Édouard Vuillard with Julia Frey & Beverly Held

An Evenings with an Author event at the American Library in Paris featuring art biographer Julia Frey and art historian Beverly Held. Filmed on 12/04/2022 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
Many have researched Édouard Vuillard, prolific and adventurous 20th-century painter, for his contributions to the avant-garde. But what sets Venus Betrayed (Professor Emeritus and writer Julia Frey’s study of the artist) apart is its attention to the figure behind the paintings. Indeed, Frey uses Vuillard’s body of work to access the interior state of the artist. In this way, rather than a chronology of Vuillard’s life, Frey subtly reveals this life through: his relationships with figures ranging from Toulouse-Lautrec to Mallarmé; the ideas that obsessed him; his often-tortured artistic process. This newfound access into Vuillard’s private life in turn draws out previously hidden depths from the artist’s work.
Carefully reading Vuillard’s unpublished journals and looking to his work with exacting visual analysis, Frey has produced a deeply intimate picture of the artist in life and at work. The result is a refined perspective into both the artist’s masterpieces and unfinished projects, as well as a striking argument for the relationship between artistic atmosphere and production. Venus Betrayed reinvigorates the genre of biography, infusing new motivations and stakes into the project of reading art through the lens of life.
Copies of Venus Betrayed will be for sale at a discounted price during the event thanks to Bill & Rosa’s Book Room (Paris West - Boulogne). After the event, additional copies may be ordered by contacting [e-mail].
About the speakers:
Julia Frey, PhD in French literature and culture, is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. A biographer and novelist, she is the author of Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, which received the 1995 Pen Center West Nonfiction Literary Award, and Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary. She currently resides in France.
Beverly Held, PhD in History of Art, was the founding director of San Francisco Arts & Humanities Seminars, a non-profit educational organization. Held now writes a weekly newsletter on art exhibitions, collectors, and collections in and around Paris where she spends most of her time running from one exhibition to another.
Evenings with an Author is sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.

[@prolificF8]

Thank you for this talk. I just purchased the book and was glad to hear the question on order. I will proceed accordingly.
Side note: "Nobody wants to buy a book a man who's name they can't pronounce." < ????!!!!! Unbelievable that anyone would make such a statement. What about VanGogh? People (outside of the Netherlands) had a hard time pronouncing his name and from what I understand it is why he signed his artwork Vincent. And yet, how many VanGogh books have sold? OK that's the end of my rant. :)
Thank you again. Glad you went forward and wrote Vuillard's biography.

[@magicknight13]

Totally agree!!