I will have to think about this more. I'm not even sure how I should rate this book.

As I started this book I was gearing myself up to hate it; it really did not seem to appeal initially, a novel set in the New York art world about a feminist contemporary artist. I have to acknowledge, though, that Siri Hustvedt's story got me in.

The book is about Harriet Burden a middle-aged woman sick of being sidelinedand ignored by a patriarchal art world. Her art has been subsumed by the famous gallery owner that she married, and she is unversally viewed as just his wealthy widow, not an artist in her own right. To make a point, Harriet comes up with the idea of hiding her work behind male artists who act as her front, thereby demonstrating that men have it easier.

Hustvedt makes Harriet a larger than life person, both imposingly tall and also womanly. Her friends call her Harry, and Hustvedt suggests at times that Harriet's ruse is bringing out the male aspects of her personality and creating conflicts for her.

Initially Harriet hides behind a newcomer to the art world who is hailed as a prodigy and then disappears when he can't follow up his success. Her second "mask" is a performance artist who presents her work as a change of direction. Finally Harriet engages an established artist, Rune, and gets him to agree to represent her work as his. At this point her project comes undone spectacularly, with tragic results.

The pieces are all successes, but one thing that is never clear is whether Harriet might not have got the credit had she just presented the work as her own. She is convinced not, but how can she really know? Are the masks she is using to fool the art world damaging her more than others?

Hustvedt develops her story as an assembly as a series of notebooks, interviews, articles and memoirs from the various characters. Once the reader gets used to this it works quite well. However it comes unstuck at the end, leading to a tedious and down-beat ending recounted by one of the most minor characters in the novel. After getting to the novel's high point, the last 15 pages were just excruciatingly vapid and boring and I couldn't wait for it to be over. This story deserved a more dramatic and engaging ending than this. ( )

Harriet Burden’s artwork consisted of large installations that can be “experienced” by viewers. She has died, and Professor I.V. Hess is assembling an anthology about her life. This is accomplished through articles, excerpts from Harriet’s diary entries, interviews, art reviews, and written statements from people who knew her.

Harriet Burden was the wife of an art dealer and mother of two. She desired recognition for her art but is she overlooked in the New York art scene. She decided to make a point by asking three male artists, Anton, Phineas, and Rune, to agree to show her work as their own. When their shows were successful, she wrote letters under the guise of art scholar, to disclose the deception. Rune decides to engage in subterfuge of his own to beat Harriet at her own game. Harriet’s reaction sends her spiraling out of control. In this battle of tormented artists, there is no victor.

A primary theme is sexism in the art world. It is very clever and cerebral. Hustvedt is clearly an intellectual writer. This book requires the reader to recognize a number of philosophers, scientific principles, and art theories, many of which are fairly obscure. I appreciate the concept that culture and perception greatly influence art appreciation, and I generally enjoy books about art, but this one is not particularly engaging and eventually feels rather exhausting. I much prefer and recommend Hustvedt’s What I Loved.
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“No one rejoices more in revenge than women, wrote Juvenal. Women do most delight in revenge, wrote Sir Thomas Browne. Sweet is revenge, especially to women, wrote Lord Byron. And I say, I wonder why, boys. I wonder why.â€ù

I read [b:What I Loved|125502|What I Loved|Siri Hustvedt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347721158s/125502.jpg|1309881] last year and absolutely loved it. I thought I had found a new girl-crush in Siri Hustvedt, who is clearly a super-smart lady. But what should I read next? Well, The Blazing World was longlisted for the Booker Prize, was mentioned on numerous "Best of 2014" lists, and centers on that dreaded f-word: feminism. I was sold.

Harriet Burden left the New York art scene years ago, partly because she was being ignored, and partly because she became a wife and mother. After her husband's death, she decides to come back, but with a twist. Convinced that critics would be less dismissive if she were a man, Harriet enlists three male artists willing to exhibit her work as their own. After the success of the three shows, she reveals herself as the creator only to be met with disbelief. Only one of the men confirms his role; the first has disappeared and the third denies her involvement. Harriet does gain a reputation, but unfortunately not for her work.

Feminism has been getting so much flak lately, it was just nice to read a book that validated my experience as a woman. (In this case, it's a pretty privileged experience, but I can care about the underrepresentation of female artists and other women's issues. Screw y'all.) I found myself nodding my head at several points: A dinner guest disagrees with something Harriet says, but agrees with her husband when he says the same thing. A snippy critic mocks Harriet's appearance, like that has anything to do with her ability to create art. Rune, the artist who claims Harriet's work as his own, suggests she is mentally imbalanced. But The Blazing World reads like a slightly fleshed out thought experiment. I feel like plot and characters were passed over in favor of intellectual density.

Right from the "Editor's Introduction," The Blazing World is presented as an academic study on the life and times of Harriet Burden. It collects Harriet's journal entries, articles from art mags, and interviews with family, friends, and acquaintances from the art world. Even if you aren't familiar with academic reviews, this shouldn't be a real deterrent. What got to me was the namedropping of writers, philosophers, and artists on pretty much every page. Around the fifth time Søren Kierkegaard was mentioned, I went, "Uh oh." I am not versed in philosophy at all, and the footnotes just seemed to demonstrate how encyclopedic Harriet's - and by extension Hustvedt's - knowledge is. Some references I knew, some I did not, and some were definitely made up. Yeah, I suppose I could have googled all those names, but ain't nobody got time for that! What I Loved was smart without being overly cerebral.

Now I am going to stop writing this review and just start handing out copies of What I Loved. I can't say enough nice things about that book. Read that one instead. ( )

I saw that Siri Hustvedt wrote a collection of essays about perception and identity, and I think there must be a great deal of her thinking expressed by the protagonist of this novel, Harriet “Harry” Burden. Harry is an artist in New York, who also had the possible misfortune of being married to a well-known art dealer. Her husband, Felix, has refused to show her work, and consequently the New York art world knows her as the hostess of Felix’s dinner parties rather than as an artist in her own right. Both Felix and Harry are dead at the start of the novel, which is told through Harry’s journals, academic and critical writing about her, and interviews with people who knew her.

After Felix’s death, Harry undertakes a project to create and show her art using “masks”—three male artists who will show the art as if it were their own. Not only are these shows far better received than Harry’s art was when shown under her own name, vindicating her belief that she has been disregarded as an artist because she is a woman, but it gives Harry (and us) insight into how what we think and believe affects how we perceive and, perhaps even more interestingly, how her “masks” affect the art she creates.

It’s clear from the onset of the novel that the art market has difficulty believing that Harry was really the creator of the projects shown under the names of her male “masks.” Rune, the final of her “masks” who was already an established artist in his own right, refuses after all to reveal that Harry was the artist behind the work. Her relationship with him is the most complex and thought-provoking in the book, though her relationships with every character shed light on the philosophical and psychological concerns about art, perception, sex, and identity that infuse the novel.

This is very much an intellectual novel of ideas. There’s a touch of “Rashomon,” in that we see Harry’s life and work from a variety of perspectives, though strictly speaking not many of the same individual incidents from different points of view. We see the broader picture of Harry as housewife, mother, virago, mentally disturbed obsessive, lover, and ultimately brilliant artist.

The title comes from the writing of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, a 17th-century philosopher and writer, and an icon to Harry. The title became particularly resonant at the very end of the novel, when we see Harry’s magnum opus through the eyes of the distinctly unintellectual Sweet Autumn, a New Age crystal healer. This final scene made the perfect frame, and there’s nothing I appreciate more than the perfect ending to a novel of ideas. ( )