American author Dave Eggers delivers a “great American novel” centred around art and the art world in his new novel Contrapposto. The novel takes readers through fifty years of the main character’s life. Along the way he also considers the nature of art, developments in the art world and the broader world.
When Contrapposto opens Robert Dibb is ten. He lives with his mother and her abusive partner. Robert’s safe place is drawing and it is something he is very good at, to the point where his mother uses her limited funds to find him a local art teacher. At this time also he meets the slightly older (she is 12) and much wilder Pia, who encourages him to help her with a bit of pointed graffiti. It is at this time that Robert gets the nickname Cricket and decides that given everything that is going on in his life he would rather be Cricket. In the second section of the book Cricket is 15 and working in a railway convenience store. He enrols himself in a life drawing class in nearby Chicago and dreams that this will be his gateway to becoming a great artist. But he is brought down by his naivete. At twenty Cricket enrols in a local art school and finds another mentor. Succeeding sections catch up with Cricket at various later points in his life in which he grows and matures but circumstances always prevent him from reaching his full potential.
And always there is Olympia, the Pia he met when he was ten. Olympia is wild, impulsive and entitled. She is everything that Cricket is not, his counterpose. Cricket carries a torch for Olympia from the time that he meets her, but she does not have his constancy. While Cricket is struggling to make ends meet Olympia draws on family money to travel overseas, work for major galleries, make her own art or promote upcoming artists through her own galleries. Olympia does care for Cricket, though, and wants to see him succeed, only she often ends up sabotaging his efforts in some thoughtless way.
Cricket is an engaging if frustrating central character. Readers get a sense of his raw talent but somehow he is never really able to convert it into a living. He is slightly passive, accepting life as it comes to him, but he is also incredibly loyal to his friends and will go out of his way to help them. Cricket is an observer, he has a clear-eyed way of seeing the world, its foibles and its contradictions but can never seem to turn that understanding to his advantage.
While Contrapposto is driven by its central relationship it is also a book about art. Eggers is interested in the different artistic movements, how art is made, what art is meant to do, how it is monetised and marketed, how it is critiqued. The title itself refers to a particular asymmetric pose in art that creates a more natural form (eg Michelangelo’s David). And while all of that might sound a little esoteric, Eggers elicits these ideas through his characters, their encounters with other artists, and discussions of their works. There are plenty of novels about art and artists but Eggers manages to find new angles and ways of looking at this topic and introducing readers to new ways of thinking about it. While he exposes some hypocrisies and charlatans, Eggers takes a more nuanced view of the art world making Contrapposto slightly less didactic and critical than some of his other novels (although it can get a little speechy at times).
Contrapposto, for all of its foreign locations (Cricket eventually ends up in Turkey, Thailand and Paris), is a very American novel. It is a book that seeks to explore universal themes but does it through very American characters who remain so even in foreign settings. That is not a criticism, just an observation that it fits within a canon of authors like Donna Tartt, Ann Patchett, TC Boyle or Barabra Kingsolver. Contrapposto is an overall engaging, well observed, thought provoking and often frustrating (in a good way) novel. Eggers, when he is on form, is one of America’s best novelists. And in Contrapposto he is on form.
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
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