With or Without Angels

by Douglas Bruton

'The thought in my head does not yet have shape or form, only direction, one picture leading into another.' An ageing artist, faced with his own mortality, embarks on one final artwork. As he battles to complete the project, working with an enigmatic young photographer, he finds his past and present blurring. Through the act of creation and the memories it excavates, the artist comes to a realisation about what matters most, and what he will leave behind when he is gone. This hybrid and innovative short novel responds through fiction to 'The New World', the final artwork by the late artist Alan Smith – which is in turn a response to an eighteenth-century fresco, Giandomenico Tiepolo’ s 'Il Mondo Nuovo'. With sparkling, dreamlike prose, Bruton weaves a story around these artworks, arriving at both a profound exploration of the creative process and a timeless love story told in a new way.

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Mental Health

112 pages, Paperback

Published February 16, 2023

About the author

Douglas Bruton is a Scottish author. He has published in Northwards Now, and in Umbrellas of Edinburgh and Landfill, an anthology of new writing frm the Federation of Writers (Scotland).

Reviews

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catching moments of beauty that resonate with the questions that we have.

We continue, we take a piece here and a piece there. We live a piece now and other pieces in the past and think on the pieces in our future. And all these pieces get tangled up in us and we end up making a life of these pieces and this can sometimes be a work of art or can we say that our lives are a work of art in themselves.

Bruton takes us on a journey together with the old artist, and we look, and we see, and we ask and admire and question and look some more.

Beautifully done, with or without angels.

Il Mondo Nuovo di Giandomenico Tiepolo

The New World - Alan Smith

https://alansmithartist.com/

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il Mondo Nuovo and The New World
Review of the Fairlight Books paperback (February 16, 2023)

With or Without Angels is author Bruton's fictional novella about the final work The New World of Scottish artist Alan Smith (1941-2019) which was itself inspired by the fresco Il Mondo Nuovo (1791) by Italian artist Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo aka Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) at the Ca' Rezzonico Museum in Venice, Italy.

Bruton wrote the fiction having been inspired by hearing of The New World from the artist's widow, but his creation is his own imagined journey of an artist no longer capable of painting who creates his final work of photomontages with the assistance of his wife and an rather mysterious photographer muse.

He nodded to his wife and made some noise in the back of his throat, a noise that might have been in agreement of what his wife had said about the walk doing him some good, but might just as easily have been something else altogether. She was always so cheery and so positive. It was her strength and she showed him the angels in the world, the angels that he might not have noticed without her.

This was a lovely and moving portrait about art and aging and facing death. It is lavishly illustrated with prints of both the 1791 Tiepolo work and the 2013-14 series by Alan Smith.


Image sourced from Italian Wikipedia. Di Giandomenico Tiepolo - Web Gallery of Art:   Immagine  Info about artwork, Pubblico dominio, Collegamento.

I read With or Without Angels as the April 2023 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.

Other Reviews
Book Review by Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman, February 8, 2023.

Trivia and Link
See the complete set of Alan Smith's The New World photomontages and watch a video of the artist introducing the work at Alan Smith Artist - The New World.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novella about art, inspiration, memory, love and ageing. The author in his afterword says that it was inspired by artist Alan Smith and his series of photos The New World which was in its turn a response to the fresco Il Mondo Nuevo by Giandomenico Tiepolo (all the artworks are shown in the book). I read it in two sessions, the writing is lovely. It is written from the point of view of the ageing artist as his memory drifts, as his mind tries to makes sense of reality and dreams or stories. A moving and unusual read.

[Jax · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful story was inspired by the work of Alan Smith, a Scottish artist who created a series of photo collages based on an eighteenth-century fresco by Giandomenico Tiepolo. Smith was ill when he made the collages, and the protagonist of this book will follow that path. Aging and terminally ill but creating works of art that will live beyond him. What comes after is a theme in this book, explored through what came before. Youth, fresh love, relationships, time, and decline. Angels revealed through love. The narrative is incisive, soulful, and precious. Douglas Bruton is a master of language and mood and has done a marvelous job rendering a perspective from which Smith might have created his own version of The New World.

Many thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The April Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month.

