Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime

Kathryn Harrison

Ultimately, Blue Arabesque isn’t a memoir so much as it is a paean to the act of seeing, celebrating our capacity to be transformed by the truths art holds, recognizing them as . . . holy. “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” John Berger writes in Ways of Seeing. On Photography, by Susan Sontag, identifies a “heroism of vision” and finds “everyday life apotheosized” in image. Patricia Hampl’s determination to occupy the space between the eye and its object and her success at articulating the mysterious transactions therein grants her authority among writers like Berger and Sontag, who not only sit and stare but see. Read Blue Arabesque and you too might mistake — or exchange — art museums for churches.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

In this discursive and absorbing interdisciplinary work, Hampl (A Romantic Education) explores the artistic life from an impressively diverse number of perspectives. Her starting place is Matisse's Woman Before an Aquarium, a painting that, to her, represents the languid, inward-looking life of the mind that leads to great art. From this image, Hampl sets off on an intellectual journey that leads her from Matisse's odalisques to those of Delacroix and Ingres, then outward to the larger notions of orientalism and exoticism that pervade such works. The pleasure of reading this book comes from following Hampl as she skips swiftly from one subject to another while maintaining a perfect consistency of tone and theme. In one particularly illuminating sequence, Hampl discusses the career of Jerome Hill, a documentary filmmaker from her hometown of St. Paul, Minn., who chronicled the minutiae of his life in his final film; the hometown connection allows Hampl to explore aspects of her own life as well. Whether discussing the journals of Katherine Mansfield or the harems of the 18th century, Hampl proves to be an authoritative and beguiling guide to the joys of leisure and the intellect. (Nov.) Copyright 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Booklist (starred)

"Hampl''s memoirs of discovery are exhilarating...Hampl does with words what Matisse does with line and color."

Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Whether discussing the journals of Katherine Mansfield or the harems of the 18th century, Hampl proves to be an authoritative and beguiling guide to the joys of leisure and the intellect."

Library Journal

"It is Hampl's insight and humor that make this gem worth consideration."

Entertainment Weekly

"[A] sinuous meditation on artistic inspiration..." (A-, EW Pick)

New York Times Book Review

"Ultimately, Blue Arabesque isn''t a memoir so much as it is a paean to the act of seeing, celebrating our capacity to be transformed by the truths art holds, recognizing them as holy...Patricia Hampl''s determination to occupy the space between the eye and its object and her success at articulating the mysterious transactions therein grants her authority among writers like Berger and Sontag, who not only sit and stare but see. Read ''Blue Arabesque'' and you too might mistake --or exchange -- art museums for churches."

LA Times

"Blue Arabesque is part of a rich but underappreciated sub-genre of nonfiction, a hybrid of art crticism and memoir...Here Patricia Hampl is true to her belief that ''[a] painting must depict the act of seeing, not the object seen.'' She illuminates and distinguishes among the many ways we apprehend our surroundings -- the gaze and the glimpse, seeing and sightseeing, the insolent leer and the clear-eyed observation. In so doing, she exercises precisely the visual discernment from which she once felt hopelessly alienated."

America

"Much is left for the reader to consider and pursue after reading this joy-filled and intriguing book."

The Plain Dealer

"In her early poem Woman Before an Aquarium - yes, it''s about the painting - Hampl writes: ''A mature woman always wants to be a mermaid.'' Hampl achieves just such a metamorphosis here, swimming gracefully through the tricky currents of art and history, biography and memoir. Singing yet another beguiling verse of her career''s lovely song."

Library Journal

In this personal essay, Hampl (A Romantic Education) explains that, as an English major, her career goal was to be left alone to read an endless novel while observing and musing about the world. After graduation, en route to meet a friend for lunch in an art museum cafeteria, Hampl saw the Henri Matisse painting Woman Before an Aquarium, which depicts an aloof woman gazing at a goldfish in a bowl. Hampl's admiration of the piece sparked her quest to examine art, literature, and leisure. Within this framework, she entwines her thoughts on the stories of Katherine Mansfield, the artworks of Matisse, the poetry of Rumi, and more. She examines cloisters and harems, women and leisure, tourism and travel, and visual arts and the printed word. It is Hampl's insight and humor that make this gem worth consideration. Recommended for academic libraries.-Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas Cty., North Pinellas Park, FL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Charmed in youth by a Matisse at the Art Institute of Chicago, a memoirist (I Could Tell You Stories, 1999, etc.) later pursues the painter's story and discovers more of her own. Hampl, poet and professor (English/Univ. of Minnesota), has crafted an emotional memoir that begins in 1972, when she first saw the painting, Woman Before an Aquarium. She acknowledges that at the time, she had very little knowledge of the artist or of painting. (She amuses with some sentences about her elementary-school art-class clumsiness.) But something about the serenity of the painting caught her eye, and, later, her imagination; before long, her curiosity was leading her through worlds her blindness had hidden from her. She views the artist's work in museums around the world; she visits the sites where he lived; on the Riviera, she talks to an ancient nun who knew him at the end of his life. Hampl uses Matisse's story (and his fondness for the odalisque) to pursue her own interest in the concept of leisure, of having the time to think, to look, to note, to create. She visits this idea in other cultures (with much attention to North Africa), sees how it worked in the lives of other writers she admired, among them her fellow St. Paulian F. Scott Fitzgerald, and most notably, her "pagan saint," Katherine Mansfield (Hampl visited the hotel room in Bandol where Mansfield wrote Bliss). There is a luscious account of a Turkish bath she once took, an experience she encapsulates with one of her lovely sentences: "This night I'm an odalisque at last, all fish, all float." Images of water and fish and blue backgrounds and bright sunlight and religion occur throughout, and when they reappear, it's as if an old andvalued friend has returned bearing another gift. An artful, affecting memoir whose lessons arrive in a delicious whisper. Agent: Marly Rusoff/Marly Rusoff & Associates