New novels draw inspiration from visual art and artists

Several new novels this summer are directly inspired by visual art and artists. Alex Hyde's 'Exhibition' uses Tracey Emin's early monoprints as a source, set during the YBA era of 1990s London. Phil Melanson's 'Florenzer' follows a young Leonardo da Vinci in 15th-century Florence. Lisa Rochon's 'The Paris Thief' involves safeguarding the Mona Lisa during Nazi occupation. Dave Eggers's 'Contrapposto' traces two artist friends from adolescence to old age. Rebecca Birrell's debut 'Venus, Vanishing' features a young Jewish painter in 1930s Berlin. Birrell, an art historian and curator, created a fictional composite figure named Hannah after struggling to write non-fiction about lost Jewish women artists like Charlotte Salomon and Lotte Laserstein. Hyde avoided using artist biographies, instead drawing on the cultural zeitgeist of Cool Britannia. Her novel explores the relationship between a photographer and a painter, interrogating photography as capture. Hyde also looked at works by Sarah Lucas, George Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Sally Mann, and read Susan Sontag. Both novels question the line between muse and subject, collaboration and ownership.