John Richardson died yesterday at the ripe old age of 95. He lived an incredibly full life that has enriched hundreds of thousands of people, yet I cannot help but feel a great sense of loss as he leaves his last, great project unfinished.

 

That project, of course, is his multivolume biography of Pablo Picasso. While far from the only one out there on him it's uniquely informed by his decades-long friendship with the artist. The first two volumes came out in the 1990s, while the third volume (which took Picasso's life up to 1932) was published twelve years ago. While the fourth and final volume is described in the obituary as "close to completion," I've seen similar descriptions of the book for the past three years now, which leaves me despairing of ever reading Richardson's treatment of Picasso's life during the Spanish Civil War, World War Two, or the years he witnessed firsthand.

 

Hopefully I'm wrong. Richardson collaborated on the third volume with Marilyn McCully and he was working with someone on the final book, so perhaps there's enough to bring it to a satisfactory end. But until that happens Richardson's books will stand as one of the great unfinished projects of nonfiction literature — and we're all poorer for it.

Foreword, by Glenn D. Lowry
Acknowledgments

--Introduction: Picasso's Printmaking: A Catalyst for Creativity, by Deborah Wye

Text and Plates
--1. Saltimbanques
--2. The Cubist Spirit
--3. Sculptor's Studio
--4. The Minotaur
--5. Reenacting the Bullfight
--6. Abstracting the Bull
--7. Fauns and Satyrs
--8. Animals Real and Imagined
--9. Text and Image
--10. Portraits: Vollard, Kahnweiler, Balzac
--11. Portraits: Lovers and Wives
--a. Marie-Thérèse Walter
--b. Dora Maar
--c. Françoise Gilot
--d. Jacqueline Roque
--12. After the Masters
--13. Late Work

Notes
Checklist
Chronology
Selected Bibliography
Index

I’ve always enjoyed reading about artists and their muses. I truly thought I would love reading about Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso.  But this book did not hold my interest at all nor did I care about any of these shallow people.  Unfortunately, I’m not able to recommend it.

 

This is a tragic story about an artist in her own right, Dora Maar, who was obsessed with a “genius” artist, Pablo Picasso. Dora was the model for Picasso’s famous “The Weeping Woman” and was involved with him for nine years.  She ends up having a mental breakdown due to his treatment of her.  Fifteen years later, Dora takes a trip to Venice with two admirers of Picasso, Bernard Minoret and James Lord.  After this short trip, Dora shuts out the world and becomes a recluse.  The author interviews the two men to try to find out what happened on that trip.  The author is an award-winning novelist and I was expecting a heart wrenching passionate book.  It wasn’t that for me.

 

The book is written in alternating chapters going back and forth between Dora telling of her trip with Bernard and James, plus thinking back on her memories of Picasso, and then autobiographical chapters of the author and her pursuit of this story, plus her exile from Cuba. The book didn’t flow at all and seemed very disjointed, especially the sections about Dora.  I found the autobiographical chapters about the author to be more coherent.  The Dora chapters were hard to follow and jumped all over the place.  There would be a mention of Max Jacob, a poet who had asked for his close friend Picasso’s help when he was sent to a German concentration camp.  Chapters later it would be mentioned again and yet again chapters later.  There is a lot of name dropping, almost constant, such as so and so said this about Dora’s eyes and so and so said that about her intellect.

 

It also appears from the books I’ve recently read that today’s historical novels about artists must contain a lot of explicit, coarse sex scenes. This one meets that standard quite well.  There’s in particular a very descriptive sex orgy scene that I could have done without.  Passion can be written quite seductively but not like this.  Of course, this was sex involving Picasso so possibly there was no other way to write it.   The book reinforced my opinion of Picasso as a cruel madman but I expected to have more sympathy for Dora.

 

This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

The theatrical voice of the narrator almost made me feel like I was in a movie trailer, or listening to a carnival barker (neither of which was a bad thing). In fact, there were moments where I thought this could easily break into a musical. It had a lot of the pacing and exaggerated feel of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I have to say I wish the storytelling style and illustration had less of the flash and fame about it, and more of the abstraction that would be more consistent with the paintings that are so difficult for many people to accept. Instead of telling us that many people both love and hate Picasso's work, it would be great if they had 'shown' us how and why.

I was really impressed with Melissa Sweet's work on the River of Words book about Wm Carlos Williams, and how she worked for this consistency with the poet's work. For this book, it makes me wonder whether either the author or the illustrator really understands Picasso's work, or if they just know how to represent it descriptively.

I passed it to Pearl, because she's been enchanted with Picasso because of what they're studying in school. She read through the whole thing in the car, which she doesn't always do when I recommend or bring a picture book.

Lively, playful story about young Picasso beginning his cubist phase. Bold illustrations by Hawkes.