Train Dreams: The Real "Wild" West in Novella Form

 

 

Train Dreams (2011)

By Denis Johnson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 116 pages.

★★★★

 

What a good idea! Farrar, Straus and Giroux has recently put a series of rebound novellas on the market in paperback and e-editions. Most of them are just under or just over a hundred pages, perfect for reading in the car or on the beach. You can zip through and not worry that you’ll put them down somewhere, get busy, and forget what you’ve read. 

 

 

 

Train Dreams feels like an old Wobbly tale from the early 20^th century. It takes us out West, mostly in Idaho and Washington State when civilization was still raw outside of the cities. Robert Grainer is a day laborer on the railroad. Ever see old black and white images of high rickety-looking railroad bridges that look like they were randomly constructed from two-by-fours that couldn’t possibly bear the weight of a steam locomotive? One over Robinson Gorge in Washington State was so scary no engineer would brave it. The engineer put a wedge on the throttle so it would cross slowly, waited for the train to get to the other side, and then walked across and caught up with his train. Grainer left Minnesota and repaired such structures.

 

In 1917, he was involved with a railroad crew that hated the Chinese and he nearly killed one. If you’ve ever heard any old Wobbly stories—Wobblies were members of the Industrial Workers f the World–the situation is akin to dozens of anti-Chinese riots that took place in the West. Grainer was shocked by his own behavior and decided to live in the boonies. This short novel from Denis (sic) Johnson tackles American individualism on the primal level. It is filled with rough loggers, bridge builders, waggoneers, prospectors, brothel women, carnival scam artists, and Indians friendly and not.

 

After leaving the railroad crew, Grainer meets an old coot named Arn Peeples. Arn is a waggoner and colorful doesn’t begin to describe the whoppers he tells. Arn claims to like hot weather, the hotter the better. In his telling Arn once worked on a peak that was “only eleven or twelves miles from the sun.” Arn also spins a yarn about a man (maybe him) who was shot by his own dog! When Arn dies, Grainer takes over his hauling business. He does well for a time, but things always turn slant for Grainer.

 

He eventually builds a rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere near the Kootenai River maybe in Idaho but perhaps in British Columbia; his crowd never paid much never mind to borders. He acquires a wife named Gladys and they have a daughter named Kate. He is a man of few words and his life takes another turn when he’s on a long haul and the cabin burns. He reckons that when the fire started Gladys tried to put it out with kerosene. So now he’s resigned to being a childless widower. 

 

Grainer roams anew and meets many more characters, though he always returns to the cabin site. His world is one of men who smell bad because they seldom wash (and never in the winter), swear, drink questionable liquor, tell crude jokes, and regale each other with stories that might (but probably don’t) contain a kernel of truth. Did you hear the one about the prospector whose dynamite froze, so he tried to thaw it out in his stove? Grainer goes to a carnival where some of the boys get it in their heads that the promised pulchritude of the women probably involved a lecture on sex. And maybe that’s not completely wrong.

 

In this passing-of-the-West novella, nothing is too outrageous. Grainer rebuilds his cabin and something quite eerie occurs. Somehow, Robert makes to 1968 before he dies. I emphasize that this is a very male-centric novel that is sometimes off-color. It might remind you of something from Wallace Stegner with his filters turned off. For me it both took the doilies off of American individualism and the American West. For every person who made it rich from mining, prospecting, ranching, hunting, or living amidst nature, there were scores of Robert Grainers.

 

Rob Weir

 

Ragnar Jonasson's Gripping New Mystery Tale

 

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Writer

By Ragnar Jónasson

Minotaur/St. Martin’s Press, 320 pages.

★★★★

 

In 1926, mystery writer Agatha Christie disappeared for a dozen days. She showed up unharmed, but never explained her absence. Some have done extensive detective work and believe they have cracked the mystery, but it remains open for speculation.

 

What, pray tell, does this have to do with the new novel from Iceland’s most popular mystery writer, Ragnar Jónasson? The Mysterious Case of the Missing Writer pays homage to Christie and is written in the so-called Golden Age style popularized by Christie. It is sparse and sprinkled with humor, though devoid of Christie's ability to somehow imbue murder with an ineffable sweetness. In other words, Jónasson is a hard-boiled mystery writer. Another departure is that whereas Christie preferred a controlled approach to her mysteries, Jónasson’s work is complex, right down to moving between three time frames: the 60s, the 70s, and 2005. He even cribs from two earlier works, White Out and Death at the Sanatorium, but doesn't bother to explain back stories. (You don't need to read these first to understand Case of the Missing Writer.)

