A Recent (and Fun!) Read: The Art Forger by BA Shapiro

A year and a half ago I read The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick. I'd just visited Atlanta's High Museum of Art's Dutch painters exhibit. I loved the exhibit, and the highlight was seeing the real "Girl with a Pearl Earring" as the last painting in the exhibit. I had built the book up and was so excited to read it, but was disappointed.

The Forger's Spell was a let down. Only a few parts interested me as a person who enjoys art but can only draw stick figures (my recent visit to a BYOB and paint-your-own-canvas thing produced a piece I'm not sure is worth hanging in my house).

Fast forward to this summer. I borrowed The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro from a friend, and this book has made up for the other in a sense. The book begins 25 years after the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston (right about now). A talented painter named Claire has been trying to make it as an artist and win back a good reputation after accusations of a forging a painting a few years before. To earn money to supplement her own original works, Claire is paid to paint copies of famous paintings sold as fakes online by a large retailer. When she's approached by a trusted friend from the art world with a secret project with a large paycheck, Claire struggles to make a decision that's ethical and true to herself.

While I'd still be interested to read an interesting nonfiction book about the underground world of forging the works of famous artists, and the theft at the Gardner Museum, I enjoyed this book. The Art Forger was fun fiction, and was just the right amount of art for a person like me with good pacing and a character I could understand.

It's an interesting time to be reading a book like The Art Forger, as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the U.S. Department of Justice have just released new information on the heist this month. The two men who stole some of the world's most valuable paintings are now confirmed dead, though their names haven't been released. Now the investigation to locate those paintings continues.

Here's hoping they catch the thief and someone writes a good book about how they got away with it.

To Read: The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by John Baxter

I recently complained about a book I picked up at Atlanta's High Museum's exhibit this summer of "Girl with a Pearl Earring (Vermeer) and other Dutch painters. I visited Paris on Peachtree: The Art of the Louvre's Tuileries Garden two weeks ago and picked up a book from the shop that I can't wait to get into, and I hope it will measure up to my expectations. (By the way, the exhibit's last days are now. It ends on January 19, so go if you're going.) Doesn't this book look wonderful?

Recent Read: The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick

Have you ever had really high hopes for a book and are so disappointed when that book doesn't meet your expectations? It happens.

This summer I went to Atlanta's High Museum's exhibit, "Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshaus." It featured 35 paintings by Dutch artists of centuries past including Vermeer and Rembrandt. I enjoyed it. I loved the beautiful colors and the simple lives portrayed in many of the works. Then, the last painting of the exhibit was "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and seeing it in person was fantastic.

Years ago I read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and saw the movie. It's the kind of historical fiction I just love.

Then shortly before I visited the High this summer I read the New York Times story, "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar" and was fascinated. This summer in Austria and Germany my family and I learned about the treasures Adolf Hitler and his cronies stored up during the Third Reich.

After that news story I was ready to read The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick, a book I'd bought at the exhibit this summer. I was excited about reading it on my Thanksgiving break. I didn't finish it until the day after Christmas (yes, it's completely unheard of for it to take me a month to read a book). Part of the reason is because I had a busy work life wrapping up 2013. The other reason it because I just plodded through it. It didn't hold my interest and was really a disappointment considering how I'd worked it up beforehand.

The book focused nearly entirely on the forger, Han van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who found he could make more money forging the work of the famous Dutch painters of the previous centuries than selling his own original works. Long story short, the book focused way too much, for my taste, on the specifics of how van Meegeren pulled one over on the art world and not nearly enough time talking about the Nazi party officials and their desire to get their hands on the artistic and cultural works of the countries they occupied, and how he was finally found out. Admittedly, I don't have much of a background in art but I do enjoy it. I also enjoy a good story that's told well. If it's historical nonfiction it needs to keep my interest and unfortunately this just didn't measure up.