Mark Lamster

After so many years of working and waiting, the day has finally arrived: “Master of Shadows” has been released into the world, and is available at a bookstore near you. Please join me in celebrating publication of the book with a reading and beers next Monday night (Oct. 26) at the Half King, 505 West 23rd Street (off 10th Ave.) in Manhattan. Doors open at 7:00, and the event is free.

In other news, the Daily Beast has named the book a “Hot Read” for the week. Thank you Daily Beast!

There’s also a really generous review up at Bookotron—they call the book “gripping and intense.” A bit more:

“Lamster takes the reader on a journey through secret treaties, gorgeous art and secret negotiations conducted by the artist. It’s an incredibly involving portrait of a man as complicated as the world around him, a man who helped crate that complicated world. Inner and outer beauties collide. Lamster’s a fine writer who knows how to take the reader through history that we think we understand, only to offer a very fresh perspective. The prose is transparent, the better to see the people, the places and the events portrayed. Nan A. Talese has included a generous number of color plates in the book to compliment the excellent story. Here’s a proto-steampunk thriller about a real artist who happened to be a spy and a diplomat, in a lovely package. Reality seems to overtake fantasy with an ease that is often nearly as breathtaking as the work of Rubens.”

It’s a rather satisfying bit of parallelism that the excerpt of my book on the political career of Peter Paul Rubens appears in the Wall Street Journal on the same day that Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is the paper’s lead story. As I believe the piece in the Journal demonstrates, Rubens was a pragmatic, moderate man whose success as a diplomat was predicated on a combination of the high esteem in which he was held internationally and by his own great intelligence. Whatever one thinks about the timing of the Nobel, or of Obama generally, it’s hard to deny he shares these characteristics with Rubens. But I’d like to think the artist can serve as a fine model for the president, or any diplomat practicing today. He was a serious and dedicated public servant, a master of what we now call “realpolitiks.” His world, like ours, was faced with intractable conflicts, and he was tireless in his efforts to resolve them. The Low Countries, then, was a land divided by sectarian violence, and his own Flemish homeland was ruled by a grossly negligent foreign occupier. (In the 16th century, Antwerp was almost a proto-Baghdad, with a full-scale Green Zone avant le lettre.) Rubens was no revolutionary. He worked within the power structures of his day to shift policy and push ideologically opposed leaders toward reconciliation. There was never a more savvy negotiator, whether he was bargaining for European peace or setting the price on one of his very expensive canvasses. He was a peaceful man but believed in the use of military force, even its pre-emptive use, but in drastic situations only. Rubens had more than one contemporary who considered him as fine a statesman as he was an artist, and that was saying something, because in that field he was, indisputably, the tops.

It would be nice if an author were somehow able to pick up Domenichino’s St. John the Evangelist (c. 1627) when it comes up for auction at Christie’s in London this December. The picture seems, as much as anything, a celebration of the act of writing and the ecstasy of the written word. True, the writing process sometimes feels more like torture than pleasure, but this is a picture about visions, so we can allow for artistic license. Here, Domenichino’s rather effeminate and disheveled St. John composes the book of Revelation on the Greek island of Patmos (not a bad writer’s retreat) and looks as if he’s barely made it out of bed (typical writerly behavior). If this were painted today, his trusted eagle and putti would be replaced by an open laptop with a live Twitter feed, a half-eaten bagel, and a large mug of fair-trade coffee. As it is, the painting is likely to draw upward of $10 million, a bit stiff for any scribe, even one named Brown or Rowling.

