Novelist With a Gallery of Thrillers : College Dean Creates Niche Writing Art World Mysteries

Oblivious to the thunderstorm outside, Peter Clothier signed copy after copy of his first novel in the foyer of the 170 Building on La Brea Avenue. The crowd of several hundred celebrants flowed between the hors d’oeuvres and the whimsical art works displayed at the connected galleries.

The unusual setting for a book-signing party, sponsored by art collectors Stanley and Elyse Grinstein, was particularly fitting: Clothier’s book, “Chiaroscuro” (St. Martin’s Press: $14.95), is a bicoastal mystery thriller set in the glittery high-art world of auctions and successful artists.

“I’ve read mysteries since I was 10 years old,” said Clothier, 49, who was born in Newcastle, England. “I started out with all those great English mystery writers: G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie--they were part of my youth. So it was a fairly natural genre for me to come back into years later when I found myself writing fiction.”

A former dean at the Otis Art Institute, Clothier hopes to create a niche for himself by combining mystery and art. In “Chiaroscuro” (a style of painting or drawing using light and shade), Jake Molnar is a modern master painter who has chosen to live quietly out of the mainstream of the art world. His solitude is disturbed by the murder of a prominent abstract expressionist artist and he is drawn into following the murderer’s trail from New York to Los Angeles and back.

“I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen when I started writing the novel,” said Clothier. “It was always a process of discovery for me, at least the first draft. I simply did not plot it out. I just sat and wrote and let the characters do what they wanted to do.”

The art world’s response to his book has been one of excitement, according to Clothier. “Chiaroscuro” has entered a second printing after a first printing of 3,000 copies, and Clothier has an offer for paperback rights, he said. His second thriller, “Trompe L’Oeil” which is 90% completed, is set in what he calls the underbelly of the art world, with artists who are all doing something else for a living.

Clothier’s third novel, “Percent for Art,” still in outline form, will deal with public art. “The issue is: What kind of control should the public have over what kind of art is put up in public? And who should have it: Should it be the city officials, the developers, the community of artists, the critics?” he said.

Clothier traveled a circuitous route before arriving at the coupling of mystery and the art world. Brought up in an English village where his father was a minister in the Church of England, Clothier has been involved with words since the age of 5, when he started learning English grammar and French, and a year later, Latin. He attended private schools and studied modern and medieval languages at Cambridge University.

“My whole life is explained in terms of trying to find time to write,” said Clothier, adding that since he was very young he longed to be a poet.

Books of Poetry

Clothier has had two books of poetry published: “Aspley Guise” (Red Hill Press) in 1969 and “Parapoems” (Horizon Press) in 1974. Clothier also writes poetry and art criticism, contributes a regular gallery review column to the L.A. Weekly, and has had art-related articles accepted by various publications.

Attempts to combine a livelihood with writing included teaching French and German at a grammar school in England, teaching at a Berlitz language school in Germany, and teaching French and German at a Canadian high school.

In Canada, Clothier met American poet Mark Strand, who was teaching at the University of Iowa. With Strand’s encouragement, Clothier relocated to attend the well-known Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and later to instruct the translation workshop there. He also spent the next five years working on his Ph.D. in comparative literature.

Clothier first became interested in the visual arts while teaching comparative literature at USC, a position he held for eight years beginning in 1968. Together with artist Gary Lloyd, he worked on an art book which included a 30-page poem written by Clothier, the impetus for which was Clothier’s shocked reaction to Lloyd’s bizarre work.

“I asked myself what it was all about. When I find myself in that situation almost inevitably I begin to write,” he said.

Divorced from his first wife while he was teaching at USC, Clothier remarried in 1972. His wife Ellie, an independent art adviser, furthered his interest in the visual arts. Clothier designed and directed a program at USC called Semester of the Arts, in which undergraduate students immersed themselves in the Los Angeles art scene for an entire semester.

Clothier liked his first taste of administration. “I found it, in fact, much more creative than teaching. In administration you’re always putting things together, creating different patterns, seeing where sparks happen.”

An opening for the dean’s job at Otis Art Institute gave Clothier the opportunity to administer on a larger scale. The day he arrived, the county voted to cut off funds for the school.

“It was an exciting time administratively,” said Clothier, who had a lot to do with the merger of Otis with Parsons School of Design in New York. For part of his two years at Otis, Clothier also served as acting director.

After the merger, Clothier left Otis and managed to stretch a Rockefeller Fellowship into two years of writing. He studied Charles White, one of the pre-eminent black artists of the century.

Four years ago, Clothier took over the dean’s position at Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. Most of his time was spent on the planning and construction of the Burns Fine Arts Center, a $7.5-million building which opened in the fall of 1984. He is now on leave from LMU.

It was while at LMU that Clothier started “Chiaroscuro,” writing from 4 to 6 a.m. and on weekends.

Pertinent to the germination of the novel, according to Clothier, is a picture which hangs in the upstairs bedroom of the Clothiers’ Spanish-style home in Silver Lake, a drawing of a nude by R. B. Kitaj. “Looking at that picture kind of led me into the whole idea of an artist making this picture and who that artist was and what kind of thinking he might have about art,” Clothier said. “This character was fairly clearly a fictional character and slowly he began to get involved in this mystery.”

Clothier admits to having a lot in common with his hero, yet he said, “Jake is much more conservative in his art tastes than I am. He has a far more committed stance in his thinking about art than I do. I’m much more eclectic. . . . For purposes of writing a thriller you have to necessarily simplify somewhat the aesthetic thinking of your hero.

“All I’m trying to say is that the art world is full of fascination, full of lively, imaginative people who are consistently interesting. If there were no corruption around then there would really be nothing to write a thriller about.”