Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice

A contemporary painter finds inspiration in Venice, where the canals, art, and architecture guide her thoughts on female desire, love, grief, and memory in this hybrid work of creative nonfiction.

Alone in Venice for an artist's residency, Celia Paul began keeping an ongoing record of her painting. Objects of Desire is a mesmerizing account of her perceptions in La Serenissima and of her preoccupations there: female desire and love, mortality, and memory. "Venice resembles a collective brain," Paul writes, "where other people's lives—past and present—are transmitted like signals to my own."
In the reflections of the floating city, Paul finds traces of her last visit with her late husband; in the work of Venetian artists Carpaccio and Giotto, forceful depictions of her own emotions; and in the allusive painting La Tempesta by Giorgione, a key to her complex feelings about the past.
Objects of Desire is a radiant record of a life devoted to art, a profound portrait of an artist who longs to confront herself and who invites the reader to do the same.

About the Author :
Celia Paul was born in 1959 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her major solo exhibitions include Celia Paul, curated by Hilton Als, at the Yale Center for British Art (2018) and the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California (2019); Desdemona for Celia by Hilton at Gallery Met, New York (2015–16), and Innervisions at the Gladstone Gallery in New York City.  Her work was included in the group exhibition All Too Human at Tate Britain (2018).  She is the author of three books, Self-Portrait, Letters to Gwen John, and Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice. Her work was included in the group exhibition All Too Human at Tate Britain (2018). She lives and works in London.

Review :
"Paul's writing is a kind of ritual, as well as a pilgrimage, in which she leads us into those hidden places where understanding is beside the point, and invites us simply to dwell with her and whomever else she summons." —Jack Hanson, Artforum