Customer Reviews

Pictures at an Exhibition

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Pictures at an Exhibition is the story of the Berenzon family, as told through the eyes of son Max. Max's father Daniel is one of the premiere art dealers in Paris. He sells the works of their next-door neighbor, Pablo Picasso, and has an exclusive contract with Henri Matisse. Works by Sisley, Degas, Lautrec, Manet, and too many others to name pass through the Berenzon Gallery. They are a wealthy and respected family. And while they're not religious in the least, like many of the art dealers of the time, they are Jewish.

Max was raised surrounded by great works of art. Every evening, his father would drill him on memorizing each work from exhibitions of the past. Max has always assumed that he would one day inherit the gallery. However, when Max is a teenager, Daniel informs him that he can't "with good conscience" pass the gallery down to him. Daniel doesn't believe Max has the right abilities and temperament to fill the role. It would be an understatement to say that Max has some "daddy issues."

So, as the story gets going in 1939, nineteen-year-old Max is studying to be a doctor. His father has just taken on the latest in a series of apprentices. Max typically resents these interlopers, but Rose Clément is different. She is beautiful, independent, awe-inspiring. It is love at first sight. It's not long before a relationship of sorts begins between Max and Rose. But no matter how many ways Max shows his love for her, Rose clings to her independence. Their romance, the business of the gallery, and everything else are put on hold with the outbreak of the war.

Rose is working furiously with the staff at the Louvre to safeguard the artworks. Daniel puts 250 of his most valuable paintings in the vault at the Chase Bank. More are hidden in a secret basement room in the gallery. Max and his parents flee the city and hide in the countryside. They stay away from Paris for several years, and we don't see them again until their return in 1944. Someone else is living in their house. The gallery is a wreck, and all the artwork has been found and stolen. Likewise, the art that was in Chase Bank is gone. Despite the fact that both Max and Daniel were born in France, they have been stripped of their citizenship. They have few rights, and almost no recourse for the injustices that have befallen their family. Their wealth is gone. Everything they had is gone.

Daniel decides to cut his losses and return to his wife in the country. Max, perhaps in an attempt to finally win his father's respect, stays in a wholly changed Paris to seek out their artwork through channels of varying legitimacy. It is Max's quest to find Rose, the art, and most of all himself that encompass the latter two thirds of the novel. It shouldn't come as a shock to any reader that it's a sad and difficult story.

I had a really conflicted response to this novel. In part, I'm sure, it was because of my own Jewish heritage. I'm no more religious than the characters in this book, but seriously, has anyone ever written a novel where the Jews lived happily ever after? It just gets depressing after a while. So, it would be accurate to say I had an emotional response to the book.

Intellectually, I loved every bit of this novel that was about the art. Whether it was ruminations on the works themselves, gossip about the artists, or details of how the French protected their treasures, I thought it was absolutely fascinating. Houghteling did a great job of providing an insiders view of a fascinating time in the art world.

I had a more difficult time relating to the main characters. At one point, Max says to Rose, "I couldn't understand you less." Bravo, Max, I thought. I shared his sentiment. But the truth is, I had a difficult time with Max, too. I don't think they were badly-drawn or unrealistic characters, just people that I had little in common with or understanding of. It made it a bit difficult to care that much about them or root for their romance.

There's an interesting author's note at the end of this novel. I was truly surprised by how much of the book came straight from the historical research. That went a ways towards explaining why parts of the novel were bogged down in details. All and all, even thought I wasn't fully invested in the character's stories, I was interested in learning about the time and place in which they lived. I'd recommend Pictures at an Exhibition for readers interested in art, history, or Jewish literature.

Sara Houghteling successfully recreates the Paris art world of World War II in "Pictures at an Exhibition." As seen through the eyes and perceptions of Max Berenzon, the son of a successful gallery owner, it is a grim, gray world. The story seems to work on two levels: the Berenzon family, their lack of emotional communication, their family secrets, and the role of art in their lives - and then the larger picture - Paris under the Occupation and the fate of its Jews. It is the second aspect that is the most compelling.

