{"id":93760,"date":"2016-01-25T14:30:29","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T19:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93760"},"modified":"2016-01-25T14:35:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T19:35:42","slug":"do-you-like-monkeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/25\/do-you-like-monkeys\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gayety of Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Karen Blixen in Copenhagen, 1957.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What is your favorite fruit?<\/p>\n

DINESEN<\/p>\n

Strawberries.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you like monkeys?<\/p>\n

DINESEN<\/p>\n

Yes, I love them in art: In pictures, in stories, in porcelain, but in life they somehow look so sad. They make me nervous. I like lions and gazelles.<\/p>\n

\u2014Isak Dinesen, the Art of Fiction No. 14<\/a>, 1956<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When Isak Dinesen gave her 1956 Art of Fiction<\/a>\u00a0interview, she was into her seventies. It\u2019s one of the strangest entries in the Review<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Writers at Work series.\u00a0While the focus is, naturally, on Dinesen\u2019s work as an author, the artist, also known as Baroness Karen Christentze Blixen-Finecke, addresses her career as a painter, too:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

When I was quite young, for a while I studied painting at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts; then I went to Paris in 1910 to study with Simon and Menard, but (she chuckles<\/em>) … but I did little work. The impact of Paris was too great; I felt it was more important to go about and see pictures, to see Paris, in fact. I painted a little in Africa, portraits of the natives mostly, but every time I\u2019d get to work, someone would come up and say an ox has died or something, and I\u2019d have to go out in the fields.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Part of the interview even takes place in a museum, where Dinesen admires several pieces and buys postcards. There are not a great many of her own works extant, although at the the Karen Blixen Museum, outside Copenhagen, you can see a number of her oil paintings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her art is akin to her writing in that it\u2019s skillful, often delicately lovely, sometimes problematic, occasionally faux-naif, and deceptively complex. It is, to my eyes, beautiful. Whether that\u2019s a recommendation is up to you\u2014but\u00a0if the subject interests you, you should seek out a book from 1965 called Isak Dinesen\u2019s Art: The Gayety of Vision<\/a><\/em>, by Robert Woodrow Langbaum. Some of Langbaum\u2019s observations are dated to modern eyes\u2014for instance, today, the dynamic between Dinesen and her \u201cnative sitters\u201d is as necessarily acknowledged as her written portrayals in Out of Africa<\/em>. But it\u2019s an interesting introduction to the author\u2019s multiple contradictions\u2014her willful optimism and hardened fatalism\u2014as well as the aesthetic pleasures of her still lifes and portraits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Four of Blixen\u2019s paintings from the Karen Blixen Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

INTERVIEWER What is your favorite fruit? DINESEN Strawberries. INTERVIEWER Do you like monkeys? DINESEN Yes, I love them in art: In pictures, in stories, in porcelain, but in life they somehow look so sad. They make me nervous. I like lions and gazelles. \u2014Isak Dinesen, the Art of Fiction No. 14, 1956 When Isak Dinesen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[35,1132,1549,20890,8620,1298,67,20889,7782,10113],"class_list":["post-93760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-art","tag-interviews","tag-isak-dinesen","tag-isak-dinesens-art-the-gayety-of-vision","tag-karen-blixen","tag-out-of-africa","tag-painting","tag-robert-woodrow-langbaum","tag-the-art-of-fiction","tag-writers-at-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsak Dinesen\u2019s Art Is as Good as Her Writing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 25, 2016 \u2013 INTERVIEWERWhat is your favorite fruit?DINESENStrawberries.INTERVIEWERDo you like monkeys?DINESENYes, I love them in art: In 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