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Tiepolo Blue
Cambridge, 1994. Nachdem er zu Studienzeiten von einem Kommilitonen zurückgewiesen wurde, hat der Kunsthistoriker Don Lamb der Liebe abgeschworen und sich ganz seiner Karriere verschrieben. Mit Anfang 40 führt er ein asketisches Professorenleben zwischen Hörsaal, Bibliothek und dem High Table, wo am Abend die Intrigen des Lehrkörpers gesponnen werden. Außerdem arbeitet er wie besessen an einem Buch über das Blau des Himmels in den monumentalen Fresken von Barock-Maler Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Doch dann kommt der Knacks. Als im Peterhouse eine moderne Kunstinstallation aus Müll errichtet wird, ist Don dermaßen empört darüber, dass er seinem Gelehrten-Reservat den Rücken kehrt und stattdessen die Leitung eines Museums in London übernimmt. Damit bricht das wahre Leben über ihn herein - in Gestalt des jungen Künstlers Ben, der ihn in die anarchische Künstlerszene der Hauptstadt und das Nachtleben von Soho einführt. Der Perspektivwechsel lässt den sonst beherrschten Professor zunächst aufblühen, erschüttert aber auch seine bisherige Existenz in ihren Grundfesten. Dons Schwärmerei für Ben wird zum Drahtseilakt und sein Neuanfang zu einer immer verworreneren Reise ins Ungewisse.
James Cahill war selbst einige Jahre Dozent in Cambridge und kennt die Welt, von der sein Debütroman erzählt, sehr genau. So ist "Tiepolo Blau" nicht nur die augenzwinkernde Coming-of-Age-Geschichte eines kauzigen Intellektuellen in der Midlife-Crisis, sondern auch ein liebevolles Porträt der Elfenbeinturm-Existenz eines Stubengelehrten. Mit viel Feingefühl, Witz und Ironie erzählt Cahill, wie sein stoischer Protagonist sich selbst neu kennenlernt und dabei zunehmend den Halt verliert. "Tiepolo Blau" ist ein großer Roman über die Kunst, den Sex und das wahre Leben - düster wie ein Herbsttag in Cambridge, rätselhaft wie das Labyrinth der Bars von Soho, erhebend wie das Blau des Himmels bei Tiepolo.
James Cahill war selbst einige Jahre Dozent in Cambridge und kennt die Welt, von der sein Debütroman erzählt, sehr genau. So ist "Tiepolo Blau" nicht nur die augenzwinkernde Coming-of-Age-Geschichte eines kauzigen Intellektuellen in der Midlife-Crisis, sondern auch ein liebevolles Porträt der Elfenbeinturm-Existenz eines Stubengelehrten. Mit viel Feingefühl, Witz und Ironie erzählt Cahill, wie sein stoischer Protagonist sich selbst neu kennenlernt und dabei zunehmend den Halt verliert. "Tiepolo Blau" ist ein großer Roman über die Kunst, den Sex und das wahre Leben - düster wie ein Herbsttag in Cambridge, rätselhaft wie das Labyrinth der Bars von Soho, erhebend wie das Blau des Himmels bei Tiepolo.
352 pages, Paperback
Published April 27, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 18, 2023
Another overwritten review- sorry! I can't get this out of my head haha.
When he looks at a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo, Don is drawn in by the blue of the sky. He is intent on mapping it- measuring the angles at which it appears, how it relates to the subjects of the paintings, and how it draws a link to the classical masters. Tiepolo’s skies are a shade of blue so subtle, so delicate, that, in many ways, they don’t resemble the sky at all. They are distant and fleeting, fragile sheets of tissue paper in the background of scenes depicting gods and mortals with exquisite detail.
However, a flimsy sky cannot hold a life forever. When Don, an art historian at Cambridge’s Peterhouse College, is first introduced, he is falling off his bike. The event is somehow distant, and when he falls his vision fragments into a thousand little images, signifying the beginning of his descent from the skies of academia to the close intricacies of real life. The book is full of little symbolisms like this, to the point that it could be accused of being overwritten (at any rate, it is clear that Cahill is an academic), however, the symbols and the running metaphor of Tiepolo’s skies do support a richly considered story.
‘Tiepolo Blue’ is the tragedy of Don’s necessary but fatal removal from the refuge of academia. After an inexcusable blunder makes his place as a professor at Peterhouse untenable, his colleague and friend, Val, pulls some strings to land him a place as director at a prestigious London art museum. He gives Don the use of his London home and becomes a constant and increasingly Machiavellian presence throughout the book. Val sets up and organises Don’s removal from highly politicised College affairs, leaving him exposed to London life in all its forms. For a man who has not left Cambridge since his undergrad days, this all proves far too much. Don is forced to look away from Tiepolo’s skies towards the crux of the paintings, the actual subject matter, life itself.
‘Tiepolo Blue’ fits into the literary theme of the division of the life of the mind and the life of the physical. For me, this theme is most noticeable in Pullman’s ‘The Amber Spyglass’, and, with a great genre leap, in Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. In the former, the experience of life and the physical world is portrayed as being so important that consciousness itself actually depends upon it. In the latter, Clifford Chatterley’s ‘life of the mind’ is actively portrayed as stifling, while Connie’s sexual liberation is just that- a liberation.
