Thursday, February 17, 2011

Next pick

"An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter" by Cesar Aira

Part travelogue, part meditation on art, this brief, increasingly riveting fictionalized history by Argentinean author Aira (How I Became a Nun) reinvents German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas's ill-fated 1837 South American journey. Rugendas, a genre painter influenced by naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, first recorded the "exotic" landscape of the New World in the early 1820s and had early success with the illustrated Picturesque Voyage Through Brazil (1827). Aira dwells on Rugendas's disastrous second journey to South America, when the artist had hoped to penetrate the immense plains of Argentina.
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6 comments:

  1. ErinFebruary 17, 2011 at 12:33 PM

    By the way, I'm a little behind on reading, cl. I will get your pick finished tonight!

    ReplyDelete
  2. kcFebruary 17, 2011 at 1:13 PM

    Argentinos! Argentinos!

    (yay)

    ReplyDelete
  3. clFebruary 18, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    Looks very interesting, Erin!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ErinMarch 17, 2011 at 3:16 PM

    Everybody ready for this one?

    ReplyDelete
  5. kcMarch 17, 2011 at 4:28 PM

    I'll be done tonight!

    ReplyDelete
  6. ShanxiMarch 17, 2011 at 6:33 PM

    Feel free to start without me. I'm at the ACES conference but will be back next week!

    ReplyDelete

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