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(contact Elise Smith at smithel@millsaps.edu if you have any additions
to this list)
I. NOVELS
Archer, Jeffrey. False Impression. St. Martin's Press, 2006 (mystery
about a Van Gogh painting)
Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. 2003 (murder in the Louvre)
Burley, W.J. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine. London: Orion, 2000
(murder mystery set at an artists' colony near St. Ives, England)
Carson, Ciaran. Shamrock Tea. Granta Books, 2002 (involving Jan
van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait)
Chessman, Harriet Scott. Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper.
Plume, 2002 (novel about Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia)
Chevalier, Tracy. Girl with a Pearl Earring. New York: Penguin,
1999 (about Vermeer and one of his models)
_____. The Lady and the Unicorn. Dutton, 2003 (novel about the
making of the six medieval unicorn tapestries in the Cluny Museum, Paris)
Davenport, Will. The Painter. Bantam, 2003 (novel about finding
a journal related to a love affair of Rembrandt)
Davies, Robertson. What's Bred in the Bone? Macmillan, 1985 (about
fictional artist and collector in Toronto)
Diliberto, Gioia. I am Madame X. Scribner, 2003 (about John Singer
Sargent's portrait of Madame X)
Dunant, Sarah. The Birth of Venus. 2003 (Set in 15th-century Florence,
this novel is about a young woman who wants to be a painter)
Elkins, Aaron. Loot (1999) (mystery about a retired Boston art
curator)
_____. Mystery series about a curator at the Seattle Arts Museum, including
Deceptive Clarity (1987), Glancing Light (1991), and
Old Scores (1994)
_____. Mystery series about a forensic anthropologist, including Old
Bones (1995)
Everett, Peter. The Voyages of Alfred Wallis. London: Vintage,
2000 (novel about an early 20th-century artist in St. Ives)
Fairstein, Linda. The Bone Vault. New York: Scribner, 2003 (mystery
about the murder of a curator at the Metropolitan Museum)
Flanagan, Richard. Gould's Book of Fish. Grove Press, 2003 (novel
about a thief, prisoner, and painter in 1830s Tasmania)
Follett, Ken. The Pillars of the Earth (1989) (novel about the
building of a medieval cathedral)
Frayn, Michael. Headlong. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999
(novel about the discovery of a new Bruegel painting)
Gash, Jonathan. The Rich and the Profane (2000)(series of art
mysteries with the protagonist Lovejoy)
Harr, Jonathan. The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece.
New York: Random House, 2005 (novelistic account of actual events)
Kilmer, Nicholas. Lazarus, Arise. Scottsdale: Poisoned Pen Press,
2001 (mystery about a medieval illumination, set in Boston) - other art
mysteries by Kilmer include Dirty Linen, Man with a Squirrel,
Harmony in Flesh and Black, and O Sacred Head
Lapierre, Alexandra. Artemisia. New York: Grove, 2000 (novel about
Artemisia Gentileschi)
Mahfouz, Naguib. Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth (novel about the
New Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh by the Nobel Laureate Egyptian author)
Malcolm, John. Simpson's Homer. London: Allison & Busby, 2001
(most recent in series about an art historian & amateur detective;
about a Winslow Homer)
Matton, Sylvia. Rembrandt's Whore. Grove, 2003 reprint (novel
about Rembrandt's mistress Hendrickje Stoffels, told in her voice)
Mayle, Peter. Chasing Cezanne. Vintage, 1998 (mystery about an
art photographer and a stolen Cezanne)
McGregor, Elizabeth. The Girl in the Green Glass Mirror (about
an art evaluator and a painting by the Victorian painter Richard Dadd)
McKean, James. Quattrocento. New York: Random House, 2002 (about
an art restorer at the Met, a Leonardo portrait, and the 15th-century
court of Urbino)
Moggach, Deborah. Tulip Fever. Delta, 2001 (about the world of
artists and tulip-merchants in 17th-century Amsterdam)
Page, Martin. The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa (mystery about the
theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre)
Pears, Iain. The Immaculate Deception. London: HarperCollins,
2001 (other art mysteries by Pears include The Last Judgment, The
Raphael Affair, The Titian Committee, Death and Restoration,
Giotto's Hand, and The Bernini Bust)
Perez-Reverte, Arturo. The Flanders Panel. New York: Harcourt,
1994 (mystery & historical novel about an art restorer and a 15th
century painting)
Peters, Elizabeth. Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery
(1973)(series of five mysteries about an art historian; the others are
Street of the Five Moons, Silhouette in Scarlet, Trojan
Gold, and Night Train to Memphis)
Robb, Peter. M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio. Henry Holt &
Co., 2000 (reconstruction of the life of Caravaggio)
Rucker, Rudy. As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel. Forge,
2002.
