Now I stand in Christie’s Gallery 2, a public space at the front of the house where badges and security checks aren’t necessary. I reread the written supplement, which describes Alizée, her time at the WPA with Pollack and Krasner and Rothko, and most important, how her work provides the missing link—particularly in terms of “the big canvas,” as Krasner had referred to it, and the transformation from abstraction to realism rather than just the other way around—filling a hole in the evolution of the school of Abstract Expressionism.
This is followed by a discussion of her political escapades, about Turned and Montage, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Breckinridge Long memo, the destruction of her work, and as verified by Oncle Matthieu, the assassination attempt. Nathan Heme received ten years for the shooting and always claimed he’d worked alone. Although no judgments are rendered, it’s noted that while Long and his cronies controlled immigration policy, 90 percent of the visas allocated for refugees from German-occupied countries were never approved. It concludes with the estimate that had Long granted the visas, 190,000 people would have escaped the Nazi massacre.
To the side are a couple of short paragraphs explaining how the squares were found and the mural re-created, the part both Christie’s and I played in the discovery, more accolades to Christie’s than to me. Still, I look proudly around the gallery.
On one wall, photographs detail some of the possible permutations of the sixteen squares, most leave space for the missing ones, but two craft the seven squares into a single whole. The actual squares, including the one Lee gave to Grand-père, stretched but unframed, are lined up, one by one, on another wall.
Turned, Lily Pads, Alizée’s two triptychs, and the five paintings from Oncle’s house hang on the third wall. My reinterpretation of Montage, sixteen feet by four feet, comprising four canvases, is on the fourth. It’s abstract, representational, and surrealistic all at once, colors and images and textures leaping from one canvas to the next, fusing the styles in way that was far ahead of its time.
The mural depicts the horrors of war on humans, plants, and animals as well as the greater horror of the indifference of each species to the destruction of its own. The details may be specific to 1940—Alizée’s cry to wake Americans to the fate of the European refugees—but the emotions, the themes, speak to the human condition, to the now and to the future, transcending time and place. Which is its brilliance. Her brilliance. And I now understood in a way I hadn’t before, the power of great art.
Is it exactly what Alizée painted? Of course not. Does it get to the emotion she wanted to elicit? I hope so. Will this show create a place for her in the art world, give her the credit she deserves for her work, her influence, her bravery? I hope that, too.
I glance at my watch. My mother should be here any minute. Tomorrow the French cousins arrive, eight of them, for the official opening. I debate whether to throw one of my mother’s I-told-you-sos back at her, this being a perfect situation for it, the grand culmination of my efforts despite her unwavering conviction of my foolishness. Obviously, this isn’t necessary, as the show says it far better than I ever could. But still. Sometimes a girl’s got to say what a girl’s got to say.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A historical novel is a work of long fiction set in a previous time period. To me, the most important word in this definition is fiction. The life, art, and politics of pre–World War II New York City form the setting for The Muralist, but Alizée Benoit and Dani Abrams, whose stories are the heart of the novel, are completely imagined.
Obviously, Eleanor Roosevelt held no conversations with Alizée, nor did Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, or Jackson Pollock. And while Joe Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh did write op-ed pieces and give speeches pushing an isolationist agenda—I used some of their exact words—they, of course, never mentioned Turned.
This mix of history and invention continues throughout the novel. While it’s alleged that Franklin Roosevelt claimed the United States was a Protestant country and that the Jews (and Catholics) were here under sufferance, it wasn’t in reference to Long’s memorandum. But the memorandum Alizée carries to Eleanor Roosevelt is an exact facsimile of the actual memo Breckinridge Long sent to his lieutenants. Today he is most famous, or infamous, for this particular communiqué, although no attempt on his life ever took place.
