Mint Book Club

 Author

Lust for Life 

and

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Tuesday, October
20, 6 p.m.

Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him

Mia McMurray ushers readers into the Soho gallery scene as they launch a show by Jeffrey Finelli. His major piece provides the novel's title. On opening night, Finelli is hit by a taxi and dies. Demand for his pieces skyrocket, and niece Lulu becomes part of a world she never wanted to know.

Ganek portrays hangers-on, wannabes, nouveau riche, powerhouse dealers, poseurs, and artists.  Lulu becomes the darling, finding her place in this crazy scene. Mia, despite the lies and backbiting, not only survives but also finds a new path.

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling

After 500 years, the frescoed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome still attracts throngs of visitors. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling tells the story behind the painting, with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera. Pope Julius II takes it upon himself to restore the Sistine Chapel and intimidated Michelangelo into painting the ceiling. Along with technical difficulties, personality conflicts, and money troubles, Michelangelo was plagued by health problems and competition in the form of the talented young painter Raphael. Author Ross King offers an in-depth analysis of the complex historical background that led to the Sistine Chapel ceiling weaving a fascinating historical tale.

Read a review of the book.

Discussion Questions

Burning Bright

Author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier looks at poet and painter William Blake. The Kellaways arrive in London's Lambeth district during the anti-Jacobin scare of 1792. Thomas Kellaway talks his way into set design work for the circus, whose fireworks displays provide the same rallying point that the guillotine is providing in Paris. Meanwhile the youngest Kellaway boy Jem falls for poor, sexy firebrand Maggie Butterfield. Blake, who imagined heaven and hell as equally incandescent and earth as the point where the two worlds converge.

Read a review by the publisher.

Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Filippo Brunelleschi's design for the dome  in Florence remains a towering achievement of Renaissance architecture. Completed in 1436, its span of more than 140 feet exceeds St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome. The story of its creation and its brilliant but "hot-tempered" creator is told in Ross King’s delightful Brunelleschi's Dome. The story of the dome goes back to 1296 but it was only in 1420 that work began in earnest.

King weaves an engrossing tale from the political intrigue, personal jealousies, dramatic setbacks, and sheer inventive brilliance that led to the paranoid Filippo,  finally seeing his dome completed only months before his death.

Read a review of the book.

Download a copy of this month's discussion questions.

A fictional memoir of the legendary American-born beauty Virginie Gautreau, the subject of John Singer Sargent's famous 1884 painting, In portrait of Madame X. Gioia Diliberto risks debunking the most persistent mysteries in Western art history: what the model is thinking. Following in the footsteps of Girl With A Pearl Earing, though with much more historical documentation at her disposal, Diliberto gives voice to a woman whose memory rests on this single painting.

Read a review of I Am Madame X.

Download a copy of this month's discussion questions.

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

While Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer started cataloguing the art he planned to collect and the art he would destroy.

In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.

Read a review of Monuments Men.

Download a copy of this month's discussion questions.

Based on an a painting, The Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris by Gwen John, Forster's novel recounts the history of how the painting came to be and imagines its effect on the women who have owned it.

The story begins Gwen. She loses herself in a passionate affair with the sculptor Rodin, and as the years pass and his visits become less and less frequent, she does the one thing she knows best--she paints a picture that represents the woman her lover wished Gwen could be: quiet, serene, and content.

Forster gives the painting a life of its own, evoking passion, yearning, and hope in the women who possess it.

Read a review from the New York Times.

The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment and for some, a kind of alternative religion.

Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the Takashi Murakami's studios, the Basel Art Fair, Artforum magazin, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players.

Read a review, watch an interview with the author  or watch an introduction to the book.