The Credeaux Canvas

by Keith Bunin

Paperback. Acting edition.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

72 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winston, the young painter who is the hero of The Credeaux Canvas, is criticized for packing too much into his work. The same might be said of playwright Keith Bunin: The Credeaux Canvas, an endlessly admirable and compelling piece, is finally too intricate and too jammed full of ideas to be entirely satisfying. On one level, the play is an account of a romantic triangle; on another, it's a bleak, raw glimpse of twentysomething anguish. And going still deeper, it's a disarmingly insightful exploration of art and artist; a fascinating and surprisingly cerebral meditation on where beauty resides. Does the artist make the object beautiful because of what he sees in it; or does the onlooker make the painting beautiful? Could the beauty reside in the object itself?

Jamie, tired of living in Alphabet City squalor (think Rent) and devastated at being left out of his father's will, hatches a scheme to make him, his roommate Winston, and his girlfriend Amelia rich. Jamie's father was an art dealer, so Jamie decides to sell one of his father's prize customers--Tess--a forged painting. He tells her about a rare nude portrait by the obscure but about-to-be-discovered French artist Credeaux, and she bites. Eventually Winston, who is praised by his teachers as a skillful imitator, agrees to paint the Credeaux canvas, and Amelia agrees to pose for it.

Complications ensue--all kinds of them; but what interested me most were the unexpected and unsettling ways that this particular fraud explodes back on its perpetrators. We watch, for example, as Tess tells Winston how poor and ugly his "original" work is; and then, just minutes later, we witness her near religious experience when she gets her first look at the "Credeaux." Then, when Tess intuits some startling secrets about both painter and subject--that's Winston and Amelia, remember--we watch as not just Jamie's plot but, yes, his entire world comes tumbling down around him. Rich, incredible stuff, this.

The Credeaux Canvas covers a great deal of ground, of more or less interest and originality; Bunin's given us a landscape so full that each of us will manage to take in only the part that most intrigues us, I think.

[Stoickitten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play has some great scenes and some meaty roles for actors. I probably would have rated it higher if it weren't for the ending going a bit more melodramatic than the rest of the play seemed to warrant, and if I weren't personally a little tired of the "model mistakes a painter's artistic appreciation of her body for love" plot line. However, I will say that even those scenes are well-written. I'd be curious to see how it plays in performance if I ever got the chance.

[Roxana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie is the disinherited son of a respected art dealer who, in an act of inspiration and desperation, convinces his room-mate, Winston, to paint his girlfriend, Amelia in the style of Credeaux. The love triangle that develops during the painting causes a lot more consequences than a forged piece of art.
The sad part was to realize that Winston is able to love only the woman in his painting; real women, with their trivial emotions, drive him into crises of impatience.

I wonder how would I feel to have my body regarded by someone else not as the flawed and imperfect thing I thought it is, but as something worth to transmute into art. To an artist, my form can be beautiful precisely because it doesn't match some kind of airbrushed Hollywood-idea of perfection. An artist accepts it precisely as it is; its flaws make his work more interesting: form and pattern, range of lights and shadows. Winston objectifies Amelie, literally makes her into a thing. When, after years, she gazes at that thing, she feels returned to herself again. And the artist, too, feels a kind of love, not for her personally, but for her as the mechanism that allowed his art to come into existence.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most plot-driven of any of Bunin's plays that I've read, and satisfying tragic in the way a young artist cannot move past being technical into making a mark of his own, on other people, or on the world.

Using the same evocative language I've found so previously engaging in his work, Bunin here describes the unraveling of a group of friends, and the consequences of touching other people emotionally, when you intend to do so only through work. Great stuff, and well worth the read (probably worth seeing, too -- especially for what might the longest nude scene I think I've ever read).

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favorite plays that I saw in college. I thought it was wonderful. There are a lot of things about the structure that just really work -- the naked, moonlit painting scene and the single-appearance art collector are both knockouts. I remember being less impressed when I reread it later, since maybe the plot elements are on the melodramatic side. But not too much, really. It takes a master to avoid it, and you can love something that is flawed, anyway.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool play. A little too simple for my taste, though. I suppose that with the right actors and interpretation for the stage that this could be an interesting piece. On page, however, it seems more like a well-written sit-com episode centering on a con or get-rich-quick scheme. Could have been a little deeper...

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play shows better than it reads, I think. It's still a good story, though.

[Nilchance · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author put guns on the table in the first two acts and then fired them, brutally. LA Theatre Works created an amazing production of the play.