Douglas Bruton's novel With or Without Angels is a response to the artist Alan Smith (1941-2019)'s work The New World, itself a response to Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo’s (son of the more famous father) 1791 painting, Il Mondo Nuovo.



Smith's New World (2014-2016) is a series of edited photographs, working in elements of Tiepolo's work, produced with the assistance of photographic artist Chloe Rosser, made between his recovery from cancer in one lung and his diagnosis of a new, fatal, tumour in the other - a video on Smith's website (link above) explains the story behind the work.



Bruton's novella is, with the artist's widow's permission, a fictional retelling of this story, an inquisitive exploration of the genesis of artistic endeavors and a moving story of devotion, and a beautifully produced work of art containing high quality reproductions of the 11 photos constituting Smith's creation.

4.5 stars

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discuss this fabulous novella with my buddy reader friend Lindy on my BookTube channel: https://youtu.be/TVgF2kBcSW8

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a rare thing these days to be surprised by a book. To be unprepared for its magic or its brilliance. Blindsided by perfection. I can honestly say this short book must now rank among the handful that I have loved most of my life. Easy for me to say, harder to put my finger on exactly what it is that makes this perfect.
A book about art, about an aging artist and his struggle to come to terms with his life slipping away and his inability to create art as he once did. But being an artist, he still wants to continue to create, he is still driven by that love, even when things around him are failing. His mind and body are letting him down.
We begin with a painting, Il Mondo Nuovo (The New World) by Giandomenico Tiepolo in 1791. It shows a group of people, with their backs to the viewer, looking at something we cannot see. They are gathered on the sand where the land meets to sea. The artist and his father are both in the group. People from all levels of society. The clothes are carnival colours; oranges, blues and reds. There is a sense of occasion, a celebration. A man stands on a stool with a long thin stick, or wand. We have no idea what he is doing.

The book talks about the painting and then we cut to a modern-day artist, the central character. He is old and he is not well. He can no longer work as he used to but has turned to photography to undertake a last work.
‘Things are cloudy some days, in his head.’ The subtle hints are there from the first few pages, gradually informing us that everything is not OK. And rather like dementia, it creeps up almost unnoticed, hard to distinguish from old age, forgetfulness or gradual decline.
I like what the artist says about his profession:

You have to spend time with a painting to really understand it. That’s also what the old artist thinks. People in galleries – watch them flitting from one picture to the next. They confuse looking with seeing, spending so little time on any individual picture that they miss what the artist wanted to show them. Sometimes there are benches arranged in the centre of the gallery floor. Old men sit there waiting patiently for their wives to be done with looking; or women by themselves sit there, clasping their gallery guides in one hand, pens poised over notebooks filled with small spidery writing and their eyes fixed on one work only, and they are at least trying to see.
Once there was a young woman there, sitting on one of the wooden benches, small and pretty and the sun in her hair. He sat down beside her, close enough he could breathe in the scent of her. He looked to where she looked. If he remembers right it was a blue painting by Yves Klein, a piece of something eternal, and she was lost in the looking, as though she was in the blue or the blue was in her. He took her hand in his – or he imagined he did, for these things are never so simple or so easy. And like that they were adrift. She smelled of patchouli – did I say that already?

Because the artist is unable to create art as he once did he calls on the services of Livvy to be the hands he can no longer control:

Her name is Olive – Livvy to her friends. He notices the slim long fingers of her hands. And the sun in her hair – didn’t his wife have hair like that once? – and the blue in her eyes. The eternal is never really eternal. It is a failure of language.

This confusion between Livvy, his assistant, and memories of his wife from many years before constantly lurks in the background. A thorn that must hurt his wife, even if she understands what is happening to him. The reader feels it, even if the narrative doesn’t voice the words.

The artist tells Livvy a story about a time when he was in Venice. He wanted to be lost and away from the crowds so he tore up his map “…into a hundred pieces and dropped the pieces into a bin that smelled of fish and salt and lemons.” These are the little detailed touches that bring the book to life. It is the middle of the day and hot and the artist seeks shade and water in a tiny workshop. Among the smells of varnish and wax and wood shavings he detects patchouli. He tells again the story of the woman he sat next to in a gallery, but this time we learn that she left a scrap of paper in his pocket with her name and her phone number, and that now she is his wife.
We are moving through a series of pictures that the artist is creating. They are photographs which he is using Livvy to crop, photoshop and combine. They are his response to the fresco of Giandomenico Tiepolo. The people in his pictures are snipped out of their original context and brought together in the new setting of the artist’s imagination. Each new picture is a new chapter in the book. The photographs are all reproduced in the book.

