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Anyone who has wondered what female artists might achieve if they received the same attention as men likely will be drawn to Northfield native Siri Hustvedt's latest novel.


 
In "The Blazing World" Hustvedt examines the overwhelming power of public perception in the art world through Harriet Burden, a middle aged painter and sculptor in New York. Married to a prominent art dealer, the maverick artist grows so frustrated with a patriarchal cultural hierarchy that she goes to great lengths to gain the recognition she believes she deserves.


 
"She decides that the art that she has been making for many, many years has been ignored," Hustvedt said. "And that among the reasons for people ignoring it, is the fact that she is a woman."


 
To give herself an equal platform to showcase her creations, Burden enlists three men to put their names on exhibitions of her work. In the novel, readers find excerpts from her journal, which often seethes with anger, and her disdain for her detractors.


 
"There are those in the neighborhood who call me the witch," the artist writes in the journal. "I take it on, then, the enchantment of magic and the power of night, which is procreative, fertile, wet." 


 
All three shows are smash successes, drawing critical raves, and fame for the three men. But when Burden reveals her ruse, things get very messy — particularly when one of the men insists the art is his.


 
Hustvedt describes Burden's scheme as an experiment in perception, one in which readers absorb the experiment through many different people. The book introduces 20 different narrators, from Burden and her children, friends and chance acquaintances to implacable foes who dispute her claims.


 
"These different points of view represent a kind of shifting reality so there isn't a single one of those speakers who owns the truth," Hustvedt said.


 
The story that emerges as each person chimes in becomes ever more complicated, and contradictory.


 
"That means that the reader is pushed into a position of making certain decisions through these ambiguities that appear," Hustvedt said.


 
Likely as not, the author said, those decisions will be based on a reader's own beliefs and experiences. Hustvedt said readers in a sense write the book by applying their perceptions to what they see on the page. It's a dynamic she said is stronger in "The Blazing World" than in any of her previous novels.


 
Hustvedt describes writing from all the characters' viewpoints as akin to having a multiple personality disorder, but also very satisfying.


 
"I felt genuinely liberated writing this book," she said.

 
 
Although the book received great critical praise, some reviewers complained about elitism in the story and its confusing narratives. However, "The Blazing World" was one of the first novels from the United States selected for the Man Booker Prize long list in London.


 
Hustvedt doesn't expect the book to change the world. But she likes to think it's causing a stir.


 
Lest anyone think "The Blazing World" critique only applies to art, Hustvedt points to similarities with the larger fame-obsessed culture of modern life — in which perception can be more powerful than reality.


 
"Celebrity is really about images, images that are bought and sold on the open market," she said. "The more you are photographed, the bigger a celebrity you are. It has very little anymore to do with what you do."

Arts and Culture

Euan Kerr

Author

In "The Blazing World" by Northfield native Siri Hustvedt, an artist makes a big splash by pretending men created her work.

In Siri Hustvedt's new novel, a female artist won't be ignored

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