Paint it Blue

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We wonder what they’re thinking, so we ask Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. And you, Picasso, what are you really like? Vincent van Gogh, please tell us more about your agony and inspiration. We must also learn about distinguished women – Paula Modersohn-Becker, Séraphine Louis, Lee Krasner, Diane Arbus, and others. I know they’ll tell us. So will expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirschner and Otto Dix. African American artists are certainly forthcoming. Charles White takes us inside his homes, and William H. Johnson invites us into his mind, a stimulating but often unsafe place. And other painters from Europe and the United States – what are they feeling? We find out as they Paint It Blue.

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Book Excerpt

In the Blue House

It can’t be too late. This is a meeting so compelling and mandatory that all rules, technicalities, and encumbrances must be ignored. It doesn’t matter they are dead. It doesn’t matter they never knew each other. It doesn’t matter they were married. It matters only that the proper time be chosen, a common instant that allows both to be decently pubescent and artistically aware. It must as well be long before dissipation and obscene fate ravaged their bodies and eviscerated their souls. The moment, indeed, must be entirely propitious when Papa comes to Frida’s house.

It’s a blue house, and Frida was born there and she will die there. She will always be there. It’s her house and she’s searching for another woman who’s been sleeping with Diego. The intruder’s healthy and hot and new, and Diego’s been pounding her with three hundred passionate pounds, and every thrust fractures Frida’s bones. But Frida can’t find her. The other woman is not in the blue house. She’s must be somewhere with Diego right now, and Frida can hear everything and wants to kill them both. Maybe more she wants Diego to kill her. She wants him to stab her into oblivion. She certainly wants something. She must absolutely have something, but it might not be revenge or the oblivion of alcohol and drugs, which won’t suppress her pain.

No, there must be something else. There must be something better. There must be something to help her forget all this, and it must relieve her right away. She doesn’t know what it could be. She can’t imagine how to escape. She doesn’t know how to get out of the Blue Prison. But today she does not need to. Today Papa is standing at the door, knocking. The servants are not there. Frida is alone, wearing a Tehuana dress long to the floor. She opens the door and looks at Papa. He is strong and brown and his mustache makes him look like Gable. The poet MacLeish has said oxygen is sucked from a room when Papa enters. He’s in the Blue House and Frida sighs.

She knows she can have him. She can have almost any man or woman she wants, for awhile. Language is certainly not a problem. Papa speaks Spanish. Frida speaks English. Papa’s more Latin than Frida feels Anglo. They talk Spanish, and are funny and flirtatious in the relaxed Latin way. Frida is delighted. So is Papa. This is good for him, too. He is tired of his second wife. He doesn’t want her anymore just as he had not wanted his first wife anymore. He has also gotten tired of his first blond girlfriend, a Grace Kelly twenty years before the real one. Actually, Papa is not so much tired of the blonde. He is tired she’s so beautiful and rich he can’t have her. He can have her sometimes, but he can’t really have her. He doesn’t need her. Frida is standing before him in her Tehuana dress.

(This story continues…)

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Book Reviews

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Net Galley Review

Susan D.

February 27, 2021

This is the first time that I have read a book by George Thomas Clark and it is like nothing I have ever read before. The idea of writing about conversations between famous artists (dead or living) is unique, cerebral and intriguing. The lives, homes and inspiration of an artist’s world becomes alive and palpable throughout each short story. Tapping into the minds of Renoir, Norman Rockwell, Otto Dix, Frieda Kahlo & Diego Rivera, Lee Krasner, Van Gogh and Picasso represents the vast array of personalities, styles and influences on the art world that kept me wanting more as the pages were turned.

This is a beautiful way to look at art, its history and the brilliant minds and creative hands that created it. George Thomas Clark has shed a new light on each artist and it shines brilliantly. I highly recommend this book and would like to thank the author, NetGalley and Books Go Social for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.

Amazon Review

Grady Harp

Oh to be a fly on the wall….

May 6, 2015

Controversial George Thomas Clark usually challenges our sense of perception about politics and historical figures as well as contemporary ones – Death in the Ring, The Bold Investor, Hitler Here, Obama on Edge, and Echoes from Saddam Hussein. He currently teaches English as a Second Language for adults in California, and has been a material handler, salesman, newspaper correspondent, and the publisher of a monthly tabloid of features and columns. In this current book he gives his capacious imagination full range and enters the minds of artists both dead and living and allows us to hear their perceptions of not only their work but also that of their compatriots and the history of art and styles of that time in which they lived.

How he came up with this idea is a puzzle: he obviously is an art lover and a knowledgeable art historian, but he also displays insights into the minds of creative people based as much on the paintings he sees as on his rather deep knowledge of their lives.

The results: a series of short stories, each about a particular figure who may or may not introduce the other people in their life cast, and the conversations are lively, funny, touching, and perceptive. From Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Picasso, van Gogh, to Paula Modersohn-Becker, Séraphine Louis, Lee Krasner, Diane Arbus, and on to Ernst Ludwig Kirschner, Otto Dix, Charles White, William H. Johnson, Renoir, Thiebaud, Norman Rockwell, Thomas Eakins (my favorite – because it so blatantly excludes the artist’s proclivity for young men!) and others.

This is a course in art history, the psychology of the artistic temperament, and a parody of sorts. George Thomas Clarke simply writes VERY well.

Amazon Review

Peter Wood

Painters Exposed As Never Before!

April 8, 2015

Who is your favorite artist–Picasso? Vincent Van Gogh? Jackson Pollock? Frida? Gauguin? Author George Thomas Clark dares to do the impossible–trespass into the minds of these great painters, (and many more), to create verbal self-portraits, musings, introspections and imaginary dialogue.Clark ignites the reader’s imagination with his unique literary ploy. Particularly of interest to this reviewer were chapters devoted to the primitive artist, Mickey Walker, a former boxing champion; the brilliant mind of Norman Rockwell, the ingenuity of Pollock, and the current work of Wayne Thiebaud. Thank you for a wonderful book!

Goodreads Review

Charlie

April 10, 2015

This is an off the wall type of book. Whimsical, corny, weird, funny, well, you name it it’s all there in this book about Artists/painters talking to each other, oh, did I say they are dead too? The book also includes current celebrities and Obama as well. AND no they are not all dead.

I particularly enjoyed reading about Thomas Kinkade the painter. That’s just me I guess.
Last but not least —- you don’t want to take this book too seriously – it could get your mind out of sorts – it’s fiction and one heck of a read.

Amazon Review

Sctrppl

A must-read!

May 31, 2015

Amazing! Worth all 5 stars!

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