At one point the artist and Livvy take a trip to Brighton. At the station he has the chance to see her from a distance:

She was gone for longer than he thought it would take and he missed her, felt suddenly how alone he was in the busy station. Maybe it was his wife he missed, then. He looked up and saw Livvy from a distance and he knew she did not feel watched. She had her hair loose and she took one finger and caught a wisp of her hair and tucked it behind one ear. He snatched for breath, tucked the memory of that moment into his waistcoat pocket.

This leads us to these wonderfully voiced observations:

Sometimes, it is true, a wife thinks she knows her husband, even though he is taciturn and keeps his thoughts wrapped up like doves in a conjuror’s cloths and only sets them free when he is sure he is not watched or when he has practiced the trick enough for it to be easy.

When the artist tries to explain what he has seen Livvy do with her hair, he finds it hard to put into words:

What he does not say is that it is something his wife does sometimes when her hair is not pinned up from her face, something he saw her do when she was just a girl sitting on a bench in a gallery staring into the blue – looking for meaning or hope or love. It was what caught his eye and he snatched for breath then and sat down beside her wanting to put into words what he had just seen her do, for he knew she had done it unawares, as Livvy had; unaware of how small but exquisitely beautiful a thing it was.
“Like this,’ she says and does it for him.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but far off and not as though you are seen.’
Maybe it is not so beautiful when given as a performance but must be something done unawares. Or it must be something illicit and stolen.

And so it goes on and on, these little moments when gems tumble out onto the page. The asides that make the prose sparkle with life:

He marks the days off on his calendar. Two more before Livvy is to visit. From his studio window he sees a bird at the feeder in the garden. Then two, then five. Squabbling with each other. Starlings, he thinks. Ugly and beautiful in equal measure, the sleek pugilists of the bird feeder, their feathers all oil-slick blue and rainbows.

Although I have stolen so many of the words from this wonderful book, there is an unexpected reveal in the acknowledgements which took me quite by surprise and turned the whole book into an even more extraordinary creation. I will not spoil it for you. Please, find a copy and make the most of a brief masterpiece.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The combination of fiction and visual art is one I pretty much always enjoy when I pick it up, although usually neither the work nor my taste extends to contemporary art. Here the work does extend so, however, and drags my taste just a little bit forward with it. If my appreciation of the contemporary art whose creative genesis is the inspiration for this work is reluctant, my appreciation of the writing itself is considerably less so. It's filled with humanity and gentleness, kind to all it sees, and follows a twisty and clever thread to do with time, memory, love, and illness, so subtly that I almost missed it, looking without seeing.

[johnny ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a heartbreaking story about an old man trying to create his last piece of art after a particularly grueling battle with cancer, “with or without angels” is an excellently and otherworldly crafted short novel. there is something so poignant about the way burton writes about this process that it borders on pure ekphrasis. yet, the emotion capacity of the characters shines through. each chapter ends with a gorgeous work of art, showing the progression of the artist as well as the growth and spread of cancer. this is a fantastic, short read i would recommend to anybody. the prose is simply brilliant and you can tell just how invested burton is in his characters.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review!

[alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

crying in the club

[Kate Vane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written sketches in response to art by the late Alan Smith with the works included in the text. I prefer a more fully realised story but interesting if you like something experimental - and short.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2023 'With or Without Angels' was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award - an award for books put out there by independent publishers, small presses or self-published. It is always nice to make it to a list. Here's what they said of the book: 'I like the concept behind the book - in some ways it takes ekphrastic writing to a new level, building a fiction around the creative process and unpacking some of the ideas that underpin Smith’s work, including change, mortality, perception, and the significance of influence and intertextuality. It is extremely readable - the narrative is fragmented, but Bruton’s prose is fluent and lucid. The book is absorbing and satisfying.' Thank you to them for that. xx

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure that I already wrote a review. Oh, well. Here is a bit of one now.

