, his wife Rebecca is the editor of an art magazine; Mizzy, the complicated young brother of Rebecca, is considering becoming an art curator. But even if the author is utterly into the contemporary art system and its unwritten rules, to the eye of an art insider “By nightfall” (2010) may seem just a very clever collection of cliches (and that is indeed what the insider will love the most). Apart from this, Cunningham writes memorable pages about the feeling of getting old and about the problematic perception we have of talent. And about “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” by Damien Hirst as well.

July 17, 2015