 

Helgi Reykdal works for the Criminal Investigation Division in Reykjavik, a job that would stress out just about anyone. His mind is overloaded and is trying to recharge his batteries at his family's bookstore in the countryside outside of the capital. Helgi is relatively young as detectives go, and harbors a secret he wishes to remain private. His previous girlfriend, Bergthora, was violent. What his colleagues think if they knew Helgi  was found to have been battered by Bergthora and is under a restraining order? He doesn't even want his current girlfriend, Anita, to know the details. She's everything Bergthora was not: kind, calm, affectionate, curious, athletic....

 

Helgi is brought in from the wilds, as it were, because Élin Jónsdóttir is missing. His job is to find the famous crime novelist before word gets out, social media explodes, and the public works itself into a frenzy of fear and rumor. There may be nothing to any of this, but the disappearance is reported by her best friend Lovisa, a retired judge, who suspects something has happened with Élin because she failed to show for their weekly gabfest. The public imagines that Jónsdóttir has a jetsetter’s lifestyle and would cast suspicion on every glamorous or important person in the nation. Lovisa, however, reveals that despite what people believe, Élin is a shy homebody of rigid habits. Her publisher, Rut, confirms Lovisa's concerns and reasons for them. Even Élin’s accountant finds it out of character for her to simply drop out of sight without a word to her closest confidants.

 

On the other hand, Jónsdóttir publicly announced that her 10th murder mystery, Deadline, would be her last book. Helgi can't help but wonder why an aging mystery writer would need anyone's permission or advanced notice to go out on her own for a bit; after all, that’s what he did. But the more Helgi probes, the more he's inclined to entertain the probability that something deeper is afoot. The ideal situation would be that Élin is acting in accordance to plots in her books and has pulled a fast one by claiming she was done with writing. Is she holed up somewhere working on a new book? Or, as Helgi increasingly fears, has she been murdered?

 

Try cracking all those nuts if you are Helgi. He is back in Reykjavik, is being badgered by higher ups to solve the case, and is falling deeply in love with his new girlfriend Anita, who fears that Bergthora has been stalking her at work. She's not wrong about that! Bergthora insists that Helgi is still in love with her, and that they have sex together when Anita is busy. That's not true, but Helgi has little time to deal with this as he is hours away from resolving the Jónsdóttir case. He insists that Bergthora as annoying, but not a threat. He promises to deal with her very soon.

 

Will Helga find Élin? Will he lose the intelligent Anita to his workaholic lifestyle? Is Bergthora a sociopath? Find out for yourself in this gripping page turner. Jónasson’s book is well plotted and finishes with an absolutely shocking conclusion. Maybe you'll anticipate it or maybe you won't. Either way it lands like a left hook when you're looking right.

 

 Thanks to Minotaur and NetGalley for a review copy. This book will be published in September but can be ordered now.

 

Rob Weir

 

Devil in a Blue Dress: Worth Seeing but a Better Read

 

 

 

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Directed by Carl Franklin

Sony Pictures Releasing, 102 minutes, R (violence, language, brief nudity)

★★★

 

It's hard to believe that Devil in a Blue Dress was released 30 years ago. This Denzel Washington vehicle is a stylish film, that often looks a lot better than it is. Call it a film noir in color, neo noir, or a crime drama. It's based on a Walter Mosley novel. He's one of my favorite writers, but his books are often complex in the sense that there are a lot of characters. This sometimes means that there's too much going on to capture in a movie of under two hours. Director Carl Franklin might have done well to delete a few of them to present a truncated tale involving Mosley's favorite detective Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel).

