Thorskald by Tony Morphett

Thorskald

by Tony Morphett

Lloyd O'Neil, 1969 [First Edition], hardcover, dustjacket, 

Fine Condition, price-clipped dustjacket, minor edge and shelf wear

'An art gallery in Melbourne.  The posthumous exhibition of a painter named Thorskald.
Thorskald was a man for whom the world was irrational, without meaning.  If involvement makes demands on a man, so does the country of isolation.  His reaction was to make his own patterns, down through his arm, in paint, on masonite.
What is the complete picture of a man?  Thorskald's story is told by the men and women who loved and hated him: his mistress, young, passionate, vulnerable, who worshipped but never understood him; the critic, a machiavellian, scheming homosexual, who found a crack in the monolithic Thorskald; the lonely, alcoholic journalist who came close to him in the blood and guts of an insane war; the young artists who idolized and envied him.  Each has a different refinement of the world in which they are all a part.  Each sees the same incidents in a different focus: each knows a different Thorskald.