Life Studies: Stories

Susan Vreeland has said that she wants to write about the enriching and uplifting power of art and she has certainly succeeded. The seventeen stories in Life Studies explore art of the past as well as art in our own time. One of the pleasures for the reader is discovering just what well-known painting is being described - sometimes even before it has been painted and is just planned by the artist.Her writing is firmly based in research and fleshes out dryer art history we may have studied. There is a great sensitivity to the writing as Vreeland brings out the humanity of the artists and those in their lives. She has said "Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the evolution of the human race." In this collection, we are also privileged to enter into Vreeland's childhood with "Crayon, 1955" For anyone who had encouragement, as a child, to explore a new world of thinking, it is particularly poignant. A really good read.

A friend that I take art classes with recommended this book. I've really enjoyed it. It's a collection of stories that show how deeply art can affect average people in their daily life. The main quote of the book explains well the message of these stories: "The real question is: To whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialist? - John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1977" The author gives awesome examples of how art can touch you regardless of age, practice, education level, and culture. Some of the stories refer to renowned past artists and the inspirational effect they have on others, while others present average people opening to art. Not a full 5-star though, as some of the stories could have taken a bit more work to get them polished at the level of a few, outstanding ones. I found the following excellent: The Yellow Jacket; Crayon, 1955; At Least Five Hundred Words, with Sincerity and Honesty. A heart warming and inspirational book.

Life Studies is a collection of short stories about art and artists by Susan Vreeland. I've read two of the stories so far and am in the middle of the third one. All three stories show Vreeland to be a master at work as she deftly weaves together art history, human psychology, poignant metaphors and recurring motifs together with vivid descriptions of the French landscape and people. I was delighted at the "aha!" moment in each story has where it becomes clear which beloved artwork has been, is being or will be created. I look forward to finishing the book, but highly recommend it based on what I have read so far.

Susan Vreeland's first book, the exquisite "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," was told in a series of stories centering around one Vermeer painting. In this book she returns to the story form, this time concerning many artists instead of just one. It contains moments of real beauty and for those who love art, or grew up with artists as I did, quite real and memorable. These are unusual stories in form and perception. Art and the artist are seen from an angle, often told from the perspective of a model or a child or a lover. It is as if you rounded a corner and bumped into Renoir's easel or noticed Cézanne across a country road talking to a friend. These artists touch you as they really lived, as rather ordinary people. The stories are sometimes as quiet as walk in the woods. But in the end you feel you have known the little boy who threw stones at Cézanne, or the tired banker who goes to a weekend gathering in Montmartre and finds, in a short conversation with the artist Renoir who lives upstairs, a new joy in his life. Of the contemporary stories in the second half of the book, "Crayon," about a little girl and her dying artist grandfather is such a beautiful piece of writing. This book is for any reader who would like to know what it was like to see one of these artists not as some sort of sexual athlete or superman but walking across the street quietly with his paint box in his hand.

Susan Vreeland is fast becoming one of my favorite living authors. Her ability to draw you quickly and seamlessly into a living moment is one of the best I have come across, and I was impressed and relieved to find that the details I found the most poignant in her historical fiction sketches were the ones she gave bibliographic references for at the end of the book. In addition, I found her web sight containing the art pieces referenced in her stories at the beginning of my reading, and it greatly enhanced my overall experience: http://www.svreeland.com/ls-paintings.html In general, I found this book absorbing and vivid, but educated and relatively free from sentimentality. She is able to change voices well from character to character, but not so abruptly and obviously that the book loses fluidity. These chapters, each dedicated to a human life affected by a particular work of art, were saturated with reality and living detail. Really beautifully done; I was sorry to see it end.