“ Second Place,” Cusk’s first novel after the conclusion of her radical, brilliant “Outline” trilogy (“Outline,” “ Transit” and “Kudos”), scratches at that variance, popping it open like a fat-domed pimple. “Of any woman creator, an explanation is required of whether, or how, she dispensed with her femininity and its limitations, with her female biological destiny of where - so to speak - she buried the body.” As Cusk writes in the profile, which finally situated Paul, at 60, as more than Lucien Freud’s nubile muse, female artists have to work through or around or beside their gender. He smokes, drinks, scandalizes, indulges his lusts and in every way bites the hand that feeds him, all to be unmasked at the end as a peerless genius.”Īrtist and male artist are not distinct terms. He neglects or betrays his friends and family.

“The male artist,” Cusk writes, “in our image of him, does everything we are told not to do: He is violent and selfish. The consummate swigging, stomping, scolding male virtuoso, Giacometti is performing a role he’ll never be asked to step out of. In a 2019 profile of the long-neglected artist Celia Paul, Rachel Cusk mentions a scene from a film about the painter Alberto Giacometti in which he jams dozens of his sketches into a firepit and watches them burn. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Outline trilogy