The Muralist

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 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 show more 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

Rating 4.5

When coupled with the author's engaging narrative, her expansive knowledge of the art world creates an immersive, engaging experience much like it was with "The Art Forger".

We first meet Danielle, a staff member at Christie's Art Auction gallery who comes across some early Abstract Expressionist paintings from the 40s. As she researches their background she realizes they were painted by her great aunt Alizee, who grew up in France and moved to New York early in her career. Alizee became part of a team of artists hired to paint murals by a government program. Working side by side with the likes of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Mark Rathko and others their art caused a stir due to its groundbreaking style. Across the ocean, the show more Nazi's had begun their ethnic cleansing push causing concern for Alizee's family.

Toggling back and forth from 1940 to 2015, Danielle's investigation into Alizee's history grows worrisome when she learns she'd entered mental health ward and suddenly disappears. We learn that Alizee and her colleagues become outraged with Breckinridge Long, a member of FDRs cabinet in charge of immigration. Parallel, Eleanor Roosevelt visits the muralists and is captured by Alizee's art; soon after a close relationship develops. What's fascinating is the parallel between FDR's administration and Trump's due to their 'immigrants will steal American jobs' mentality.

Learning that her family's attempts to get visas became hopeless, Alizee learns that Long undermined Congressional immigration law by going behind FDR's back. Making Eleanor aware of what she'd discovered, the First Lady's appeal to FDR fails. As the Nazi invasion deepens, and the US refuses to allow immigrants, Alizee's emotional stability wavers. When she finally has a breakdown, she's taken to the Bloom Sanitarium and disappears a couple of days later.

Well paced, each chapter provides twists and turns which when added to letters builds momentum. And with each twist, reader engagement deepens. Evocative, passionate and revealing, its immersive quality and historical relevance makes for an enjoyable reader experience.

Shapiro has a unique style, does copious research and engages with believable characters. Highly recommended for those who enjoy the world of art, history and intrigue show less

With THE MURALIST. B. A. Shapiro brings us back to the world of art, previously featured in THE ART FORGER. This time the area is Abstract Expressionism, the featured time frame is 1939-1940 and 2015, and the settings are New York and Europe. The book includes historically accurate information about some people and events, mixing them with fictional characters and situations. I frequently went to Google to see if something was real or fiction. Usually it was real.
While working at Christie’s Auction House in New York in 2015, Danielle Abrams discovers three 2' x 2' panels hidden in sleeves behind paintings by Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack. As she tries to determine their origin, against the wishes of her employer, she learns about show more an aunt, Alizée Benoit, who disappeared in 1940 and was never again heard from. Dani’s family had never mentioned her.
She learns that Alizée was a painter in New York at the time of her disappearance. Among her close friends and co-workers in the WPA/FAP projects of that time were Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. She begins to think her aunt was the painter and sets out to find if that is true and if there are more of them.
As part of the New Deal recovery program, Franklin Roosevelt began the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to give people gainful employment and help the US infrastructure at the same time. The FAP (Federal Art Program) was one of the areas included. Artists such as Rothko, Pollock and Krasner were among the hundreds, if not thousands, employed. The artwork had to meet the committees requirements as to subject matter and style, mostly were traditional. The program was cancelled suddenly in the early 1940s. The artists were fired and their works, dumped. Some were sold at four cents a pound to junkyards. Others were left of sidewalks for people to take or to go into the trash.
One of the themes of the book is explaining abstract art. Abstract Expressionism was”the first true American school of art, when we begin to export our artistic ideas to Europe instead of vice versa.” As Alizée explains to Eleanor Roosevelt, “It goes deep. Much deeper than just a picture of what we can already see. It’s not easy to make sense of–or to paint–but when you do, there’s nothing like it. It’s magical, really. Interpreting what’s going on inside....And then putting it on the outside. The real experience of living.”
The second major theme, the one that drives Dani’s search for her aunt’s story, is what was happening to the Jews who were trying to escape from Europe in the days leading up to World War II. Alizée was French and most of her family still lived there. Desperate to get them out, she tried many avenues to get visas for them to come to the United States. However, US immigration laws were very restrictive and powerful people, including Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy, wanted to keep them that way. Many of the people who did escape were very well known and had spoken out against the Third Reich. Many of them were not Jewish.
The biggest barrier was Breckinridge Long, the assistant secretary of state who oversaw visas. Against the wishes of Congress and the President, he did all he could to prevent issuing visas. (To read a memorandum, go to https://www.facinghistory.org/rescuers/breckinridge-long-memorandum) He was more interested in keeping immigrants out than helping them get it. He deliberately did not approve ninety percent of the visas allocated for refugees from German-occupied countries. Had he granted them 190,000 people would have escaped the Nazi massacre.
In addition, Congress defeated a proposed bill to allow more refugee children to come to the US. One Congressman, however, secretly rescued hundreds of Jews. If word got out, he would have been thrown out of Congress and possibly into jail. That Congressman was Lyndon B. Johnson. For more information about him and this program, go http://lyndonjohnsonandisrael.blogspot.com/
There are many books about the Holocaust. THE MURALIST looks at it from a different angle, the US reaction to saving refugees as well as explaining Abstract Expressionism. Well written and very informative. I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished reading it. show less

The Muralist is riveting, haunting and tragic till the end when it gives a ray of hope and leaves the reader satisfied. It also provides a slight insight into what goes on in the minds of the isolationist political leaders calling for ban on refugees in the present day and how it is not much different from history.

