Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser
found himself visiting—casually at first, and then more and more
obsessively—the country’s great museums. Inside these old
buildings, he discovered the remains of the Dutch Golden Age and
began to unearth the strange, inspiring, and terrifying stories of
the artists who gave shape to one of the most luminous moments in
the history of human creativity. Beyond the sainted Rembrandt—who
harbored a startling darkness—and the mysterious Vermeer, whose
true subject, it turned out, was lurking in plain sight, Moser got
to know a whole galaxy of geniuses: the doomed virtuoso Carel
Fabritius, the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, the deaf prodigy
Hendrik Avercamp. And through their artwork, he got to know their
country, too: from the translucent churches of Pieter Saenredam to
Paulus Potter’s muddy barnyards, and from Pieter de Hooch’s
cozy hearths to Jacob van Ruisdael’s tragic trees. Year after
year, as he tried to make a life for himself in the Netherlands,
Moser found friends among these centuries-dead artists. And he
found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that
he was. Why do we make art? What even is art, anyway—and what is
an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does
it mean to fail? Is art a consolation—or a mortal danger? The
Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to
turn them on their heads: to look, and then to look again. This is
Holland and its great artists as we’ve never seen them before.
And it’s a sumptuously illustrated, highly personal
coming-of-age-story, twenty years in the making: a revealing
self-portrait by one of the most acclaimed writers of his
generation.
General
Imprint: |
W W Norton & Co Inc
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2023 |
Authors: |
Benjamin Moser
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
320 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-324-09225-4 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-324-09225-4 |
Barcode: |
9781324092254 |
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