Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime - Hardcover

Hampl, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151015066 ISBN 13: 9780151015061

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006

Synopsis

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 Eugène 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.

About this title

About the Authors

PATRICIA HAMPL is the author of three memoirs: A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, and I Could Tell You Stories; and two collections of poetry. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. She lives in St. Paul, where she is Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota.

Patricia Hampl is Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151015066
• ISBN 13: 9780151015061
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 215