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A satire on the modern art market: The Violet Hour, by James Cahill, reviewed

A world-renowned painter becomes the ghost of his former self, betraying his instincts to embrace sterile abstraction – and even outsourcing his work to ‘a fabricator in Zurich’

8 March 2025

9:00 AM

8 March 2025

9:00 AM

The Violet Hour James Cahill

Sceptre, pp.368, 16.99

In James Cahill’s first novel, Tiepolo Blue, Don Lamb, a Cambridge art historian, expressed outrage when ‘Sick Bed’, a Tracey Emin-like installation, is erected in the college quad. It is tempting to imagine what Lamb would now make of the many artworks on display in The Violet Hour. Here, Cahill steps away from the rarefied world of academia and public galleries to expose the excesses of the international art market.

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