Burnt Umber (Paperback)

by Sheldon Greene (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Green's second novel is a beautifully written account of the lives of artists caught up in turbulent times. In the waning days of World War II, GI and American artist Harry Baer takes refuge in an abandoned house and by chance discovers the sketchbook of prewar German artist Franz Marc. In Proustian fashion, the story elicits the tortured artistic life of Marc in the midst of artistic and intellectual movements prior to World War I. Green intertwines Marc's life with that of Baer, who is about to begin his own artistic odyssey. Baer, whose life is loosely based on American artist Harold Paris, moves to Paris, France, after the war and marries Aurora, a struggling intellectual who pushes him to become a star in the Left Bank galleries. Returning to the U.S. a generation later, Harry finds new challenges in Berkeley, California, especially with Karine, an African American activist, and Darah, a feminist who vies for the love he devotes to his art alone. Very beautifully written. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

1945. The bloody days of the allied invasion of Europe. A lost American soldier seeks shelter in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse and in an old trunk discovers the sketchbook an unknown artist. So begins the story of two intertwining lives, that of Franz Marc, the visionary German painter, and Harry Baer, a draftee from Cleveland, haunted by the sketchbook and the urge to make art.

Franz Marc (18801916), was an expressionist painter who, along with Kandinsky organized Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, a band of artists whose aim was nothing less than the rebirth of looking. Although Kandinsky lived to become one of the seminal figures of modern art, Franz Marc was killed in 1916. His confused sex life and his struggle to capture the mystical spirit of nature in his work are imagined here for the first time.

Harry Baer is based on the life of Harold Paris, the enigmatic California artist. Having built a reputation in the left bank of Paris, he took a semester to teach at Berkeley, and stayed on to create haunting sculpture until his early death.

Burnt Umber is a novel about art and ideas but above all the lives of two artists who struggled to express themselves while engaged in the defining moments of the 20th Century: the trenches of World War One, the liberation of the concentration camps, the intellectual turbulence of post-World War Two Paris, the social upheavals of Vietnam-era Berkeley.

Sheldon Greene ";is a born story teller,"; raves the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of one previous novel, Lost and Found (Random House, 1980), grew up in Cleveland and lives in Berkeley.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Leapfrog Press; 1st edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967952018
• ISBN-13: 978-0967952017
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,676,246 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burnt Umber, May 12, 2001

By	Lois Schwartz (Berkeley) - See all my reviews

I love a work of fiction that teaches me something, and this book is a wonderful mini-course in art history. Although I certainly recognized the work of Franz Marc, Shel Greene's novel really piqued my interest and we spent an evening on the internet looking at pictures of his work. As for Greene's creative creation, Harry Baer, I found him to be three-dimensional and thought the latter part of his life was particularly compelling. Everyone is tracked by his own demons, and the harder the Baer character tries to make amends for his past, the more trapped he is.

The structure of the novel works very well, although the connection between the two artists is entirely serendipitous and a bit fragile -- it would have been interesting if the plot had interconnected them in a more fateful way.

I dropped everything to complete the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will recommend it to others.

As an aside, this is a very pretty book and the typeface and cover are particularly attractice. This is one of those rare times when it is wise to judge a book by its cover.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Achievement, April 26, 2001

By	Richard Goodman (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Burnt Umber" is a very unconventional novel for several reasons. First, its protagonists are two unrelated real life twentieth century artists whose work was far overshadowed by that of their contemporaries. Second, in place of normal chapters, this book is composed of microchapters, few longer than three pages. Third, although the story unfolds primarily through narration, some microchapters are epistolary and others are in the form of a screenplay. Finally, neither artist is shown to be larger than life or even to be especially likable.

In spite of (or, more likely, because of) these unusual aspects, "Burnt Umber" succeeds splendidly in evoking the lives and art of Franz Marc and Harold Baer(the real name of the latter artist was Harold Paris). For example, the use of microchapters and of alternative narrative voices creates an impression not unlike that of glass shards: the fragments do not fit neatly together but nonetheless they can be pieced together into a recognizable whole.

At the center of this work are Marc, an early twentieth century co-founder (with Kandinsky) of Der Blaue Reiter school and Baer, a mid-century Berkeley sculptor. We are given a unique entree to the imaginations and to the creative processes of these two artists, who see the world quite differently than the rest of us. To be sure, both artists are self-centered, monomaniacal cads. However, Greene's unsentimental approach lends this work a flinty verisimillitude.

As topping on the cake, this novel introduces the reader to several dusty corners of the twentieth century: Munich on the eve of World War I; the trenches as seen from the German side; and Paris in the late 1940s.

Two criticisms: This book would have benefitted greatly from the inclusion of pictures of the art that these men created. In addition, I sometimes found Greene's imagery and descriptions to be overly redolent and, on the whole, to be less effective than his unadorned narration. Nonetheless, "Burnt Umber" is a remarkable achievement.