Customer Reviews

Pluche or The love of art

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This is a book every person should have on their shelf for those times when nothing seems to matter or all the important things have lost their importance.

Pluche is an artist who realizes he has hit one of those non-creative spells that happen to us all. For him, it means he is not producing his livelihood, paintings. He recognizes the symptoms and knows there's nothing to do but wait it out and see what happens on the other side.

What happens in the meantime is that he emerges from his passion and has a spell of enjoying other parts of life and the people in it. His spirit is such that he throws himself into whatever his fate brings along.

What happens when the dry spell ends and the paint and canvas beckon him again? His hiatus into the world of friends and family and everyday adventure serve him well until next time.

This novel is one of my very favorite pieces of writing. It talks of passion for art and it talks of commercialism in art. Pluche is a moderately successful painter that lives in the shadow of his brother-in-law that is an enormously successful, very commercial, painter. Pluche is not jealous, but he has distain for his brother-in-law's work. One of my favorite quotes from the books is when Pluche is referring to his brother-in-law he says: "To him time is money, but for me, money is time." For this artist (Pluche) the passion to paint is what is most important and having money gives the artist freedom and time to paint more without having to compromise his ideals to put food on his table. As another that reviewed this book stated, it is a journey following Pluche through a period that he feels that his art is stagnating and how he occupies his mind with friends, family and his mistress. In the course of this book Mssr. Dutourd gives very insightful views as to what it really is to be an artist.
This novel was written over 50 years ago and I had the pleasure of first reading it about 30 years ago and I have recommended it to many of my artist colleagues and students. It is a beautiful book and story and is as relevant now as it was when it was first written.