With a nod to Henry James, THE PRIZE looks at the mannered art world with irony and earnestness
Prologue to THE PRIZE, Jill Bialosky's incredibly moving novel of the art world Edward Darby knew that an artist's work had the power to change the way in which art was perceived, for every successful artist must recreate the medium, but he did not know, each time he went to a new artist's studio, if he'd ever find it. When you see a work of art, it will be as if everything else in relationship to it has faded. Art should transport the seer from the ordinary to the sublime. His father, a scholar of romantic poetry, told him this when he was a boy. But it was more than that. It was the myths artists created about their art that gave the work authority, and as an art dealer, he was part of that creation. He thought about all this as he looked for Agnes Murray's name on the directory in the vestibile of a crumbling old warehouse in Bushwick. It was a cold and gray morning in April. He hoped he wasn't wasting his time. THE PRIZE (COUNTERPOINT, Berkeley)...