An Object of Beauty<\/em><\/a><\/p>\nSteve Martin’s An Object of Beauty
\nby Geoff Wichert<\/p>\n
At the end of Shopgirl, a first novel published to cautious praise in 2000 and made into a well-received movie in 2005, Mirabelle Butterfield, a struggling artist supporting herself in a dead-end retail job, makes a vocational leap upwards to selling art in a gallery. A decade later, comedian, banjo musician, and author Steve Martin has again taken up her story\u2019s trajectory, now moved to the opposite coast and set among different characters who play similar roles.<\/p>\n
Martin describes his novel as operating on three not-unexpected levels: as a conventionally told story, as an essay in art criticism, and a psychological study. Each is essentially one facet of a bildungsroman, an eventful intellectual and moral biography. The story of Lacey Jeager, ambitious dealer in art, offers readers a window into the art market from the early 90s to the late \u201caughts\u201d\u201415 years of historically unparalleled boom and bust\u2014and the frenzy of art-making all those millions of dollars fueled. Lacey\u2019s education in intangible value and its manipulation gives Martin an opportunity to retell the history of Modern art, with glimpses all the way back to the Baroque, bringing in undeservedly forgotten artists and crafting a new, more coherent and personal narrative, while displaying a gift for illuminating metaphors (\u201cBut when Warhol started to achieve newsworthy prices, the value of contemporary art, including art that was yet to be created, was pushed up from behind. Warhol\u2019s presence was so vivid, so recent, that he was identified not with the dead, but as the first nugget of gold from Sutter\u2019s Mill. The rush was on.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Lacey tells her story to Daniel Franks, a college friend uniquely positioned to watch her character grow and develop. He gives the story psychological, moral, and ultimately sad, if not quite tragic dimensions. If Shopgirl was emotionally remote, lacking a warm place to connect to, in An Object of Beauty Martin has found a way to tell the story that gives the human element the same warm intimacy the author evidently feels for art. The title is a pun, of course, and curiously enough in conflating the passion for art with the passion for another person neither is reduced, but both come to life. Readers will come away with a richer understanding of art and may be surprised to feel an unfamiliar sympathy for the marketplace, which turns out to be as essential a part of elevated aesthetic pleasure as the flawed persons who inhabit it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you’re still looking for gift ideas you might check out Radio West’s Best Music of 2010 and Holiday Book Show programs. And if you haven’t read the entire December 2010 edition of 15 Bytes we’ll remind you that there are some art-related book suggestions on pages 5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":12070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,69],"tags":[1433],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-daily-bytes","tag-steve-martin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/052s.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-05 21:19:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70568,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/70568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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