On Jan. 29, nine high school students, who were nominated by members of the English department, accompanied by faculty advisor Ms. Trish McHale, attended the Santa Barbara chapter of the California Literary Society’s meeting at the Four Seasons Biltmore Hotel.
The California Literary and Prologue Society “support[s] authors and poets, while supporting the local communities.”
Each year, a group of students is selected to attend one of the chapter’s meetings. Led by Laguna alum Kendra Epley.
Months before, the students had each been given a copy of Anne-Marie O’Connor’s book, “The Lady in Gold”—a book based on the life of painter Gustav Klimt’s muse, Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the story of the painting’s restitution to its original owners.
The students met for an hour with O’Connor privately before the luncheon commenced to ask questions and open up a conversation about the book.
Adele grew up a wealthy Jewish woman in pre-WWII Vienna, Austria. Much of the story is also about her niece, Maria, who moved to California after the war, and who Anne-Marie O’Connor became personally acquainted with and whose story she wanted to tell.
Adele’s portrait, titled “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” but often called “The Lady in Gold,” was appropriated by the Nazis, and later claimed by the Austrian government.
Maria was beginning the process to have it returned when O’Connor first met the 80-year-old.
“[The book] was really about Maria… In person, she was just this very charming, charismatic person,” O’Connor said.
When asked what drew her to the story of the painting, O’Connor said, “I was surprised at how much was out there about Gustav Klimt but hadn’t been published…. I saw the painting first when I was 14 in St. Louis… and I didn’t love it. But the painting in unforgettable.
Famous paintings are famous for a reason. It is emblematic. I didn’t understand that until I began this [writing] process.”
O’Connor, who studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute before transferring to University of California, Berkeley, said she wrote the novel because “art and its meaning should be available to everyone.”
She also spoke about how today the Internet facilitates social justice in the art restitution process.
“I enjoyed meeting O’Connor and I found the book a fascinating read covering fin-de-siècle Vienna and the story of the Bloch-Bauer family,” adviser Trish McHale said.