Max's personal story is so understated, so emotionless, that it was difficult for this reader to be too involved. Briefly, Max is a son unsure of his father's love; he is pursuing a medical degree when he'd rather work in his father's gallery; he is in love with his father's assistant and possible mistress Rose; he is unfocused and seems to careen blindly through life. Then, Paris is occupied by the Germans and the Jewish Berenzons go into hiding. Those war years aren't the focus of the story, so it picks up again when the Berenzon pere and fil return to find the gallery an empty shell and their paintings gone. Max's search for the missing works gives the reader a view of just how difficult it was for those whose possessions had been `liberated' to reclaim them. But it is the depiction of postwar Paris that is more compelling.

Far more interesting than Max's story is the recounting of the art works themselves: the lengths the French went to protect these valuable possessions and the greed that flouishes even today as the descendants of the rightful owners are unable to claim their possessions. The recounting of the secret transport of 'The Wreck of the Medusa' and the 'Victory of Samothrace' were, for me, the highpoints of the novel.

The strong points of `Pictures at an Exhibition' are the author's prose style and the fascinating story of the `missing' art works. However, the human side of the story is far less riveting.

"Pictures at an Exhibition Pictures at an Exhibition" is Sara Houghteling's debut novel. Set in France just before, during and after World War II, the plot follows Max Berenzon as he attempts to recover his family's lost art work, which was looted by the Nazis.

No plot spoilers from me. This story was well researched, both in the art and war history, but some how failed to reach it's full potential. There are several sub-plots running through the book that never get fully explored, at least as deeply as I would have liked.

This book will likely be appreciated more by fans of historical fiction and, perhaps art lovers, but it really didn't draw me in.

Seriously, stop splitting hairs. It's facinating. It's lovely. It's about art and major artists. It's about the looting of art from Parisian Jews. It's about art dealers and their shady world post WWII. It's about provenance. Today we go to museums and see art that is not with it's rightful owners. Perhaps those owners perished in camps. It's about family, love, and passion for greatness. READ IT.

I found the storyline interesting, but the book does not grip you. It was hard wading through the plots and subplots. It does cover an interesting and relatively unknown history of how the art world fared during the Nazi invastion. However, maybe it's must me, I've read too many WWII novels, and this one does not drag me into the story.

Post World War II, a young coming-of-age Jewish man obsessively hunts for the art looted by Nazi's from his father's art gallery. Family tragedies and the desire to protect have obscured the love and respect of a father for his son. Is his search for the art the same as the search for his manhood and his father's love and respect? In his quest, he almost looses himself and what is really important. And then there is the love story.

How can the transcendence of art and love, and cold-blooded uncaring greed come from the same species. You can destroy yourself trying to get what is rightfully yours, what beautiful and worth having, what is part of your soul and identity, people can take it from you and not care. Human are vultures. They take advantage of the weak then put their righteous indignation uniforms on and treat you like your are the one with the problem. They aren't any different today. Just try getting what your insurance policy says is rightfully yours from the insurance companies. Listen to the old Jewish men in the story. They know what is important.

The writing is lucid and straightforward. The story telling haunting and heart breaking. The theme is universal.

Much appreciated is the explanation of the history involved at the end of the book. All historical fiction should do this.

I was incredibly, and pleasantly, surprised at how well-crafted a novel 'Pictures at an Exhibition' was. The novel takes place on the eve of World War II, in Paris, just as the skies are beginning to darken. Houghteling's writing is dreamy and seems grounded in reality by the essence of its writing, and not the essence of its characters. The protagonist, Max, narrates the events of the story, but is never quite involved in the larger picture: he avoids the draft due to flat feet, and while marginalized by his art-dealing father, stills manages to come into his own. However, the events of his own life begin to mirror the events of Paris, though on a much smaller scale. My favorite paragraph of the novel occurs when Max recounts the dissolution of his romance with Rose, an apprentice at the art gallery: "A sweater I had left in her room was returned, neatly folded outside my door, along with my spare bicycle lock. It stunned me that these stupid, mute objects outlasted love. No square of yellow illuminated the courtyard. The bathwater scalded, I cracked my Cole Porter record in two, and France declared war" (p64).

My first instinct, and perhaps painfully grandiose in scope, was to see Max as a sort-of Hans Castorp character: a regular individual, tinged with affluence and pervasive mediocrity (which, one may recall, Mann attributes Castorp's mediocrity to underlying greatness in 'The Magic Mountain'). Max becomes a player - intimately known to the reader - in a scenario and situation that dwarfs his existence. Though he never literally heeds the 'call to arms' as Castorp did, he instead undergoes as much a journey of purpose and exploration through the novel. Max's humanity is effervescent and clear, he is an idealistic Romantic but also occasionally indecisive. He is believable, if an improbable, individual to be telling his story.

The writing is truly lyrical and beautiful, and (intended or not) conveys a sense of detachment from reality; as if the characters are encapsulated outside the realm of reality. Though there is romantic intimacy, there seems to be little in the way of emotional and intellectual intimacy between any of the characters; relationships develop, but there is an air of independence to each person's problems.
Houghteling's style is airy, and occasionally too flowery for comfortable reading. There are occasional situations where Houghteling seems more concerned with flaunting her artistic and critical knowledge about painters (using the characters as mouthpieces), and her choices of art can be a difficult fit. However, she so successfully taps into the role of art in creating and destroying relationships, establishing individual purpose, &c, that it is entirely forgivable.

Very, very well done.

The writer seemed to have a disconnect with the characters, the scenes and the movement of the story. She might have known what she was thinking - but didn't convey her thoughts to the reader. I found myself constantly trying to link the characters and their actions - but couldn't. It was rather like being in a maze with no map. Thankfully it ended at some point and the Author's Note explained a whole lot that the book didn't. I would suggest reading the Note before starting the book.

"Why worry about (the paintings) out there? You'll have a museum of the mind." So why is ownership of a work of art so important, important enough to demand frenzied bidding at auctions and astronomical values. For Max, the narrator of this book, it is the significance to his family of a painting by Manet that spearheads decades of postwar searching. The infamous looting of art treasures by the Nazis is an issue that remains unresolved. Family members whose lives as they knew them were ended forever, retained attachment to possessions as talismans of times long gone. At the center of this luminescent novel is Rose Clement, based on Rose Vallard, who courageously documented the fate of looted artworks in the hope of possible retrieval. Her character seemed most well defined to me, despite her disappearance for much of the book. The sections describing the efforts to mislead the Nazis and in particular the removal of the Winged Victory of Samothrace were most vivid, and I was reminded of the 1965 movie "The Train." There is a lot to recommend this book, haunting and well written.

1939. Max Berenzon is the son of one of the premier art dealers in Paris, and when his father tells him he doesn't have what it takes to inherit the business, Max doesn't know what to think or do. Max settles on med school, where he does only enough to get by. When his father hires a new assistant, the brilliant, eccentric, and beautiful Rose, Max is smitten. It's only a matter of months until the Nazis overrun France, and no one could foresee the consequences to Jewish citizens or to the art world .

When Paris is liberated nearly 5 years later, Max returns from hiding to Paris, only to discover that the family's gallery and home have been decimated. His father seems resigned, but Max instantly becomes fixated upon two goals, to find Rose and to recover the priceless artworks stolen by the occupiers. As he pursues his twin obsessions, he learns, day by day, of the enormous and incredible depravities visited by the Nazis upon the city and its population, especially the Jewish segment. And as he struggles, for the rest of his life, to reconcile what was with what is, he comes, finally, to understand his father and himself, as well as others whom he loves.

Pictures is a well-researched, insightful, illuminating novel based upon historical facts and persons. It is one thing to read a dispassionate account of these events, and another to read the same information from a personal perspective. This book is every bit as valuable as the concentration camp stories in helping to humanize the horrors of cultural warfare.