This is the first library text written by About Art Guest Contributor Gracie Newman.
There are many excellent novels about artists. The best ones elucidate the vital, inextricable tangle between the visual and the textual. White on White by Ayşegül Savaş is one such example. This short novel, published in 2021, is narrated by a young scholar of Gothic art who rents a room from an older painter.The two women forge an unusual friendship, one that is divided by the intellectual study of art and the active practice of it.
White on White deftly explores art’s capacity to foster empathy, facilitate thought, and reconstruct psychological realities. Savaş’ prose reads like fresh snow: cold, stark, and beautiful. The book’s elegant, minimalist style also calls to mind a number of great visual works: Kazimir Malevich’s titular White on White(1918), Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951), and Agnes Martin’s The Tree (1965) all come to mind. A quick, searing read, Savaş’s novel demonstrates that language and image are mined from the same mysterious caverns. If one hand holds a pen, the other holds a paintbrush.