 

The story is set in Los Angeles 1948. It has the right look, but let's not confuse it with The Big Sleep or Chinatown. Rawlins has just been laid off from the aircraft plant and he needs money for his house, car, and stylish wardrobe. He lives along Central Avenue in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a neighborhood filled with well-kempt homes, low-life bars, juke joints, and flashy but often legally ambiguous clubs. He's approached to find a white woman named Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals). Easy has no interest and looking for a white woman, but he keeps getting strong-armed by the LAPD, a white PI,  and creditors who collectively seem like the Keystone Kops. At times it's difficult to know whether to call this film a crime drama or a comedy, though humor is common in Moseley's novels. In one awkward scene Easy is having an intimate moment with Coretta James (Lisa Nicole Carson), when the LAPD invite themselves into his living room to “encourage” him to look for Daphne. DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) also badgers Easy. He’s the white PI who has hired Easy because, for some reason, he can't find Daphne on his own–possibly because he’s afraid of the neighborhood, though Easy suspects ulterior motives. He is also hustled by an old friend Joppy (Mel Winkler) for reasons that are not explained in the film, at least not for quite some time.

 

If you can't convince someone to do what you'd like them to do, resort to blackmail. Easy reluctantly calls in an old friend from down South named Mouse Alexander (Don Cheadle). Rawlins doesn't like to use him very often, for the simple reason that Mouse is a bit psycho and wants an excuse to shoot someone! (He will get his chance.) Easy is even more suspicious when he unearths a few leads that any competent PI should have been able to collect.

 

When in LA, assume political strings will be pulled. There’s a mayoral election and Easy is approached by the incumbent  Mattew Terell (Maury Chaykin) who is obviously trying to pry information from him. Coretta tells Easy that Daphne is staying with gangster Frank Green, but before he can follow up he is arrested for Coretta’s murder, something he knows nothing about, but try explaining that to two homicide agents. Yet he walks free. Nothing seems to make complete sense to Rawlins. Enter Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), a billionaire who dropped out of the race when Daphne, his fiancé disappeared. He offers Easy big bucks to find her. Because of the movie’s elided action, a subplot about pictures of naked boys comes at us pretty fast. So too does Carter’s rejection of Daphne when he finds out she is biracial.

 

Washington plays Easy Rawlins with cool smoothness, though he perhaps overplays it as he often comes off as more detached than hard-boiled. Cheadle comes close to stealing the show with his manic energy and walk-the-razor’s-edge volatility. He actually won a few best supporting actor awards (though not an Oscar). Comic relief is also added by an unnamed “mad gardener” who would level every tree in Easy’s neighborhood if given a chance. In his own way he’s as crazy as Mouse. I also wondered if Daphne was a hard role for Beals to play. She is, in life, a biracial woman born to an African-American father and an Irish-American mother. She has often spoken of experiencing discrimination as a child.

 

By the movie’s end, Easy Rawlins has his own detective agency, so it’s also an origin story. My tag line for Devil in a Blue Dress is “okay movie, much better novel.” I may have said that 5-6,000 times before!

 

Rob Weir

 

A Look Back at National Lampoon

 

 

 

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2010)

By Rick Meyerowitz

Harry N. Abrams Publishing, 320 pages.

★★★

 

In my book on the Marx Brothers I wrestled with the question of makes something “funny?” Comedy is usually transgressive, meaning it occurs when our expectations of “normal” are overturned. Some comedy is universal, some is timebound, and some is contemporary hoping to become classic. Beyond that, you’re on your own!

 

As a child I loved Bugs Bunny and Mad Magazine. Though I enjoyed a recent exhibit on Mad Magazine, my main feeling was one of nostalgia. Once I got wind of National Lampoon, I left childish things behind (except Bugs). NatLamp was my go-to mag for the 1970s because it was cheeky, irreverent, and didn’t give a fig about authority or propriety. It was the funniest thing going–until I discovered Monty Python. My point is that people often change when the Zeitgeist shifts. Later I discovered (in alpha order) George Carlin, Billy Connolly, Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, and Stephen Wright.

 

But back to National Lampoon. Recently I picked up a $1.99 copy of Rick Meyerowitz’s  look back at the magazine for which he did a bit of everything: art work, writing, spin-off radio broadcasts, movies, stage shows…. He did the famed “Mona Gorilla” cover, in my mind, the second funniest after the brilliant “Buy this magazine of we’ll kill this dog” cover that outraged some people and made others double over in laughter. National Lampoon began in 1970, an offshoot of Harvard Lampoon, and ceased publication in 1998, though it ran out steam in the 1980s.