Douglas Bruton takes my breath away once again.

I believe that I would rate any of his future work 5* even before I read it.

[Loree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophical, tender and poignant

Douglas Bruton’s latest novella is as stunning as his last – the wonderful Blue Postcards, also published by Fairlight Books. Like the earlier novella, With or Without Angels glisten’s with finely-wrought prose. But there are other similarities, too: a contemplative aging protagonist attempting to untangle memory from illusion; a fragmentary structure; and use of real artists as inspiration. In Blue Postcards, one of the storylines follows the enigmatic artist Yves Klein, and according to the author’s acknowledgements, With or Without Angels was inspired by the Scottish artist Alan Smith. The unnamed protagonist, an artist himself, draws inspiration (as did Smith) from the 18th century Venetian painter Giandomenico Tiepolo’s painting Il Mondo Nuovo ‘The New World’.

No longer able to paint, but still with ‘too many thoughts in his head’ the artist takes a young assistant, Livvy, to help him express his artistic vision. As his hands have become unsteady, he has swapped his paintbrush for a camera, and with Livvy’s technical expertise, he is able to create a new form of artwork – the photo montage.

As they create a series of images, each building upon the last in much the same way that Giandomenico Tiepolo depicted the same characters over and over before realising Il Mondo Nuovo, the artist is able to ‘work out his thoughts’ and find an answer to the question we all must face: what will be left when we are gone?

It feels surprising that such a short novel – perhaps 25,000 words – can contain such depth of meaning. But that is often the way with stories where there are great gaps of unwritten text. They allow the reader to be an active participant, contemplating their own circumstances alongside the protagonist, and finding that common humanity where no words are needed.

Bruton’s work is poignant, philosophical and achingly human.

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton is a unique yet very accessible work that incorporates painting, photography, and fiction to tell a story that is both very specific while also speaking to the reader's own life.

Many works that take a unique, or at least a less common, approach to storytelling can often take some work to get comfortable with how to read them. That isn't a bad thing, just what is often required. Bruton manages to sweep the reader into the book almost immediately in that regard, which then allows you to read more actively. If you are a passive reader that needs everything spelled out for you, this may seem less "realized." If, however, you like and appreciate the interplay between modes of artistic expression and can understand the human emotions at play here, it is indeed very realized.

What struck me was the number of times I could relate the questions and concerns of the protagonist to my own life. Certainly not specifics, but the bigger questions are common to us all, and Bruton leaves room for the reader to complete the story in a way that suits each reader. No, this isn't like some Clue mystery with multiple endings, but how we understand what is being expressed is very much up to each of us. I appreciate a book that gives me space to follow the story while inserting my own ideas into it.

Recommended for those who enjoy stories that touch on life, love, legacy, and how these all inform each other.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Sarah Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fictional telling of the creation of artist Alan Smith's final body of work The New World (inspired by his engagement with Giandomenico Tiepolo's Il Mondo Nuovo. A story about love, life, death, what we leave behind and with or without angels. Another wonderful story by Douglas Bruton, beautifully told and difficult to put down.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice, short read. It works well as a palette cleanser. I nice book to read on a sunny weekend in the garden. The writing reminded me a bit of Annie Erneaux, but not as good or lyrical, although it had the potential to be. Overall, a fine read.

[Andrea Barlien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous and poignant. It’s short but must be read more slowly than its page numbers might suggest.

[Daniele · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Sometimes an angel can be just a thought or an idea - like love.”

[Ends of the Word · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across the name of Douglas Bruton in connection with his short story titled “Thirteen Wedding Dresses”, featured in the Fiction Desk anthology And Nothing Remains. That wistful, lyrical piece had made a good impression on me but did not prepare me for the brilliance of last year’s Blue Postcards, a novella published by Fairlight Books as part of its “Fairlight Moderns” series. Weaving together three storylines, chief of which is a Sebaldian retelling of the life of artist Yves Kelin, Bruton skilfully managed to combine an experimental structure with heart-warming storytelling.

