Focus on this artwork and discuss the Cultural references and exhibitions.
The Goldfinch plays a central role in the 2013 eponymous novel by American author Donna Tartt. The novel's protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore "Theo" Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which his mother dies. He takes the Fabritius painting, part of a Dutch Golden Age exhibition, with him as he escapes the building, and much of the rest of the book is based around his attempts to hide the picture, its theft and eventual return.The book won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was a commercial success with sales reaching nearly 1.5 million soon after the award. The book's cover is itself a trompe l'oeil, the painting visible through an illusionary tear in the paper. In reality, the painting has never been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum, although coincidentally an exhibition including The Goldfinch opened at New York's Frick Collection on the day of the novel's publication. An estimated 200,000–235,000 people attended the Frick exhibition, despite freezing temperatures, and 13,000 people joined the museum, quadrupling its subscription base.The 2013–2014 Frick exhibition was part of a world tour of selected Golden Age paintings from the Mauritshuis during its two-year closure for a £25M renovation of the gallery, with previous showings in Tokyo, Kobe, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York, and finishing with a visit to Bologna. The Tokyo exhibition was attended by a million people, making it the most visited such event of the year. Prior to the publicity from the release of Tartt's novel, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring had typically been highlighted as the main attraction of the exhibition.Tartt's book was adapted as a 2019 film produced by Warner Bros and Amazon Studios, directed by John Crowley, and starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman. Other cultural references to The Goldfinch include American artist Helen Frankenthaler's 1960 abstract expressionist interpretation of the 1654 painting titled the Fabritius Bird, and US poet Morri Creech's 2010 poem "Goldfinch", which includes the line "You stare / from a modest trompe l'oeil heaven we don't share".The Goldfinch was one of eight Mauritshuis masterpieces depicted on a set of €1.00 stamps issued in 2014 by the Dutch postal service, PostNL, to mark the reopening of the museum. It also featured in a 2004 set of stamps showing works by Fabritius.
Morri Creech Pulitzer Prize Girl with a Pearl Earring abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler Atlanta Bologna Kobe Nicole Kidman Vermeer Mauritshuis Amazon Studios 2019 film John Crowley PostNL San Francisco Dutch Ansel Elgort Donna Tartt eponymous novel Warner Bros Dutch Golden Age Frick Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art