A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916
by John Richardson
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Book Summary Information
Author: John RichardsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-16
ISBN: 0375711503
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916
Book Review: Picasso : The Cubist Rebel is the second volume in the projected four volume magisterial biography by John Richardson
Summary: 5 Stars
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was an amorous Andalusian who spent most of his life in Paris. Picasso is the greatest artistic genius of the twentieth century. In this second volume of his sine qua non biography of the complex painter his friend John Richardson does a superb job of looking at his life from 1917-1932. The small print text of over 400 pages is complimented by the works of the master which are being discussed in the text. I love this technique! It makes Richardson's astute analysis of the artwork much easier to understand!
This era in Picasso's career is concerned with his invention of CUBISM a revolutionary avant-garde movement which changed the way we see and interpret art! Picasso drew on his love of Cezanne, El Greco and others to move from his blue and red period into the wild world of cubism. Cubism breaks down pictorial forms into angles and presents them to our eye as two-dimensional. Cubism makes use of cubes and lines, cones and
spheres to entice us into seeing reality in a new way. The movement was launched with Picasso's great 1907 masterpiece: "Les Madimoiselles d' Avignon." Picasso along with his best friend Georges Braque and lesser lights such as Juan Gris were in the vanguard of the burgeoning movement sweeping all aside! Cubism would be virulently attacked during World War I by French chauvinists who believed the movement was German and led by spies and decadents. As the war ended we see Picasso moving to neoclassicism. It was also in these years that he moved from a bohemian life to one of wealth and renown in the art world.
During these years Picasso lost his father and found several art dealers (especially in Germany and Russia) who purchased his art at high prices. His friendship with Gerturde and Leo Stein led to his being known in the United States. During this time we learn of his friendships with the eccentric poet Apollinaire and Max Jacob a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was a writer and worshipper at the great artist's throne.
As always we see Picasso falling in and out of love. He broke with his live in lover Ferdinand Oliver and almost wed a woman named Eva. He had torrid affairs with the lesbian bisexual Irene Legut and a woman named Gaby who refused to wed the mecurial quick-tempered moody Spaniard. The book ends with Picasso working on the art work curtains for the ballet
"Parade" produced for Serge Diagheliv's ballet company. It was then he got to know Stravinksy and Erik Satie as well as Jean Cocteau who became a big fan of Picasso. It was while working on the ballet in Rome that P:icasso met his first wife the lovely Olga Khoklova who was a ballerina with the company.
Picasso is an enigma entwined in a mystery! He could be generous and parsiminous, violent and gentle, loving and sadistic. I applaud his pacificsm during World War I. Browsing through these many pages one is astounded at the range and breadth of this artist's oeuvre. Only Henri Matisse can compete with the Andalusian bull.
No one can understand Picasso without devouring these volumes by Richardson. As Picasso changed the way we see so too does Richardson alter our perception and understanding of Picasso and Cubism.
Summary of A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916
In The Cubist Rebel, 1907?1916, the second volume of his Life of Picasso, John Richardson reveals the young Picasso in the Baudelairean role of ?the painter of modern life??a role that stipulated the brothel as the noblest subject for a modern artist. Hence his great breakthrough painting, Les Demoiselles d?Avignon, with which this book opens. As well as portraying Picasso as a revolutionary, Richardson analyzes the more compassionate side of his genius. The misogynist of posthumous legend turns out to have been surprisingly vulnerable?more often sinned against than sinning. Heartbroken at the death of his mistress Eva, Picasso tried desperately to find a wife. Richardson recounts the untold story of how his two great loves of 1915?17 successively turned him down. These disappointments, as well as his horror at the outbreak of World War I and the wounds it inflicted on his closest friends, Braque and Apollinaire, shadowed his painting and drove him off to work for the Ballets Russes in Rome and Naples?back to the ancient world.In this volume we see the artist?s life and work during the crucial decade of 1907?17, a period during which Picasso and Georges Braque devised what has come to be known as cubism and in doing so engendered modernism. Thanks to the author?s friendship with Picasso and some of the women in his life, as well as Braque and their dealer, D. H. Kahnweiler, and other associates, he has had access to untapped sources and unpublished material. In The Cubist Rebel, Richardson also introduces us to key figures in Picasso?s life who have been totally overlooked by previous biographers. Among these are the artist?s Chilean patron, collector, and mother figure, Eugenia Errázuriz, as well as two fiancées: the loveable Geneviève Laporte and the promiscuous bisexual painter Irène Lagut.
By harnessing biography to art history, he has managed to crack the code of cubism more successfully than any of his predecessors. And by bringing fresh light to bear on the artist?s private life, he has succeeded in coming up with a new view of this paradoxical man and of his paradoxical work. Never before have Picasso?s revolutionary vision, technical versatility, prodigious achievements, and, not least, his sardonic humor been analyzed with such clarity.
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