The Burnt Orange Heresy was published by Crown Publishers in 1971 and is Willeford’s most critically admired novel. James Figueras is an art critic in Palm Beach — handsome, articulate, and entirely fraudulent. He has never had an original critical thought; his career is built on the ability to sound authoritative about subjects he does not understand. He is commissioned by a wealthy collector to interview Jacques Debierue, a legendary French painter who has lived as a recluse in the Florida Everglades for decades and has refused to show his work to anyone.
The collector’s price for the introduction is simple: Figueras must steal a painting. The theft, and the murder that follows, expose the novel’s central question: in a world where art criticism is a performance, where reputations are manufactured, and where the distinction between authentic and fake is itself a critical construct, what does it mean to commit a real act — an irreversible act of violence?
Willeford’s knowledge of the art world is precise and devastating. Figueras’s critical language — a pastiche of real art-critical jargon — is both convincing and absurd, and the novel’s satire of the art establishment is sharp enough to draw blood. The relationship between Figueras and Debierue — the fraud confronting the genuine article — gives the novel its moral weight, and the resolution is characteristically ruthless.
Giuseppe Capotondi adapted the novel as a film in 2019, starring Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger, and Donald Sutherland.
Collecting The Burnt Orange Heresy
First edition (Crown Publishers, New York, 1971): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $300–$800
- Very good/very good: $100–$300