Analyzing heinous hidden historical crimes from the recently retrieved declassified documents and diaries of a compromised government informant, American Renaissance, Or Inquiry Into Political Justice In the Arts & Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (Book 1; Missions Dangerous) traces the sudden rise and tragic ambition of the late artistic and political revolutionary Sean Dorian Knight, a brilliant young American artist whose radical theory of art history at the turn of the millennium attracts a violent religious cult following that threatens to upend - not only world peace and Wall Street - but forever change our fundamental faith in the economic order and civilization as we know it.
Taken from the confidential government cables and confiscated journals of an undercover young American soldier-spy and aspiring poet in 1990s Paris, this heart-rending testimony, only recently found and leaked from a series of government files found at Mar-a-Lago, is at once the story of the infamous artist’s most devoted disciple and a vital public record of his harrowing experience as the sole survivor of a secret mission of unspeakable evil. When, days after a violent explosion in the City of Light, he awakens from a coma to discover that three of his platoon mates are dead and receives shocking orders from his new commanding officer, facing him with a cruel choice: to either kill his best friend or the woman he loves.
So, we are led through the eyes of an embedded informant on the mind-bending tale and cryptic path of art history, espionage, and government secrets: On the hunt for a mysterious enemy, one whose anonymous identity and prophesied rise – till this day – the government will use any amount of deadly force to keep hidden and destroy.
Did the artist, Sean Dorian Knight, truly live? Who was he and why did he disappear - and why did his body of work become inexplicably erased from the historical record? Part spy novel, part biographical murder mystery, it is a haunting question that leads the reader into what perhaps could be the greatest true conspiracy of all time rooted in the enigmatic role played by the CIA in the founding of Modern art.
American Renaissance is at once a hilarious critique of the Post-Modern art scene in 1990s Paris, as well as an action-driven international thriller about the plight of modern-day artists living in the spiritual and political vortex during a paradigm shift of the new millennium. The full story is best experienced in numerical order and comprises:
Book 1: "Missions Dangerous"
Book 2: "An Identity Left on the Rue da la Clignancourt" (anticipated release Spring 2025)
Book 3: "A Theological History of Lost Peoples & Romantics" (anticipated release Summer 2025)
Blaine captures Dorian’s disgust at the economics of the art world in compelling rants. “It’s high time we hold those presently living and responsible for our misery and enslavement to the museum system accountable or let them make their own sacrifice in blood,” Dorian declares. Amid lengthy, sometimes electric discussions of art, money, and divinity, Amadeo falls in love with an Afghani woman in Dorian’s orbit—a woman who warns him she’s under constant surveillance by forces from back home who will kill if she is too close to man—and is tasked by his hilariously profane American handler with gathering DNA from the Paris circle whose friendship gives him life.
There’s much more happening in this thoughtful-but-overstuffed novel, including a “Doomsday painting,” rumors of an antichrist figure, and the rise of a murderous Dorian cult destroying history’s great artworks. Sharp, heady dialogue and themes of creation/destruction, art/finance, and revolution/terrorism all fascinate, but the twisty, time-vaulting structure is frustrating and a challenging to keep up with, and the prose’s density tends to squash momentum and clarity. Still, there’s much promise here.
Takeaway: Hugely ambitious philosophical thriller of art, finance, and revolution.
Comparable Titles: Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of the Resistance, Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B-
Marketing copy: B