I’m happy and honored to report that Master of Shadows has been named an Indie Next Notable Book for November by IndieBound, the organization of America’s independent booksellers. But let me take a break from pimping my own work to mention Roberto Calasso’s latest, Tiepolo Pink. Giambattista Tiepolo isn’t a painter with whom Americans are too familiar, which is unfortunate. Here Calasso argues the Venetian has long had an unfair reputation as a lightweight, a painter of pretty, decorative pictures, and an exemplar of the Italian notion of sprezzatura, a kind of easy, effortless grace. He had that in spades, but Calasso makes a good case that there was an intellectual depth to his work that has eluded generations of flummoxed art historians. Calasso, a Milanese publisher, has written a very Italian book: It is florid, elliptical, dense, digressive, and almost preposterously erudite. You are not likely to find another study of Italian mannerism that references Sydney Greenstreet, which is probably a good thing. American art historical writing, by way of contrast, tends to be dry and straightforward, jargon-rich and politicized. Calasso, however, writes with the easy elegance of his subject (you can understand the attraction). Reading him is like unpacking a suitcase of ideas. Also, a dictionary will probably be required. The production department at Knopf ought to be especially commended for the elegant package; they have clearly lavished great care on this book. Illustrations, in color and black and white, are run through the text on thick, cream paper. Best of all is the jacket, designed by Peter Mendelsund, a lovely, spare, and clever presentation. It’s not even pink.

The big story on East 7th Street these days is the opening of Thom Mayne’s new student center for Cooper Union, on Third Avenue. It’s a pretty wacky extravagance, and it replaces a deadly dull building beloved by nobody. A block away, on the corner of Second, this story is reversed. Love Saves the Day, the iconic kitsch storefront that’s been a local landmark for decades, has given way to a humorless brown excrescence. New York is losing its history one shop at a time, a sad attrition that is the subject of my new essay in Print magazine, which doubles as a review of the new book Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, by James and Karla Murray. One of its many lessons: You wanna survive in this town? Buy the building.

My review of the Ron Arad: No Discipline exhibition now up at MoMA appears in the latest issue of ID. I’m not sold on Arad as an architect, but his material experimentation is certainly admirable and many of his chairs—and this show is mostly about chairs—are undeniably attractive, if not always functional. Though maybe just being beautiful is a function sometimes? The best thing about the show might just be the catalog, with a characteristically straightforward design by karlssonwilker and an equally sharp cover by Beverly Joel.

I’ll be participating in my first event to celebrate the publication of Master of Shadows on October 6th, here in NYC. It’s a group discussion with some other terrific writers—AJ Jacobs, David Sax, and Charles London—to be moderated by Alana Newhouse, the very fabulous editor of Tablet magazine. The event is sponsored by Reboot, hence the Jewish theme. All are welcome, even goyim. RSVP to Ja****@*******rs.net.

“Who’s your favorite architect?” I get that question a lot, but don’t enjoy answering it. I admire many architects and for different reasons, so choosing seems reductive. A quick response, which is usually the expectation, sounds potted and inadequate, and now that everyone on the planet has an opinion about architecture—which is not altogether bad—you often end up with an argument you’d rather not have. Name anyone too obscure and you’re in danger of coming off like a pompous snob. Well, whatever—I’m guilty of that. When asked I generally respond with two names unfamiliar to the uninitiated (though I wish they were not): Sasha Brodsky and Lebbeus Woods. Together they’re responsible for only a handful of standing buildings–though the catalog is growing. Their reputations, instead, rest on paper projects that catalog the traumas imposed on the individual and the urban landscape. Brodsky’s work is wry and wistful; Woods’s is more dystopic.

Over on his website, Woods has released a film treatment, “Underground Berlin,” that seems a distillation of his design philosophy into narrative form. [The image above is taken from it.] Imagine Chris Marker’s “La Jetee” crossed with “Dr. Strangelove” and “Metropolis.” Do yourself a favor and check it out. Also, you might be interested in a short bio of Woods I wrote a few years ago; It follows after the jump.

Continue reading Underground Architects

An electrical fire has done severe damage to the interior of Antwerp’s St. Charles Borromeo. Rubens designed the resplendent facade of the church, a masterpiece of baroque form, and some of its other architectural elements. A cycle of 32-paintings for the church, one of his great early commissions, was destroyed in an earlier fire, in the 18th century. Reports indicate that the many remaining art works in the church were not badly harmed, but news video shows the church filled with smoke. A major disaster.