Douglas Bruton

The combination of fiction and visual art is one I pretty much always enjoy when I pick it up, although usually neither the work nor my taste extends to contemporary art. Here the work does extend so, however, and drags my taste just a little bit forward with it. If my appreciation of the contemporary art whose creative genesis is the inspiration for this work is reluctant, my appreciation of the writing itself is considerably less so. It's filled with humanity and gentleness, kind to all it sees, and follows a twisty and clever thread to do with time, memory, love, and illness, so subtly that I almost missed it, looking without seeing.… (mehr)

Il Mondo Nuovo and The New World
Review of the Fairlight Books paperback (February 16, 2023)

With or Without Angels is author Bruton's fictional novella about the final work The New World of Scottish artist Alan Smith (1941-2019) which was itself inspired by the fresco Il Mondo Nuovo (1791) by Italian artist Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo aka Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) at the Ca' Rezzonico Museum in Venice, Italy.

Bruton wrote the fiction having been inspired by hearing of The New World from the artist's widow, but his creation is his own imagined journey of an artist no longer capable of painting who creates his final work of photomontages with the assistance of his wife and an rather mysterious photographer muse.

He nodded to his wife and made some noise in the back of his throat, a noise that might have been in agreement of what his wife had said about the walk doing him some good, but might just as easily have been something else altogether. She was always so cheery and so positive. It was her strength and she showed him the angels in the world, the angels that he might not have noticed without her.

This was a lovely and moving portrait about art and aging and facing death. It is lavishly illustrated with prints of both the 1791 Tiepolo work and the 2013-14 series by Alan Smith.

See a photograph of Tiepolo's Il Mondo Nuovo at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Giovanni_Domenico_Tiepolo_-_...
Image sourced from Italian Wikipedia. Di Giandomenico Tiepolo - Web Gallery of Art:   Immagine  Info about artwork, Pubblico dominio, Collegamento.

I read With or Without Angels as the April 2023 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.

Other Reviews
Book Review by Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman, February 8, 2023.

Trivia and Link
See the complete set of Alan Smith's The New World photomontages and watch a video of the artist introducing the work at Alan Smith Artist - The New World.… (mehr)

With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton is a unique yet very accessible work that incorporates painting, photography, and fiction to tell a story that is both very specific while also speaking to the reader's own life.

Many works that take a unique, or at least a less common, approach to storytelling can often take some work to get comfortable with how to read them. That isn't a bad thing, just what is often required. Bruton manages to sweep the reader into the book almost immediately in that regard, which then allows you to read more actively. If you are a passive reader that needs everything spelled out for you, this may seem less "realized." If, however, you like and appreciate the interplay between modes of artistic expression and can understand the human emotions at play here, it is indeed very realized.

What struck me was the number of times I could relate the questions and concerns of the protagonist to my own life. Certainly not specifics, but the bigger questions are common to us all, and Bruton leaves room for the reader to complete the story in a way that suits each reader. No, this isn't like some Clue mystery with multiple endings, but how we understand what is being expressed is very much up to each of us. I appreciate a book that gives me space to follow the story while inserting my own ideas into it.

Recommended for those who enjoy stories that touch on life, love, legacy, and how these all inform each other.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)

‘’Years ago in the blue mists of memory, there was a street in Paris called the Street of Tailors. Men sat outside their shops like kings on their thrones, and they nodded to each other or tipped their broad brimmed hats and said, ‘Shalom’, and smiled. [...] Then one day the whole street disappeared and all the people in it.’’

Three men invite us to a world painted blue. Blue as memory, glory, secrets. Blue as loss and injustice. Blue as the sky and the sea and the Virgin Mary’s mantle. Blue as the threads of Tekhelet that bring fortune and a closer contact to God, according to Jewish tradition. Henri, a Jewish tailor, Yves Klein, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and our narrator, haunted by his father’s memories and a melancholic love. In the shadow of the Eiffel tower, a play that involves every aspect of the human soul - from togetherness to massacre - is being unfolded…

‘’Blue is a feeling and a time and a memory. Blue is distance and nearness and touch.’’

This is a tale told in blue. The sacred colour of divinity, spirituality and tranquility. It is a story of the quest for peace of mind and truth. For the things that should have happened and the things that did and made the world collapse. A tailor who survived the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, an artist who wanted to make a difference, a collector who loved a blue-eyed girl. This is a fable of Montmartre and the colours that make our lives worth living. A legend for St Rita, the saint of the impossible, St Sebastian and St Irene, and St Joseph of Cupertino. The celestial is united with the mortal. It is a story about the power of Art as Van Gogh’s Starry Night mirrors the nostalgia and serenity of a world of make-believe, a world that awakens the need to understand that there is more to life than birth and death.

‘’There were stories that came after they were gone. Stories too cruel to be true. Except that when the war was over what could not be true was proven to be true. So many men and women and children, all of them disappeared. Nothing of them to say prayers ever, nothing but blue smoke adrift in the Heavens.’’

Human beings created moments of divine beauty. But many creatures that do not deserve to be called ‘’humans’’ or even ‘’beings’’ created the Holocaust. On 22 June 1940, Marshal Pétain agreed to ‘’cleanse’’ his country of all the ‘’undesirables’’, obeying to Germany’s ‘’rules’’. When all the windows in the Street of Tailors were broken, when all the atrocities committed by the Nazi monsters and their filthy allies and collaborators started taking place, there were no angels’ feathers to help. Everyone looked the other way, living in their own blue dream, believing in evil blue lies.

‘’God is here. Stand well back or burn.’’

Through heartbreaking and shocking moments, during an uncertain summer echoing the flight of the sparrows, in a world that is being blinded by blue lies, Douglas Bruton creates a modern masterpiece.

‘’And in the end we are the voices of the dead, all voices they have, we who live and love and laugh. We are the guardians of their truth and even in what we invent there should be truth.’’

Many thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (mehr)