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Full Description
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.
Contents
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
