Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B007R071ZI | Format: EPUB
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art Description
It is the color of the Virgin Mary's cloak, a dazzling pigment desired by artists, an exquisite hue infused with danger, adventure, and perhaps even the supernatural. It is... Sacr? Bleu.
In July 1890, Vincent van Gogh went into a cornfield and shot himself. Or did he? Why would an artist at the height of his creative powers attempt to take his life... and then walk a mile to a doctor's house for help? Who was the crooked little "color man" Vincent had claimed was stalking him across France? And why had the painter recently become deathly afraid of a certain shade of blue?
These are just a few of the questions confronting Vincent's friends - baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard and bon vivant Henri Toulouse-Lautrec - who vow to discover the truth of van Gogh's untimely death. Their quest will lead them on a surreal odyssey and brothel-crawl deep into the art world of late 19th century Paris.
Oh la la, quelle surprise, and zut alors! A delectable confection of intrigue, passion, and art history - with cancan girls, baguettes, and fine French cognac thrown in for good measure - Sacre Bleu is another masterpiece of wit and wonder from the one, the only, Christopher Moore.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 11 hours and 40 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Audible.com Release Date: April 3, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007R071ZI
That's how Christopher Moore characterizes Sacré Bleu. It's also a mystery, a comedy and a dizzying, dazzling trip through the art world of fin-de-siecle Paris.
I read somewhere that every single one of Christopher Moore's books has been optioned but not one has ever made it to film. I think it must be because producers eventually realize that it's just too much of a challenge to translate the sheer lunacy and demented sweetness of Moore's books to the screen.
The book begins on the day of Vincent Van Gogh's death in Auvers, a village near Paris. Vincent has gone to a crossroads to paint. The history is that Van Gogh there shot himself, then walked a mile to the home of his doctor to seek treatment. Moore wondered if it made any sense that an artist at the height of his powers, even one as tormented as Van Gogh, would shoot himself at that point. And then, why would he walk a mile to his doctor's place rather than just lie down and die? Moore appoints baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard, and famed painter and libertine Henri Toulouse-Lautrec as his alter-ego detectives to pursue the answer to this puzzle. The pursuit involves Renoir, Manet, Monet, Whistler, Pissarro, Gaugin, Seurat, a menacing character called the Colorman, the artists' muses, a few side trips through time and space, and lots and lots about the color blue.
It's been a long time since I read a book in one afternoon, but once I started reading, I couldn't stop. Now, here I sit with my eyes burning and my head filled with whirling images of the adventures of the naive young Lucien and his usually drunk and lubricious but always endearing friend, Toulouse-Lautrec.
Set primarily in Montmartre, Paris in the 1890s, this is a book about artists, muses and the color blue. Of course, being written by Christopher Moore, you can expect everything to be skewed to the absurd, a bit bawdy, irreverent and playful. Moore inhabits his book with figures real (Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet and Renoir) and unreal (Bleu--a body-jumping muse, the Colorman--a gnome who can create the otherwordly shade of blue known as Scare Bleu, and Lucien Lessard, a baker/painter who is obsessed with Juliette).
While reading, I was always curious about what was real and what wasn't. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book for me was Moore's Afterword ("So, Now You've Ruined Art), which provided a breakdown of what was based on fact and what wasn't. Surprisingly, quite a bit of "realness" snuck into a book that is quite fanciful and absurd. It was interesting to learn that Monet really did paint his wife Camille on her deathbed, the puzzling circumstances of Vincent Van Gogh's death, and the ungodly amount of artists who died of syphilis. Another aspect of the book that I enjoyed were the images of the real paintings that are discussed and play a role in the book. I thought it was an ingenious way to make art history come alive in a way that would even seem palatable to ... say ... teenage boys.
However, I just didn't fall in love with the book (despite my deep and abiding adoration of several of Moore's other books). Part of it was the goofy sophomoric humor that runs throughout the book (I guess boobie and penis jokes just don't do it for me) and the other part was the fractured nature of the tale that just didn't draw me in.
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