Moynihan, Danny

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MOYNIHAN, Danny

PERSONAL:

Son of Rodrigo Moynihan (an artist).

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Gerald Duckworth and Company, 61 Frith Street, London W1V 5TA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Art curator, gallery manager, artist, and novelist.

WRITINGS:

Boogie-Woogie, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

As an art dealer and the son of a painter, Danny Moynihan came naturally to the subject of his first novel, Boogie-Woogie. Moynihan has worked in New York City and London as an art-gallery manager and curator and as an artist himself. Manhattan's flashy and fickle art scene is the setting for this satiric work, presented in a montage of scenes.

Moynihan gives Boogie-Woogie its "scattered" form, a reviewer suggested in Publishers Weekly, in order "to mimic structurally the energy of the Mondrian masterpiece that links the fates of his art world characters." The novel's title ostensibly refers to a newly discovered painting, thought to be early twentieth-century Dutch artist Piet Mondrian's last, which turns up in the library of a wealthy elderly couple and becomes the object of many covetous maneuvers from a cast of overambitious characters.

Sexual ambitions play an equally important role in the novel. In reference to the title, Lisa Liebmann, in a review for Artforum International, explained: "Boogie Nights is the implied reference that counts." Among several ambitious young women in the book, Elaine Yoon-Jung Yi stands out as a video collagist who collects sexual partners and films her encounters for raw material. In these scenes, among others, the novel lays out some explicit sexual territory.

Between the young artists and the wealthy patrons lies Art Spindle, a powerful, well-established gallery owner. Spindle reflects critically on the capricious art world and declares his true love of art, all the while swindling and showing off to clients. While Liebmann called this character "arguably, the moral solar plexus of Boogie-Woogie, "Michael Spinella, in a review for Booklist, maintained that all Moynihan's characters are "motivated solely by greed." Spinella characterized the novel as a "compellingly truthful picture of the modern art world, though not for the faint of heart."