 

Meyerowitz bit off a big task by spotlighting the voluminous cast of writers and illustrators who passed through the doors. Founders Doug Kenny and Henry Beard hired Meyerowitz, plus such well-known wits as the venomous Michael O’Donoghue and the only slightly more contained Christopher Cerf, Michel Choquette, and George William Swift Trow. You might notice that all of those names are male. Lampoon was accused of being sexist in content and production. It absolutely was! Anne Beatts was its first female writer, but she came aboard with more male writers like Tony Hendra, Sean Kelly, Charles Rodrigues, and Arnold Roth. Beatts remained the only female creative until the late 70s. Other familiar names such as Stan Mack, Bruce McCall, P. J. O’Rourke reported for duty, but NatLamp remained well behind the feminist curve with its large-breasted women and cheap sex jokes. Lampoon was also charged with being anti-Semitic, but you will notice from the number of Jewish names in its production staff that this was self-deprecating humor.

 

A challenge in a Lampoon survey is that Meyerowitz was an insider. The staff was often drunk and/or stoned and some indeed are dead. Were they “brilliant?” Most were highly educated, but National Lampoon shared a trait with Mad in that its content can be charitably called “uneven.”  This leads to a critique of the book’s organization. It is divided into seven sections: The Founders, Present at Birth, The Cohort, The First Wave, The Second Coming, The End of the Beginning, and The Art Directors. Each of the personalities involved is introduced by another staffer telling us how utterly brilliant that person was; more times than not, that person tells us how brilliant another colleague was. Such profiles don’t tell us much and read as what they are: a mutual admiration club. Some of what they “reveal” as dazzling today reads as tedious. An example is an early 12-page piece by Henry Beard and John Weidman, “Law of the Jungle.” It’s an erudite and absurdist parody of natural law and its implications for flora, fauna, land, etc. complete with footnotes. Clever? Yes, but a violation of a principle not discussed therein: thou shalt not stretch a joke until it disintegrates. 

 

Okay, so not everything worked, but TheStupidGroup is fresh and relevant. Things such a parody of the existential threat posed by the Dutch; caricatures of Reagan and the Ayatollah; Hitler’s tropical paradise; “The Socratic Monologue,” Anne Beatts’ VW ad; “Strange Beliefs of Children;” Bernie X; fake yellow pages and New Yorker covers; and tons of zany comics are hysterical.

 

In my view, National Lampoon lost it edge with its spinoffs, which had to be toned down for wider audiences. Some of what made Lampoon “funny” was that it was often offensive. Why not; “whether you know it or not, the Universe is laughing behind your back” (Deteriorata).  And, yes, it inspired Saturday Night Live.

 

Rob Weir

 

Red Clay: Black and White in Alabama

 

 

 

 

Red Clay (2025)

By Charles Francher

Blackstone, 338 pages.

★★★★

 

Red Clay is a multigenerational tale of slavery and its aftermath. Red Clay, Alabama, is the primary setting, but it also travels to New Orleans, the Côte d’Azur, and Paris. It opens in 1943 with the funeral of Felix H. Parker. Adelaide Parker shows up to pay her respects and offer an apology to Felix’s kin. What makes it more poignant is that Felix is Black and Adelaide is White. Her kin used to own those of Felix.

 

Move the clock back to 1864, when Felix and Adelaide were children. Road’s End Plantation had many enslaved servants, but the Parkers prided themselves on being benevolent owners. Author Charles Francher strips the sheen off such nonsense. Red Clay is a novel, but it is one in accordance with contemporary scholarship. Some enslavers were less brutal than others, but the very logic of slavery was that the relationship of enslavers to the enslaved was one of absolute power versus absolute subjugation. Francher shows this in numerous ways in a tale based loosely on his own grandfather. As was often the case, slaves often bore the surname of their enslavers. Felix’s parents, Plessant and Elmira, hold enviable positions on the plantation. Plessant is the valet of John Robert Parker, but he’s also akin to a manager of the estate. His word often leads to the dismissal of abusive White field drivers and Elmira is the cook whose offerings are the envy of Alabama.

