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Portrait of an Unknown Lady

por María Gainza

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1325205,619 (3.23)11
Fiction. Literature. Mystery. HTML:A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
 
New York Times Notable author María Gainza, who dazzled critics with Optic Nerve, returns with the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger
In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?
 
On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us ??not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist.?
 
Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by "authenticity" in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and wha
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Mostrando 5 de 5
An interesting and somewhat circular story featuring an amateur detective. Buenos Aires. A former auction house employee (who was forced out due to questionable but not unusual ethics in the 1960s/70s) and recently let go art critic has decided to search down the supposed master forger whose works passed through her hands. She meets people and visits places she frequented all those years ago--but was her name really Renée? Is there any chance she is still alive? Can she find her, or any hidden stash or proof that it was she who forged so many portraits by Mariette Lydis?

This book is certainly interesting, but I think, for me, it would have worked better on paper. The narration is fine, I just think the writing style and organization lend themselves better to paper (for me). ( )
  Dreesie | Dec 11, 2022 |
A fascinating look inside the world of art forgery that complements a contemplative mystery about a woman's identity. (Well - mystery may be an overstatement - there is no clean answer to the who-is-she question.) We follow the narrator as she treks through Argentina to uncover the real identities, and importantly the motivations, of two women who have simultaneous reputations in the "legit" art world and the underground of art forgery. This is a new author to me and there are a handful of turns of phrase that stopped me in my tracks. Highly recommended. ( )
  sparemethecensor | Jul 10, 2022 |
I've been left feeling a bit lukewarm as regards María Gainza's Portrait of an Unknown Lady. It's one of those cases where the problem is a mix of my perhaps having misjudged what the book would be like and the promotional material for the book promising something other than what the book actually is.

The GoodReads promo opens by describing Portrait of an Unknown Lady as "the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger" and goes on to say "In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she seems especially gifted at forging canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentine high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?" So, I was expecting a mystery novel more or less.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady, however, is not a mystery novel in the traditional narrative sense. Instead, it's more an impressionistic novel that gives readers a chance to piece together the unfleshed bones of a story through careful reading. Our unnamed female narrator finds work as the assistant to a woman charged with authenticating paintings for one of Argentina's major banks (she never does work as an auction house employee as far as I can tell). From there we go to the topic of forgeries and a brief-ish description of a group of art students who sometimes make a living by producing forgeries. Throw in the text of an auction catalogue for an artist's memorabilia and minor works that may or may not be forged. Then round things out with vague interviews attempting to pin down the life story of one of those sometimes-forging students years later when it's no longer clear whether she's even alive.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady reminds me a bit of Umberto Eco's Numero Zero—there's a story in there, but it comes in slices without the connecting threads that could weave it into something more substantial. If you're interested in recent Argentine literature, this novel is worth checking out and will give you some interesting moments to turn over once you've finished reading. If your real joy is the mystery genre, this title is likely to disappoint.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss+; the opinions are my own. ( )
2 vote Sarah-Hope | Jan 13, 2022 |
Een speelse, maar niet helemaal overtuigende roman over een obscuur groepje kunstvervalsers in Buenos Aires en over de vraag naar wat de waarde van kunst bepaalt. Speels, want zijpaden, verwijzingen, losse draden, namedropping bij de vleet ... niet helemaal overtuigend omdat Gainza minder tijd steekt in het oppikken van de kruimels en het opwerpen van rookgordijnen dan bvb. Roberto Bolano ... Met amper 171 pagina's duurt deze zoektocht/mystificatie simpelweg niet lang genoeg om er volledig in mee te gaan. ( )
  razorsoccam | May 11, 2019 |
Esta es una novela sobre falsificadores y falsarios, con personajes reales que parecen de ficción. La narradora, una crítica de arte que trabajó para una tasadora por cuyas manos pasaban obras falsificadas, relata una historia singular, aunque advierte: «No esperen nombres, estadísticas, fechas. Lo sólido se me escapa, solo queda entre mis dedos una atmósfera imprecisa, técnicamente soy una impresionista de la vieja escuela. Además, todos estos años en el mundo del arte me han vuelto un ser desconfiado. Sospecho en especial de los historiadores que con sus datos precisos y notas heladas a pie de página ejercen sobre el lector una coerción siniestra. Le dicen: ?Esto fue así.? A esta altura de mi vida yo aprecio las gentilezas, prefiero que me digan: ?Supongamos que así sucedió.?» En el centro de la trama hay un personaje llamado la Negra, que falsifica lienzos de la pintora Mariette Lydis, retratista de la alta sociedad bonaerense, y tirando de ese hilo aparece otro artista del fraude, Federico Manuel Vogelius, falsificador de obras de Pedro Figari. Aparecen también un lugar llamado Hotel Melancólico en el que viven varios artistas, y una película de culto sobre beatniks bonaerenses en la que asoma la Negra, figura escurridiza donde las haya... Esta es una novela sobre el arte y la vida, sobre el engaño y la manipulación, sobre la realidad y la ficción, sobre lo vivido y lo contado; una narración sinuosa, enigmática y envolvente que seduce y atrapa. Tras deslumbrar a la crítica con El nervio óptico, María Gainza vuelve a tomar el mundo de la pintura como punto de partida y despliega de nuevo su inusitado talento en una obra magnética.
  bibliron | Mar 18, 2019 |
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Fiction. Literature. Mystery. HTML:A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
 
New York Times Notable author María Gainza, who dazzled critics with Optic Nerve, returns with the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger
In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?
 
On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us ??not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist.?
 
Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by "authenticity" in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and wha

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