Bruton returns to Fairlight with an equally striking and interesting novella – With or Without Angels. There are parallels with Blue Postcards in the work’s artistic inspiration and its weaving of fact and fiction. The author describes the novella as a “response through fiction” to “The New World”, a set of photo collages by the late Scottish artist Alan Smith, which is itself a tribute to or meditation on “Il Mondo Nuovo”, a fresco by 18th century artist Giandomenico Tiepolo. In an afterword which doubles as an acknowledgments section, Bruton describes learning of this work after meeting Smith’s widow. Browsing the artist’s online pages, Bruton came across a video in which Smith described the genesis of The New World, a work he devised and created while seriously ill with cancer.

Tiepolo’s Il Mondo Nuovo is an enigmatic work, showing a diverse crowd with their backs to the viewer. Smith’s response is equally mysterious, the photo collages combining figures from Tiepolo’s original with contemprary images and elusive symbolism. Bruton’s novella incorporates each of the pictures in Smith’s series as a pictorial conclusion to each chapter, which reimagines Smith as an unnamed “old artist” who creates art with the help of young photographer Livvy, and the encouragement of his loving wife. The artist is aware that he is losing grip on his life and his cherished memories. The images which he conjures up with Livvy’s support are his way of surviving and possible injecting vitality into the images which have marked his life and which now seem to be slipping his grasp.

With or Without Angels is a lyrical ode to art, life and love. It is at once elegiac yet hopeful, understated yet poignant, experimental yet perfectly accessible. I am often wary of using hackneyed adjective “haunting”, but it seems perfectly fitting for this novella.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[Shannon A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to savor this beautiful book. A collaboration unmatched; this book will change how to look at art, photography and life. I loved this book.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a little gem of a book. Combination of art & prose. Beautiful

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning short novel about art and ageing, about memory, creativity and the artistic process. But be warned – the book doesn’t really work on the Kindle. Read either in hard copy or on the Kindle app. I read it on my IPad which was perfect. The illustrations are an integral part of the narrative and they don’t translate well for Kindle. Or you can keep Google open beside you as you read – there is a lot available online about the references, thankfully, as this is definitely a rabbit hole book which will almost certainly make you want to find out more. Essentially it is a fictionalised account of the last work of Scottish artist Alan Smith (1941-2019) entitled The New World, which Smith was inspired to make following his discovery of Tiepolo’s Il Mondo Nuovo. Author Douglas Bruton met Alan Smith and discovered his work shortly before the artist’s death. He didn’t originally plan to publish his account but was encouraged to do so by Smith’s widow. In the novel the old artist is ailing and no longer able to paint. He turns to photography and hires an assistant to help him translate his ideas into photomontages. The book is not an attempt to portray the real artist in a biographical sense, Bruton explains, (in fact the old artist and his wife are not named in the narrative) but reflects his own response to the work. I found the book fascinating and compelling. The writing is pitch perfect, insightful and empathetic, and packs a lot into just a few pages. Highly recommended.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Douglas Bruton already wowed me with his 500 tiny paragraph epic paean to the colour blue, aka Blue Postcards coincidentally I also had his novel Without or Without Angels and I was eager to read it.

The premise is deceptively simple an artist whose cancer is in remission decides to embark on one last art project; enlisting his helper Livvy he takes a series of pictures of himself embracing his wife while elements of Giandomenico Tiepolo’ s Il Mondo Nuovo are incorporated within the picture. The artist gives an interpretation of each element which lend to the themes of the book, such as aging, mortality, memory (lots of memories involving Il Mondo Nuovo) and love.

In a meta twist the artist in the book is Alan Smith, who actually did merge parts of Il Nuovo Mondo into his pictures and called it The New World and was his last work. Just as Bruton meshed life and art in Blue Postcards, he does it again in With or Without Angels. Just as cleverly and deftly. Each chapter, which is a meditation on a theme ends with the picture described. Here life IS art and Bruton proves it.

What can I say? Once again Douglas Bruton has shown how one can pack in a lot of ideas using the bare minimum. This is a highly creative novella which asks the big questions and answers them beautifully.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some reason, Goodreads keeps changing my status to "want to read!"

I'll try again to write a review. Wish me luck!

Douglas Bruton takes my breath away over and over again. Here again.

[Ollie Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fleeting and tender
‘And our little life is rounded with a sleep’