B. A. Shapiro

3.5***

Claire Roth is an aspiring artist who is making a living (just) by painting reproductions of old masters. And then she’s approached with an opportunity she cannot resist. A Degas painting is delivered to her studio, along with all the tools she’ll need to reproduce it … well, to actually forge the painting. In return she’ll not only be paid handsomely, but she’ll get her own show at Boston’s most prestigious gallery. But as she begins to study the original in preparation show more for painting the forgery, she makes a startling discovery.

Set against the backdrop of the infamous art theft at the Isabella Stewart Garner Museum in Boston – still the largest unsolved art heist in history – this is a marvelously intricate story. My feelings about Claire kept changing as I learned more of her backstory, and saw how vulnerable she was to being manipulated by unscrupulous men in a position of power. And then again, how could she be so stupid?!

Despite wanting to slap Claire silly a few times, I was engaged from beginning to end and Shapiro kept me turning pages to see what would happen next. show less

The Art Forger" by B.A. Shapiro was quite a bit more than I expected. Set in Boston, it explores the world of fine art, including the evaluation of paintings and the politics of gallery shows. It also includes references to the $500 million dollar art theft at the Gardner Museum some 20 plus years prior to the events of this story.

The protagonist is Claire Roth, a young artist who has recently received a masters degree and is looking to make a name for herself with her painting. show more Unfortunately, her former lover was Isaac Cullion, former teacher, and the critics golden boy. When Isaac was creatively blocked, Caire painted a picture for him called "4D," depicting time as a river. The critics loved it, and piled a multitude of praise on Isaac. On the surface, this would appear to be a good thing. However, Isaac became more and more distant and finally could no longer look at her without the guilt for his deception eating him away. Able to stand it no longer, Isaac broke it off with Claire. Feeling like the proverbial woman scorned, Claire went to the museum housing 4D and told the director that she had in fact painted the work being attributed to Isaac Cullion. After a series of tests and comparisons, it was determined that Isaac was indeed the painter of record (although the finding was not unanimous and there were other factors involved.) Claire was dubbed 'the great pretender' and was blacklisted from every major museum.

Fast forward three years. Claire is still painting, although still not able to show or sell any of her work. To pay the bills, she paints for online reproductions.com, or repro for short. Repro had sent her to classes where she learned how to paint high quality reproductions. She even became certified in Degas reproductions. Then one day in walks Aiden Markell, owner of the famous Markell G gallery and former broker for Isaac Cullion. He had a proposal for her, although he would not give out all the details until she agreed, which she eventually did. Markell had somehow obtained the original Degas painting "After the Bath," which was one of the paintings stolen from the Gardner museum. He was to pay Claire $50,000 and give her work a private show in his gallery if she would paint a copy of 'After the Bath.' The money was nice, but the real incentive was the private show where she could showcase her work and talent in order to make a name for herself (other than the great pretender.)

When Markell dropped his original off, Claire had a gut feeling that something was wrong. The painting just did not look like Degas' other works. As she looked more carefully and performed what non-invasive tests she could, she finally determined that Markell's painting, the one that had hung in the Gardner museum for nearly 100 years before its theft, was indeed a forgery. But who could she tell? Who would believe the great pretender? And besides, how could she tell anyone without revealing she was in possession of stolen goods? So she finished her copy, collected her $50,000, and prepared for her one woman show at Markell G's. Aiden, for his part, was to sell Claire's copy and anonymously return the original (which was really a fake unbeknownst to him) to the Gardner. However, the man Markell sold Claire's copy to was arrested, and Claire became worried that she and Aiden, with whom she had become romantically involved, would not be far behind.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I learned that artists see the world differently than I do, and that neither is any more correct than the other. Yet for a short time, I was allowed a peek into their world, to see how they view this world and what things are important to them. I also learned way more about art forgery than I will ever need to know, since I can't even draw a straight line let alone paint a masterpiece. This is not the typical 'who done it,' but instead more like 'where is it.' I also really felt for Claire as she, despite her wonderful talent, seemed to make one mistake after another. But that is what makes these novels seem real to me, because real people do make mistakes, sometimes the same one over and over again. As I said earlier, this is a different type of mystery, but variety is the spice of life. show less

The mid-century American abstract expressionist artists may not be my forté in terms of style, but Shapiro’s novel was so engaging that I couldn’t put it down. The book weaves together two intertwined narratives, following a (very fictional) member of the artistic group during the late 1930s and her grand-niece, who is an art appraiser/researcher for Christie’s auction house. The modern storyline was interesting and would easily appeal to the genealogist crowd, who would revel in the show more historical mystery that Danielle is trying to uncover, but what got me was the historical narrative. Shapiro paints a vivid portrait of New York during the late 1930s, covering politics, social unrest, and the artistic movements that were slowly coming to be known in the new American schools of thought through her characters and scenes. The events precluding and during World War II have been trotted out ad nauseum at this point in the historical fiction market, so her focus on the American perspective leant this novel a fresh breath. The carefully written protagonist, Alizée Benoit, provides further tension to the narrative, as she is firmly entrenched in her life in New York as an artist, but hears the growing clarion of war in Europe far more acutely than her American friends, since she still has a number of Jewish family members in France. As grand-niece Danielle explores Alizée’s story we are frustrated alongside her, knowing that there is more to discover but that much of history (unless carefully documented) can and is lost to time, but thankfully Shapiro concludes the story with some carefully placed accidental discoveries that wrap things up neatly by the final pages. Alizée Benoit may be a fictional creation, as is her story, but it gives us an interesting view into the past, and opens up some questions about the gaps in the historical record that I think are definitely worth exploring! show less

Maybe it's my fascination with forgeries. Maybe's it's that the book is set in Boston, right near where I lived for several years. I'm sure it's partly both of those things, but I'm also sure that much of why I absolutely loved B. A. Shapiro's debut novel The Art Forger (Algonquin Books, 2012) is that it's just a good book.

Claire Roth, a down-on-her-luck artist stuck doing reproduction work to make ends (sort of) meet, is surprised one day when a high-end Newbury Street gallery owner shows show more up and asks her to create a copy of a masterpiece to order. But this is not just any masterpiece: he asks Claire to create a copy of a Degas painting which she immediately recognizes as one stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the famous 1990 heist. Shapiro takes this basic plot and makes an absolutely wonderful tale of it, weaving in layer after layer of deceit, confusion, and historical detective work.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Claire's checkered past in the art world, delve into the dark underbelly of the art market and explore what might have been behind the Gardner thefts, and also take a flight of fancy back to the days of Mrs. Jack herself.

I had to pace myself a bit so that I didn't zoom through this one all in one go. Shapiro clearly enjoyed the research process, and besides just being a good story, the novel also provides a readable take on just what forgery means and about the power of art and story more generally.

Highly recommended. show less