 

The flip side is that Adelaide handfeeds Felix scraps from the table as if he were  prized dog. Felix hates that, but is advised by Plessant to keep his mouth shut and be thankful for the extra rations. If you know your history, the year 1864 is a significant turning point, as it is clear the Confederacy is losing the war. John Robert promised Plessant a modest parcel of bottomland and freedom. John, though, knows that Road’s End is sinking in debt, news he keeps from his pampered wife and daughter. He entrusts Felix with a secret that he cannot reveal, a horrible burden for an eight-year-old when John suddenly dies. Road’s End passes to his son Claude, who has little of the sentimentality,  work ethos, or temperate habits of his father. He sends some of enslaved to a slave trader, including Felix’s older brother and sister, who were sold “like a litter of hound dog pups” to a planter in Mississippi. He also sells the tract of land promised to Plessant, who has no legal claim to the land or his freedom, as nothing was written down. When Felix complains, Claude sends him and his best friend to the fields, where other slaves bully them. Felix, though, is clever and gets revenge on a tormentor that gains respect from other slaves. When he is whipped for another transgression, though, Elmira and Plessant respond by withholding their expertise in ways in accordance to what the Industrial Workers of the World later called a “systematic withdrawal of efficiency.”

 

The next year the war ends, the Black Parkers are freed, and they decline to work on the plantation. As it transpires, Felix has a gift as a carpenter and soon attracts commissions from customers Black and White. Claude simply can’t adjust to the new order of things and lacks Felix’s patience. Slowly Felix builds up a nest egg and acquires what was promised to his family. He has a novel way of helping other freedmen, staying ahead of Claude’s animosity, and his hooded compatriots. He even acquires a wife named Zilpha whose family was from cut from different cloth than his own. But can he avoid hubris?

 

When we return to 1943, you need to remember that slavery was within the living memory of elderly people who were children when it ended. This was the case of Adelaide. This part of the novel is both awkward and moving. How does one apologize for your family having enslaved someone else’s?

 

This is Francher’s debut novel, which is impressive given the mature nature of his storytelling and style. My only complaint is that it has revenge scenarios that stretch credulity. Like the superb movie Rosewood (1997), Red Clay sometimes feels like an alt.history that’s the way we might wish it had played out. But I could be wrong; even John C. Calhoun called a “peculiar instituition.”

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Is Anora Pornography?

 

 

 

Anora (2024)

Directed by Sean Baker

Neon Films, 139 minutes, R (strippers, extensive sex, nudity, language)

★

 

I’m not a prude, but the movie Anora made me understand why some people think Western morality is on death row. I can recall my teen years when any film with the slightest bit of nudity was rated X. A Swedish film called I Am Curious Yellow was infamous because it actually showed people having sex, hence was considered XXX. (I think that meant that no one under 40 could see it and even elders needed a note from their mothers and grandmothers.) Some of us sneaked into a drive-in to see it. I can tell you that today it would be an R film, perhaps even PG-13!

 

So let me start my review of Anora with the observation that it’s pornographic. We don’t see close ups what English comics call “the naughty bits” ready for action, but you see pretty much everything else. Actress Mikey Madison who plays the titular (pun intended) character Anora Ani Mikheeva is starkers–another Britishism– for most the film. She won an Academy Award for this role. Judges must have liked what they (literally) saw, as her vocabulary consisted mostly of dropping more F-bombs than heard in a junior high locker room. The rest of Madison’s scenes were so overacted that she’s been sued by the American Histrionic Association. (Okay, I made up that last bit.) Imagine if Marissa Tomei and Joe Pesci galivanted around naked in My Cousin Vinny. Even if you had to look at Pesci’s mickey (see what I did there?) for over two hours, the dialogue in My Cousin Vinny would be sharper than what director Sean Baker wrote.

 

If you were like me–one of the few that hadn’t seen it–the skinny is that  Anora (“Ani”) works as a stripper in a sleazy men’s club whose clientele has more testosterone than brains. She is popular among the other strippers, except for Diamond (Lindsay Normington), who sees her as a rival. The “girls” depend upon tips and whatever else they can squeeze out their clients, a cut of the overpriced watered-down drinks, lap dances and, for the right price, a room and sex.  Ani hits sex worker gold in 21-year-old Ivan aka/ Vanya (Mark Eydelshyeyn)  the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch. He’s a spoiled jerk, but he offers Ani a lot of dough to be his rented girlfriend. She agrees and accesses a life she never could. Vanya claims the house is his, but it actually belongs to his father. For a week the two have non-stop sex, party, trash the apartment, and even fly to Vegas, where they get married. In other words, Anora is one of approximately 500,000 Cinderella variants. Except in this one, the wicked stepmother wins.