Alizée’s story begins in 1939, and because of that I had to change the timing of certain historical elements, but the details related to these elements remain factual. For example, the Emergency Resuce Committee was established in 1940 rather than in 1939, but the organization and Varian Fry did help over two thousand refugees escape from Europe. Similarly, although the America First Committee didn’t hold its first meeting until 1940, it was the largest and most powerful isolationist group working to keep the United States out of World War II.
Breckinridge Long didn’t become assistant secretary of state until early 1940, although his nefarious activities, unfortunately, are all too true. And while Hiram Bingham IV had nothing to do with the infamous Long memo, as vice counsel in France, he worked with Varian Fry to help hundreds of refugees avoid the camps and escape Europe, going as far as hiding Jews in his own home.
The Drancy interment camp didn’t open until after the Nazis occupied France in 1940, but it was the primary site for the deportation of French “undesirables” to extermination camps; over sixty-seven thousand Jews were sent to Auschwitz from there, including six thousand children. The Drancy Shoah Memorial evolved in stages: in 1973 the sculpture was installed, in 1988 the railroad car was added, and in 2012 a more traditional glass-fronted museum was built. Although Dani was there in 2015, she visited the site as it was in 2011.
Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko worked for the WPA, hung out at the Jumble Shop, and along with other artists mentioned in the book, created the first true American school of art, Abstract Expressionism, although there is no hypothesized missing link in its evolution. Mark Rothko didn’t begin work on his color-block paintings until the mid-1940s, but these are considered by some to be his greatest artistic contribution. Picasso’s Guernica was shown at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery in May 1939, not July.
On the other hand, there are events in The Muralist that, while accurate, may not appear so to a contemporary reader. For example, it’s hard to believe that up until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, a majority of Americans opposed the United States entering the war. And many of us still have the misapprehension that the Nazis didn’t begin their persecution of Jews and others until later in the war. Kristallnacht occurred in 1938, and by 1940 Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France were occupied and under German control. We now understand the impact of this in ways impossible for Americans at that time.
The degree of anti-Semitism in this country in the 1930s and ’40s is also commonly underestimated: it is indeed true that restaurants placed signs in their windows barring Jews and blacks, and nobody objected. It’s also difficult for us to imagine a world in which communication could take weeks, in which there was no instant access to information about the past, in which it was possible for the First Lady to casually meet a train.
My hope is that The Muralist, through its particular mixture of fact and fiction, will bring this unique moment in American history to life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I love writing acknowledgments because it means the book is finally finished—and it means I get to thank all the people who helped me reach this moment. First and foremost, as always, is Jan Brogan: I love you, I hate you, I love you. For their close reading, critiques and expertise, many thanks to Jamie Chambliss, Dan Fleishman, Scott Fleishman, Ronnie Fuchs, Ilana Katz, Michael Konover, Vicki Konover, Judy Lyons, Anastasia Maronani, Cathal Nolan, Maryanne O’Hara, Melisse Shapiro, Sandra Shapiro, Becca Starr, Alice Stone, Linda Thompson, and Dawn Tripp.
Much appreciation to my fabulous agent, Ann Collette, who always believed I could do it—even when I
wasn’t so sure. And to my amazing editor, Amy Gash, who stuck with me and The Muralist through too many rewrites to count; this book would not be if it weren’t for your patience, persistence, and brilliance.
B. A. SHAPIRO is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller The Art Forger. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. She lives in Boston with her husband, Dan, and their dog, Sagan. Visit her online at www.bashapirobooks.com. (Author photo by Lynn Wayne.)
Recommended Reading
* * *
THE ART FORGER
by B. A. Shapiro
Almost twenty-five years after the infamous heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of the stolen Degas paintings is delivered to the Boston studio of Claire Roth, a young artist who has entered into a Faustian bargain with a powerful gallery owner by agreeing to forge the Degas in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But as she begins her work, she starts to suspect that this long-missing masterpiece may itself be a forgery in this thrilling novel about the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.
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Published by
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© 2015 by B. A. Shapiro.
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eISBN 978-1-61620-540-9
The Muralist: A Novel Page 30