Sleaze and soft porn about sums it up for me. I admit I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole book – the first hundred pages and bits of the middle and end. I felt like Mary Whitehouse – remember her! So here’s my rant:The idea of covering young attractive people, mainly female, with paint then requiring them to hold a pose without moving for 6 to 8 hours a day is interesting. Presumably it occurred to the author, seeing all the busking ‘statues’ around city centres, painted and still. But in the book these were mainly naked females including adolescents, ‘primed’ as canvases. Señor Somoza might have done some physiology research. If you cover anyone completely with paint, any kind of paint, they will die in a lot less than 6 hours. Our bodies breathe not only through lungs but through our skin. Remember the dead woman in Goldfinger? Covered in gold paint without a little patch left to breathe through, she died. Somoza also mentions them being primed with zinc white and lead white. Both are toxic if one is covered in it, lead white especially so. No one would survive long. I suppose a work of fiction can take what licence it cares to, but if he wants us to believe in the people/paintings, which he spends hundreds of pages telling us about in detail he could have been more realistic about how they were painted.These naked young women, depilated except for their heads, are put through not just the process of being painted and unmoving for 6-8 hours/day, sometimes in postures which result in them being taken away on stretchers at the end of the day, but are also ‘stretched’. This appears to be a mixture of participation in the art work plus challenges set by the artist up to including outright abuse. These people must give up all personality and submit to the artist. Is this sounding more and more like the Marquis de Sade’s basement?The people/paintings are sold. They go off with the buyer for a specified period – months or years – and ‘work’ 8 hour days being a work of art. Sometimes there are substitutes who take over. The venue could be anywhere in the world. Somoza doesn’t tell us how they are repainted each day, an essential, I would have thought, to remaining a work of art. He does tell us that the buyer pays ‘rent’. Of course, these naked young women, some as young as 12, will be perfectly safe because no art collector would imagine anything improper. Young men are involved as well.As well as the ‘canvases’ there are human ‘ornaments’ who perform functions such as waiting on tables while naked, depilated and painted. They can be bought and collected. One hardly notices that the purple waitress has her shaved purple pudenda in your face. Other ornaments are for touching.Well, it all turns out that art is destruction as well as creation. The end of the book was sheer narcissism.There is something of half-spoken sexual fantasy in all this. Something guilty and dirty that cannot quite be spoken. It’s unattractive, to say the least.End rant.
Книга като тази те карат да въздъхнеш облекчено, че не живееш в толкова сбъркан свят, но също така те кара да се замислиш, колко ли време ни дели от нещо подобно. Когато човек е празен и не намира смисъл и причина за съществуването си, много лесно би станал жертва на подобно течение, което зад фасадата на „възвишеното изкуство“ крие уродливото си лице. Нима вече не е факт огромният брой хора, които вярват на шамани, гурута и всякакви измислени сладкодумни шарлатани. Светът става все по-либерален, все по-малко неща ни шокират, ставаме все по-дебелокожи, апатични и безразлични. Всеки ден ни заливат с купища лоши новини и трагедии, които са толкова много и пристигат с такава скорост,че нямаме време да ги запомним, а какво остава да ги осъзнаем и разберем…Такива мисли ми навя автора с тази история, подейства ми като разтърсване, показвайки ми какво може да се случи, ако му позволим.https://knijensviat.wordpress.com/201...
Do You like book The Art Of Murder (2005)?
Μια υπέροχη, ευφυέστατη και πρωτότυπη ιδέα , αυτή της υπερδραματικής τέχνης, έχει συλλάβει ο συγγραφέας Χοσέ Κάρλος Σομόθα. Ομολογώ πως στην αρχή ενθουσιάστηκα το βρήκα υπέροχο, τέχνη πάνω σε ανθρώπινους καμβάδες. Μου άρεσε η γραφή του, αλλά δυστυχώς δεν μπόρεσε να με πάρει η ιστορία μαζί της, να με ταξιδέψει. Με κούρασε η ανάλυση και οι πολλές λεπτομέρειες γύρω από την υπερδραματική τέχνη. Κατάφερε παρόλα αυτά σε αρκετά σημεία να με κάνει να προβληματιστώ για την αξία της ανθρώπινης ζωής...Αν είχα διαβάσει το βιβλίο αυτό δέκα χρόνια πριν, ίσως να το χαρακτήριζα συγκλονιστικό. Σήμερα όμως νομίζω πως η πραγματικότητα έχει ξεπεράσει την φαντασία. Δυστυχώς η ανθρώπινη ζωή δεν έχει καμιά αξία και θυσιάζεται με μεγάλη ευκολία στον βωμό του χρήματος και του κέρδους.Μπορεί να μην χρησιμοποιούνται ακόμα οι άνθρωποι ως καμβάδες πάνω στους οποίους μεγαλουργούν "μεγάλοι" ζωγράφοι. Χρησιμοποιούνται όμως χειρότερα κι από αντικείμενα μιας χρήσης, για να υπηρετήσουν τα συμφέροντα των λεγόμενων "σωτήρων" τους!Και αυτό γίνεται δίχως να χρειάζεται να βαφτιστεί "τέχνη".
—Yiota Misiou
Posiblemente Somozaq sea el mejor escritor de thrillers en España. Su imaginación no tiene límites y esa mezcla eterna entre lo imposible y lo verosimil siempre se diluye deliciosamente. Todas sus propuestas nacxen de escenas o situaciones muchas veces poco crebles o poca apegadas a nuestra realidad para convertirse en un fresco aterrador de lo que nos rodea. Con Clara y la penumbra nos introduce en un pervertido mundo artístíco tan imposible conmo real.Hablaremos de muchas c osas, de la degeadación humana, del sentido del Arte, del capitalismo y todo esto haciendo que pasemos la spáginas de manera automática. Lo que más me gusta es la construcción de los capitulos. Con su introduccion de arte HD, su manifiesto y como esas formas o esos colores acaban introduciéndose en el capitulo. a VECES UNO SE DA CUENTA DE QUE QUIEN ESCRIBE ES ALGUIEN CN UN MUNDO PROPIO. Y Somoza tiene su propio universo espeando a que lo descubramos
—Lander
This is an amazing thriller. The suspense builds up and the book gets darker and darker as it progresses. At the end I literally screamed out loud at one point because the suspense got too much for me. I've read all sorts in my time but I've never actually screamed at a book before. Luckily I was alone at home so I didn't get any strange looks from anyone. However this books also explores issues around modern art. How far could it go? What IS art? Who decides if something is art or not? I enjoyed that part of the book too but if you are not interested in it it's mainly introduced as thoughts or comments made by various characters so you could just let that part wash over you and not engage with it.
—JackieB