Before America enters WWII, Alizee Benoit, an American Jew is working as an artist with the Works Progress Administration and is friends with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Lee Krasner before they became popular as the early Abstract Expressionists. Here, Alizee is the one who is painting in abstract and influences each of them and their painting styles. She is also haunted by the fact that her whole family is in France, show more just before the German occupation. The roundups and arrests of Parisian Jews has begun and she is frightened. She tries her level best to secure visas for her family but is unsuccessful. She also enlists the help of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who incidentally loves and purchases her paintings) but even Eleanor cannot convince the President to allow more refugees into the country because he is running for re-election and cannot afford to go against the public sentiment and support of isolationists like Breckenridge Long, Joe Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh. Alizee even decides to paint murals with a political point instead of the original commissioned artwork that is to be installed because she comes to believe that the more people who view and understand the pain and devastation depicted in it, the more they will be able to empathize with the refugees and give them safe haven. When nothing works, she even becomes a party to an assassination attempt on a powerful politician, because she assumes naively that eliminating him would somehow quench the hatred (call it anti-Semitism) of the masses and would put a stop to the wastage of visas which in turn will save thousands of innocents. Through all this, she is also devolving, has been suffering from depersonalization and finally has a breakdown just before she goes missing forever.

Seventy five years later, Alizee’s grand-niece Dani Abrams finds some murals that come her way for appraisal and she is stunned to find them very similar in style and emotion to the only two surviving paintings of her aunt. As Alizee is an unknown commodity, Dani is forbidden by her employer from digging into her aunt’s history. But she invests all her remaining time to this endeavor, hanging onto any thread she can find and finally arriving in Paris to confront the horrors that were perpetrated on her family. This journey also becomes a turning point in her life and sets her on a path to finally fulfil her destiny to be a painter.

These two remarkable women and their lives are great to read about and especially Alizee’s struggles with her art, family and her mind are truly tragic. However, the most important theme that lingers in the mind is how politicians then and now, use their words and fear psychosis to incite a group of people to hate another and play political football with the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees. They are always going to use every tool at their disposal to gain votes and the gullible voters will get hoodwinked by the propaganda and forget the things that separates humans from other species – thinking capacity and morality. The book also serves as a reminder of the part of American history that many would want to forget – that America too was in someway complicit in the 6 million deaths, by virtue of being unresponsive.

Overall, this is a great book – an excellent amalgamation of fictional with real, history with contemporary and art with politics and also offers a unique American perspective of the Holocaust. show less

I'd say more like 3.5.

I'll blame it on Alexander Chee - once I read Queen of the Night I started holding all other fiction up to much higher standards.

This was pretty good, a "borrow" from Amazon Prime - I'd been wallowing in too much news, non-fiction, academia and social justice and needed an escape route for a bit. I loved that whole art era, and mystery, well, yes, it's always a nice way to avoid reality for a second.

It held me fairly captivated until the present-day narrator got to Paris. I pretty much surmised the end of the book on my own right then and there, and the completely predictable end came shortly, and I do mean shortly, after that, all wrapped up in a tidy little package.

As a big fan of THE ART FORGER, I couldn’t wait to get ahold of THE MURALIST. But I must say it was NOT as good as I had hoped.

One thread of the novel concerns Danielle Abrams, a young woman who works at a prestigious auction house in NYC. She is also obsessed with the history of her great-aunt Alizée Benoit, an American painter who worked for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s painting murals to decorate public buildings. In the course of her auction work, Abrams comes across several intriguing and unattributed paintings she believes may be related to her great-aunt.

The other thread to the story is Benoit (a fictional character) herself. She was one of a number of artists involved in the WPA work. Others you meet in the show more novel include Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Between Abrams and Benoit, Benoit’s was the more interesting story.

In addition to hanging out with her fellow artists, Benoit's tale involves her increasingly panicked efforts to get her Jewish relatives safely out of Nazi-occupied territory, in advance of World War II. As well as the impact her growing fears have on her psyche and her work. Eleanor Roosevelt and Breckinridge Long (a former assistant Secretary of State infamous for limiting the number of people granted visas to the US) make appearances. As do several activist organizations working to get refugees out of Europe. There’s also a brief mention of two leading pacifists of the era - Joseph Kennedy Sr. And Charles Lindbergh.

Danielle’s unraveling of her aunt’s dramatic story should have been a page turner. But some how it wasn’t. It was just OK. Certainly worth reading to learn a bit about the artists of the WPA. But not the grabber I expected. show less

I didn't like this novel as much as The Art Forger, perhaps because there was less about art and more tragedy. I have read a lot of holocaust literature in my life and personally right now was just not the time for that sadness. However, the writing is beautiful and the story is interesting. If I were in a different mood I might have liked it much more. The most interesting part for me was the relationship between the painter and Eleanor Roosevelt.