Santlofer, Jonathan. The Death Artist: A Novel of Suspense. New
York: William Morrow, 2002 (thriller in which the murders are staged like
famous paintings)
_____. The Killing Art. William Morrow, 2005 (mystery about cop
Kate McKinnon, who follows art clues to solve murders and art vandalism)
Stone, Irving. The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Novel of Michelangelo
(1961)
Swan, Thomas. The Final Faberge: A Novel of Suspense. New York:
Onyx, 2001 (art crime series with Scotland Yard detective; others in the
series include TheCezanne Chase and The Da Vinci Deception)
Stier, Serena. Deadly Illumination: A Gilded Age Mystery. Dallas:
Durban, 2001 (art mystery set in 1890s New York)
Truman, Margaret. Murder in the Smithsonian. Fawcett, 1985.
_____. Murder at the National Gallery. Fawcett, 1997.
Van Adler, T. C. St. Agatha's Breast (2001) (novel about paintings
stolen from an Italian monastery)
Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Way to Paradise. New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 2003 (novel about Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan)
Vickers, Sally. Miss Garnet's Angel. London: HarperCollins, 2000
(novel about an Englishwoman in Venice, an art dealer, and two art restorers)
Vreeland, Susan. Girl in Hyacinth Blue. New York: Penguin, 1999
(novel tracing provenance of unknown Vermeer painting; film with Glenn
Close, 2003)
_____. Life Studies. Viking, 2004 (short stories based on personal
lives and works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists)
_____. The Passion of Artemisia. New York: Penguin, 2002 (novel
about Artemisia Gentileschi, written in the first person)
Watkins, Paul. The Forger. London: Faber, 2000 (novel about an
artist and art forger in Paris in 1939)
Watson, Peter. Landscape of Lies. Athenaeum, 1989 (art mystery
about a 16th-century painting that serves as a treasure map)
Wilson, James. The Dark Clue. London: Faber, 2001 (novel set in
mid 19th-century England, about a biographer of J.M.W. Turner)
Zuravleff, Mary Kay. The Bowl is Already Broken. Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 2005 (entertaining novel about an Asian art museum's acting
director, written by former editor of exhibition texts at the Freer and
Sackler galleries of Asian art)
No information:
Gee, Sue. Earth & Heaven. London: Headline, 2000.
Hook, Philip. An Innocent Eye. London: Coronet, 2000.
Lester, Judy. Masterpiece of Deception. Toronto: Sumach Press,
2001.
Other (especially biography or not-quite fiction):
King, Ross. Brunelleschi's Dome. New York: Penguin, 2001.
_____. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. Walker & Co., 2003.
II. FILMS
Andrei Rublev (1966) - directed by Andrei Tarkovsky - about a
15th-century Russian icon painter
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) - directed by Carol Reed - about
the conflict between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II
(Rex Harrison)
Artemisia (1997) - directed by Agnes Merlet - French-Italian-German
production about the life of Artemisia Gentileschi
Basquiat (1996) - directed by Julian Schnabel - about a young
artist-protégé of Andy Warhol in the 1980s - Warhol is played
by David Bowie - supporting cast includes Dennis Hopper, Willem Dafoe,
Benicio del Toro, Parker Posey, Christopher Walken, and Courtney Love
Boogie Woogie (2002?) - about the NY art scene, based on Danny
Moynihan's book
Bride of the Wind (2001) - directed by Bruce Beresford - story
of Oskar Kokoschka (Vincent Perez), Alma Mahler, and Walter Gropius, with
soundtrack of Gustav Mahler's music
Brush with Fate (2003) - Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie based
on Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue, starring Glenn Close
and Ellen Burstyn
Bunuel and King Solomon's Table (2001) - about Luis Bunuel and
Salvador Dali, directed by Carlos Saura
Camille Claudel (1988) - directed by Bruno Nuytten - French production
about Camille Claudel (played by Isabelle Adjani) and Auguste Rodin (played
by Gerard Depardieu)
Caravaggio - directed by Derek Jarman
Chihwaseon Drunk on Women and Poetry (Korea, 2002) - directed
by Im Kwon-taek (best director award at Cannes, 2002) - about the 19th-century
Korean painter Jang Seung-ub
Dirty Pictures (2000) - directed by Frank Pierson - Showtime TV
movie (available on video) starring James Woods "as Dennis Barrie,
the former director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, who
in 1990 was tried for--and acquitted of--obscenity when he presented a
Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition containing homoerotic photographs"
(ArtNews Dec. 1999, 33)
Factory Girl (2006) - directed by George Hickenlooper - about
Edie Sedgwick, Warhol's muse, starring Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce
Frida (1984) - directed by Paul Leduc - Mexican production of
life of Frida Kahlo (played by Ofelia Medina)
Frida (2002) - about Frida Kahlo, starring Salma Hayek
Fur (2006) - about photographer Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) - directed by Peter Webber, starring
Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth - film about Vermeer and his model,
from Tracy Chevalier novel
The Good Thief - with Nick Nolte
Goya (upcoming? 2002-03) - directed by Milos Forman
Goya in Bordeaux (1999) - directed by Carlos Saura - Italian-Spanish
production about Francisco Goya's late period
Incognito (1997) - directed by John Badham, starring Jason Patric
and Irene Jacob - about a forger of a Rembrandt painting
Joe Gould's Secret (2000) - directed by Stanley Tucci - Susan
Sarandon as the painter Alice Neel, and Ian Holm as her homeless Harvard-dropout
model
The Leni Riefenstahl Project (2001-02?) - about the 1920s-30s
German filmmaker, starring Jodi Foster
Lovers, Liars and Thieves (2002?) - about the 1911 theft of the
Mona Lisa, starring Robin Williams, Renee Zellweger, and Antonio Banderas
- directed by Jeremy Leven
Lust for Life (1956) - directed by Vincente Minnelli - about Vincent
Van Gogh (played by Kirk Douglas) and Paul Gauguin (played by Anthony
Quinn, who won an Oscar for this performance)
Modigliani (2004) - directed by Mick Davis, starring Andy Garcia
- other films about this artist: Montparnasse 19 (1958), directed by Jacques
Becker, and Modi (1990), directed by Franco Brogi Taviani
Mona Lisa Smile (2003) - about an art history professor at Wellesley
in the 1950s, starring Julia Roberts
The Napoleon of Crime - (1999?) - Robert Redford as the 19th-century
British master art thief Adam Worth (who stole Gainsborough's portrait
of the Duchess of Devonshire in 1876
Picasso at the Lapin Agile (2001-02?) - film adaptation of Steve
Martin's play, set in 1904, about a fictitious meeting between Picasso
and Einstein
Pollock (2000) - directed by and starring Ed Harris as Jackson
Pollock, with Marcia Gay Harden as Lee Krasner (for which she won an Oscar)
The Rape of the Sabine Women (2007) - directed by Eve Sussman
- Jacques-Louis David's painting transposed to Europe in the 1960s
Rivers and Tides (2000) - dir. by Thomas Reidelsheimer - documentary
film about the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy
Surviving Picasso (1996) - directed by James Ivory - Anthony Hopkins
as Picasso, with Natascha McElhone as his young lover - also starring
Julianne Moore and Joan Plowright
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) - directed by John McTiernan -
starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo - story about an art thief and
insurance investigator - remake of 1968 movie of the same name (but about
a bank robber), starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway
Till the End of Time (2000?) - about O'Keeffe (Linda Fiorentino)
and Stieglitz (Ben Kingsley), directed by Marek Kanievska
Van Gogh (1992?) - directed by Maurice Pialat, starring Jacques
Dutronc
The Venice Project (1999) - directed by Robert Dornhelm - shot
at the 1999 Venice Biennale, about a painter played by Ed Ruscha and his
dealer (Stockard Channing), also starring Dennis Hopper, Lauren Bacall,
and Parker Posey (and Frank Gehry, who plays himself)
III. SONGS (lyrics at bottom of list, when available)
The Bangles - "Walk Like an Egyptian" (1986)
Don McLean - "Vincent" (1971)
Edgar Winter - "Alta Mira" - from album They Only Come Out
at Night (1972)
Futureheads - "Man Ray" - from album The Futureheads (2004)
Jonathan Richman - "Pablo Picasso" - from album Jonathan
Richman and the Modern Lovers (1977)(covered by David Bowie on his
album Reality)
Rufus Wainwright - "The Art Teacher" - from album Want Two
(2004)
Talking Heads - "Artists Only" - from album More Songs about
Buildings and Food (1990)
Songs about Mona Lisa:
"Mona Lisa" by Nat King Cole (1950) Graham Parker & Aaron
Neville & Guster
"Mona Lisa" by Willie Nelson, from album Somewhere over the
Rainbow (1981)
"Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" by Elton John, from album Honky
Chateau
"A Mona Lisa" by Counting Crows (written 1992, unreleased).
