Contrapposto – a capacious canvas

In 2002, the Labour culture minister Kim Howells visited Tate Britain, and felt so dismayed by the contemporary art that he pinned a note to the gallery’s comment board denouncing what he had seen as “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit”.

Howells’ words could have been lifted from Dave Eggers’ terrific new novel, now on the Booker longlist. Contrapposto revolves around an artist called Robert Dibb, who has exceptional skill in painting and draftsmanship, but exists in a world where conceptual work that requires little technical ability is esteemed more highly by investors and by academic experts.

As one of Dibb’s mentors laments, the world of art has seemingly declined “from the glories of gods and heroes to an offhand joke”, although the novel does rehearse alternative viewpoints on the matter. Dibb navigates such clashing artistic ideas and trends, as the story traces his life from child hood to old age, with a devastating mention of the first Iraq war thoroughly grounding him in a particular epoch.

Dibb begins in an artistically unpromising situation, a child in the growing suburbs of North Indiana who fears his mother’s violent partner. He opts to distinguish himself from this abusive figure, who shares his first name, by styling himself “Cricket”, and the opening 50 pages provide a short story that could stand on its own, as Cricket realises the power of art to wreak a public humiliation upon his mother’s vile partner.

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