About this Event
Join Rizzoli Bookstore for a conversation between Jarrett Earnest, host of Private Life, The New York Review of Books podcast, and Celia Paul to celebrate Paul’s new book, Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice, published by New York Review Books.
Alone in Venice for an artist's residency, Celia Paul began keeping an ongoing record of her painting. Objects of Desire is a mesmerizing account of her perceptions in La Serenissima and of her preoccupations there: female desire and love, mortality, and memory. The book is a radiant record of a life devoted to art, a profound portrait of an artist who longs to confront herself and who invites the reader to do the same. After the talk, Celia Paul will sign copies of her book.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Can't attend? (please specify you would like it signed in the comments at checkout).
A contemporary painter finds inspiration in Venice, where the canals, art, and architecture guide her thoughts on female desire, love, grief, and memory in this hybrid work of creative nonfiction.
Alone in Venice for an artist's residency, Celia Paul began keeping an ongoing record of her painting. Objects of Desire is a mesmerizing account of her perceptions in La Serenissima and of her preoccupations there: female desire and love, mortality, and memory. "Venice resembles a collective brain," Paul writes, "where other people's lives--past and present--are transmitted like signals to my own."
In the reflections of the floating city, Paul finds traces of her last visit with her late husband; in the work of Venetian artists Carpaccio and Giotto, forceful depictions of her own emotions; and in the allusive painting La Tempesta by Giorgione, a key to her complex feelings about the past.
Objects of Desire is a radiant record of a life devoted to art, a profound portrait of an artist who longs to confront herself and who invites the reader to do the same.
Celia Paul was born in 1959 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her major solo exhibitions include Celia Paul, curated by Hilton Als, at the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Art Museum, and Innervisions at the Gladstone Gallery in New York City. She is the author of three books, Self-Portrait, Letters to Gwen John, and Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice.
Jarrett Earnest is the host of The New York Review’s podcast Private Life.
Event venue & nearby stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
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