"Mona Lisa" by Britney Spears
"Mona Lisa" by Unheilig
"Walk Like an Egyptian" (The Bangles)
All the old paintings on the tombs
They do the sand dance don't you know
If they move too quick (oh whey oh)
They're falling down like a domino
All the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet
Gold crocodiles (oh whey oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette
Foreign types with the hookah pipes say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian
Blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor
They've got the moves (oh whey oh)
You drop your drink then they bring you more
All the school kids so sick of books
They like the punk and the metal band
When the buzzer rings (oh whey oh)
They're walking like an Egyptian
All the kids in the marketplace say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian
Slide your feet up the street bend your back
Shift your arm then you pull it back
Life is hard you know (oh whey oh)
So strike a pose on a Cadillac
If you want to find all the cops
They're hanging out in the donut shop
They sing and dance (oh whey oh)
Spin the clubs cruise down the block
All the Japanese with their yen
The party boys call the Kremlin
And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)
They walk the line like Egyptian
All the cops in the donut shop say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian
Walk like an Egyptian
"Vincent" (Don McLean)
Starry
starry night
paint your palette blue and grey
look out on a summer's day
with eyes that know the
darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills
sketch the trees and the daffodils
catch the breeze and the winter chills
in colors on the snowy linen land.
And now I understand what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
they did not know how
perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry
starry night
flaming flo'rs that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in
Vincent's eyes of China blue.
Colors changing hue
morning fields of amber grain
weathered faces lined in pain
are soothed beneath the artist's
loving hand.
And now I understand what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.
perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you
but still your love was true
and when no hope was left in sight on that starry
starry night.
You took your life
as lovers often do;
But I could have told you
Vincent
this world was never
meant for one
as beautiful as you.
Starry
starry night
portraits hung in empty halls
frameless heads on nameless walls
with eyes
that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the stranger that you've met
the ragged men in ragged clothes
the silver thorn of bloddy rose
lie crushed and broken
on the virgin snow.
And now I think I know what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
they're not
list'ning still
perhaps they never will.
"Alta Mira" (Edgar Winter)
Yesterday I said goodbye to all my misery
I floated down the river just to see what I could see
Yesterday I said goodbye to all my misery
I came upon the ocean and its beauty took me in
I floated down the river just to see what I could see
A bird's course may take my mind is where I must begin
I came upon the ocean and its beauty took me in
A bird's course may take my mind is where I must begin
Alta Mira, oh set my spirit free
Alta Mira, like the wind that moves the sea
Alta Mira, oh set my spirit free
Alta Mira, let it set your spirit free
Alta Mira, like the wind that moves the sea
Alta Mira, we can live in harmony
Alta Mira, let it set your spirit free
Alta Mira, we can live in harmony
The sun was like a burnin' flame
That sinks beneath the sea
The sun was like a burnin' flame
Beckoning with all its color
That sinks beneath the sea
Come and follow me
Beckoning with all its color
Its flame was my reflection
Come and follow me
Though I knew it wasn't real
Its flame was my reflection
I had to find out what it was
Though I knew it wasn't real
And how it made you feel
I had to find out what it was
And how it made you feel
Alta Mira, set my spirit free
Alta Mira, like the wind that moves the sea
Alta Mira, set my spirit free
Alta Mira, let it set your spirit free
Alta Mira, like the wind that moves the sea
Alta Mira, we can live in harmony
Alta Mira, let it set your spirit free
Alta Mira, we can live in harmony
Hey, Alta Mira…
Set my spirit free…
Hey, Alta Mira…
Set my spirit free…
"Man Ray" (Futureheads)
It gives me manray
It's what we like
It gives me weston
Touch eachother in black and white
Eia eia eieieia, eia eia eieieia, eia eia eieieia etc..
Where did your hands go
When you thought i was your life
I could see his hands
They were touching you all night
And where did your hands go
When you thought i was your life
I could see his hands
They were touching you all night
Touching you all night night night
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Give me manray
It's what we like
Give me weston
Touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself touch yourself / touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
Touch yourself, touch yourself, touch eachother in black and white
"Pablo Picasso" (Jonathan Richman)
Well some people [guys] try to pick up girls / And get called [the] assholes.
/ This never happened to Pablo Picasso - He could walk down your street
/ And girls could not resist his stare and so / Pablo Picasso was never
called an asshole [some verses or versions: Not like You; Not in New York]
- Well [in Paris and New York] the girls would turn the color / Of the
avocado when he would drive / Down their street in his El Dorado. - He
was only five foot three / And girls could not resist his stare.
NOTE: Lyrics are from Modern Lovers (1976) version, with lyrical variants
from Precise indicated in brackets [ ].
Additional lines from Precise version:
And all the problems the young men of New York City have with women were
not those of Pablo Picasso. / In New York City some guys try to pick up
girls, it's unsuccessful tries. They don't realize it's all in the eyes
of Pablo Picasso. / Now for that New York subway sound... / Be not shmuck,
be not obnoxious, be not bell-bottom bummer or asshole, remember the story
of Pablo Picasso.
"The Art Teacher" (Rufus Wainwright)
There I was in uniform
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favorite work of art was,
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him --
Oh, I wish I could have told him
I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man
All this having been said,
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner - I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing,
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man
"Artists Only" (Talking Heads)
I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You can't see it 'til it's finished
I don't have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont' have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now I'm going to take me to you.
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