 

Vanya’s family is not happy. Mom and pop Nikolai and Galina (whose relationship reminded me of Trump and Melania) get in touch with their Armenian handler, who sends a few heavies around to try to get the marriage annulled. Ani refuses and Vanya has had so much dope and alcohol he’s incoherent. Hence, the ‘rents fly over in their private jet to “fix” things. Galina calls Ani a “prostitute,” which sends her into hyperspace. She insists she’s not a hooker, but what would you call someone who has sex for money? Galina fumes; Nikolai laughs. There are side stories about Ani’s boss, her colleagues, and her sister. There are also cheap laughs at the expense of the Keystone Kops-like guards who can’t contain Ani, but nearly all of movie’s “humor” is of LCD variety, as in “lowest common denominator.” And since when is abduction funny?

 

Anora has been billed as a “romantic comedy.” Given how the movie resolves, it flunks the romance part of the equation and if LCD is the best one can do, stick some clothes on the actors, cleanup the language, and aim it at the PG audience. I’m not saying that every comedy needs to have characters who discus the flaws in Hegelian dualism, but I do insist that humor shouldn’t be so broad it can only be seen on an Imax screen. Let’s call Anora what it really is: a male gaze film in which the story and the funny bits are irrelevant; the “girl bits” are all that matter. Much was made of Madison being the first Generation Z actress to win an Oscar. This  doesn’t portend a great future for American films!

 

Rob Weir

 

The Met in NYC Features John Singer Sargent

 

 

 

 

The Scandalous Madam X Portrait

  

 

Sargent in Paris

Through August 3

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

 

I’ve seen numerous John Singer Sargent exhibits in the past few years. If you live in Massachusetts, it’s almost unavoidable; few portrait painters come close to matching his reputation in the Bay State. He is considered the preeminent painter of society figures, though they were not his preferred company. He was paid handsomely for his endeavors, but not enough to put him in the social circle of his subjects. His work on the ceilings of MFA Boston and the Boston Public Library has been widely hailed. We’ve seen exhibits of Sargent and fashion, Sargent’s watercolors, Sargent and the Bott family, etc. MFA Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner have numerous Sargent portraits, the Clark in Williamstown has four, and you can also find his work at the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, at Harvard, and on the walls of museums in Andover, Gloucester, Salem, Springfield, and Smith College. There so many Sargents in Massachusetts that even AI doesn’t know exactly how many are in the Commonwealth.

 

Leave it to New York to try to one-up Boston. The Metropolitan Museum of Art show Sargent in Paris manages to give a new look on aspects of Sergent’s work by taking us back to his beginnings. Among other things, it reminds us of the basic absurdity of considering Sergent as a master of American portraiture. It would better to call him a master of then late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Though his parents were American, he was born in Florence, Italy, died in London, and spent more of his 69 years abroad (Corfu, England, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland) than he did in the United States. In short, John Singer Sargent was an expatriate American painter.

 

The Standard Bearer--Sargent channeling Franz Halls

 

 

 

 

Capri Girl on Rooftop--style a bit rough

 

 

 

Setting Out to Fish--channeling impressionists

 

 

 

His parents sent Sargent to study in Paris under portrait artist Léon Bonnat, who today is best remembered for his instructional skills. You can see in Sargent’s earliest works–he had a portrait displayed in the Paris Salón when he not yet 20–that he was doing what most young artists do. That is, he channeled artists who inspired him, including Velásquez, Franz Hals, Whistler, and Ingres. That he could do so with such skill was remarkable considering that he was accepted for study at the Accademia de Bell Arte in 1873, when he was just 17. The Met show features the work he produced from his three years in Paris.

 

 

 About 5 yrs later-Madam Errazuriz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, to showcase what he accomplished requires a look at more mature work, like Madame X and other Sargent masterpieces. To remind you, his portrait of “Madame X” (Virginie Amélie Gautreau) was considered one of the most scandalous portraits of the late 19^th century, as she posed in a slinky, sleeveless gown whose first iteration had one of the straps falling from her shoulder. It might not seem risqué today, but to show a married woman in such a state of relative undress shocked audiences whose values were informed by French and American versions of Victorianism. Tongues waged and many presumed an affair between painter and subject. Probably not! Sargent is thought by many art scholars to have been gay and there are many nudes of young men that strongly suggest it was so.

 

If you can get to New York before this show closes, it’s a quintessential look at a young man honing his genius and how he took his raw talents to the next level.

 

Rob Weir

 

If you're curious, here's Madam X in real-life