In contrast, Don’s unusually late and often clumsily written sexual liberation is also his downfall. London in the 90s was not a welcoming place for the gay community, and Don’s crossing of the border into life could never have been the liberation that it was for Lady Chatterley. It certainly couldn’t replicate the childlike joy of life portrayed by Pullman. Don’s awakening is overshadowed by the stigma of homosexuality and the deadly presence of HIV/AIDS. He becomes characterised by obsession, fantasy, and excess- without it, his life would have resembled that of William Stoner, in John Williams’ eponymous novel. But with it, Don’s life becomes a tragedy of a wholly different kind. His liberation is necessary yet hugely tragic.
In a book where nothing is as it seems, and in a plot constantly manipulated from afar by the Machiavellian Val, we are taken on a journey from sanity to madness. However, the question must be asked whether Don was mad all along. Was his fascination with Tiepolo’s skies a feeble mask for a man unable to cope with real life, just as his degrading end is the inevitable result of the stripping away of said mask? Don escapes life by immersing himself in a fiction, yet in tearing it away he must, inevitably, fall.
When he looks at a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo, Don is drawn in by the blue of the sky. He is intent on mapping it- measuring the angles at which it appears, how it relates to the subjects of the paintings, and how it draws a link to the classical masters. Tiepolo’s skies are a shade of blue so subtle, so delicate, that, in many ways, they don’t resemble the sky at all. They are distant and fleeting, fragile sheets of tissue paper in the background of scenes depicting gods and mortals with exquisite detail.
However, a flimsy sky cannot hold a life forever. When Don, an art historian at Cambridge’s Peterhouse College, is first introduced, he is falling off his bike. The event is somehow distant, and when he falls his vision fragments into a thousand little images, signifying the beginning of his descent from the skies of academia to the close intricacies of real life. The book is full of little symbolisms like this, to the point that it could be accused of being overwritten (at any rate, it is clear that Cahill is an academic), however, the symbols and the running metaphor of Tiepolo’s skies do support a richly considered story.
‘Tiepolo Blue’ is the tragedy of Don’s necessary but fatal removal from the refuge of academia. After an inexcusable blunder makes his place as a professor at Peterhouse untenable, his colleague and friend, Val, pulls some strings to land him a place as director at a prestigious London art museum. He gives Don the use of his London home and becomes a constant and increasingly Machiavellian presence throughout the book. Val sets up and organises Don’s removal from highly politicised College affairs, leaving him exposed to London life in all its forms. For a man who has not left Cambridge since his undergrad days, this all proves far too much. Don is forced to look away from Tiepolo’s skies towards the crux of the paintings, the actual subject matter, life itself.
‘Tiepolo Blue’ fits into the literary theme of the division of the life of the mind and the life of the physical. For me, this theme is most noticeable in Pullman’s ‘The Amber Spyglass’, and, with a great genre leap, in Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. In the former, the experience of life and the physical world is portrayed as being so important that consciousness itself actually depends upon it. In the latter, Clifford Chatterley’s ‘life of the mind’ is actively portrayed as stifling, while Connie’s sexual liberation is just that- a liberation.
In contrast, Don’s unusually late and often clumsily written sexual liberation is also his downfall. London in the 90s was not a welcoming place for the gay community, and Don’s crossing of the border into life could never have been the liberation that it was for Lady Chatterley. It certainly couldn’t replicate the childlike joy of life portrayed by Pullman. Don’s awakening is overshadowed by the stigma of homosexuality and the deadly presence of HIV/AIDS. He becomes characterised by obsession, fantasy, and excess- without it, his life would have resembled that of William Stoner, in John Williams’ eponymous novel. But with it, Don’s life becomes a tragedy of a wholly different kind. His liberation is necessary yet hugely tragic.
In a book where nothing is as it seems, and in a plot constantly manipulated from afar by the Machiavellian Val, we are taken on a journey from sanity to madness. However, the question must be asked whether Don was mad all along. Was his fascination with Tiepolo’s skies a feeble mask for a man unable to cope with real life, just as his degrading end is the inevitable result of the stripping away of said mask? Don escapes life by immersing himself in a fiction, yet in tearing it away he must, inevitably, fall.
February 14, 2025
Creo que aquellos que no lo entienden es porque les cuesta el arte. En mi caso, siendo historiadora del arte, el miedo de Don es el mismo miedo que siento en mi carrera. A obsesionarme tanto que quede obsoleta.
No me pongo 5 estrellas solo porque los últimos dos capítulos me costaron leerlos. Quizás porque eran tan tristes y fuertes que me chocaban.
Sin embargo, es un libro precioso que me hizo pensar sobre las categorías y no categorías del arte, de lo bello y lo feo, de como a veces creemos que somos alguien y vamos mutando.
Lo recomiendo 100%, y recomiendo también ir buscando las obras que se mencionan.
No me pongo 5 estrellas solo porque los últimos dos capítulos me costaron leerlos. Quizás porque eran tan tristes y fuertes que me chocaban.
Sin embargo, es un libro precioso que me hizo pensar sobre las categorías y no categorías del arte, de lo bello y lo feo, de como a veces creemos que somos alguien y vamos mutando.
Lo recomiendo 100%, y recomiendo también ir buscando las obras que se mencionan.
February 5, 2025
The book had a very good rythm. Queer longing of a main character without ability to allow yourself finer feelings made me at times uncomfortable. Possibly it felt close to home. I liked reading about places I know, but from the times I wasn’t there. Kept on researching street names and addresses to find whether they were true or not. A good read.
December 11, 2023
although it is well written the book meanders and becomes a bit of a mess plot-wise and was a chore to finish. Iit is hard to recommend it to anyone who is not of that social group
January 14, 2025
Very good read. Loved the story and fully allows you to get close and sympathise with the character but this also meant that you felt personally stupid and annoyed when they did something wrong. Overall good story - pacing could be improved.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews