Portrait in Red - L. John Harris

Portrait in Red

A Paris Mystery

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
288 Seiten
2024
Heyday Books (Verlag)
978-1-59714-649-4 (ISBN)
27,40 inkl. MwSt
The quest to uncover the history of a mysterious painting, and a joyous exploration of art in the twentieth century and beyond.

While wandering the streets of Paris in 2015, L. John Harris finds an abandoned, unfinished, and strangely compelling painting. The subject: a girl wearing a bright-red head covering, fixing her viewer with a foreboding gaze. The painting bears no signature, only the date: January 12, 1935. Harris, a journalist and illustrator, embarks on a multi-year quest to uncover the story behind this painting. His sleuthing has given birth to Portrait in Red, a wide-ranging exploration of art and its enduring mysteries.

With wit and a contagious enthusiasm, Harris traces unexpected connections between Paris on the eve of World War II, his bohemian life in the San Francisco Bay Area, the aura of original paintings, the magic of found objects, and the aesthetics of a perfect croque monsieur. Portrait in Red will delight lovers of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes or Michael Finkel's The Art Thief. By turns heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, it is an existential detective story, set among world tragedies, art-historical epiphanies, and comic hijinks.

L. John Harris, born in Los Angeles, studied art and literature at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. Seduced by Berkeley's food revolution in the 1970s, Harris worked at several iconic shops and restaurants and wrote The Book of Garlic (1974). He launched his cookbook company, Aris Books, in 1980 and his "Foodoodles" cartoon byline in Bay Area magazines led to a series of illustrated memoirs: Foodoodles (2010), Café French (2019) and My Little Plague Journal (2022). Mr. Harris coproduced with PBS in 2001 the film Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar and serves as the curator of the Harris Guitar Collection at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Harris's next book is a history of Berkeley's "gourmet ghetto," to be published by Heyday.

Prologue


I


The Journey Begins


A Corner Table


First Croque


Not the Mona Lisa


The Girl’s Aura


The Red and the Black


Meet Aura’s Cousin, Patina


The Red and the Gold


Heureux Hasard


From Russia With Art & Soul


Not So Heureux Hasard


On a Roll


Return To the Scene of the Crime


A Red Letter Day


Abandoned, Anonymous and Unfinished


Gleaning 101


Framing The Girl in Black and Gold


The Vernissage


A Christmas Salon Chez Robert


Finish the Unfinished—a Contest


Paris, January 12, 1935


The Girl From Paris Meets the Boys From Brazil


Non Finito Redux


II


The Journey Continues


Back To Paris With a Poster and a Plan


The Gods Must Be Surreal


Unlikely Complicities


Posting The Girl


Meetup With Picasso and Balzac


Tending To My Attachments


Rue Visconti, Bonnard and More Balzac


First Contact


Poster in the Poubelle


Ritual Croques


Dashed Hopes and Mini-Croques


My Mona Lisa


String Theory In London


The École des Beaux-Arts Says Non


Full Circle At La Palette


Web Design and Poster Control


At the End Of the Day


III


The Journey Ends


Jean Dubuffet’s Swan Song


But a Painting Is a Painting


A Whodunit With Two Whos


The End Of the Story?


Epilogue


Acknowledgements


Sources


Illustration Credits


About the Author

Erscheint lt. Verlag 19.12.2024
Zusatzinfo full-color images
Verlagsort Berkeley
Sprache englisch
Maße 139 x 215 mm
Themenwelt Literatur Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Natur / Technik Natur / Ökologie
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Natur / Technik Naturführer
Reisen Reiseberichte
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 1-59714-649-8 / 1597146498
ISBN-13 978-1-59714-649-4 / 9781597146494
Zustand Neuware
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