A Life of PicassoAlfred A. Knopf, 2007 - 592 pages The long-awaited third volume of John Richardson’s definitive biography of Pablo Picasso combines the critical astuteness, exhaustive research, and stunning narrative that made the first two volumes an art-historical breakthrough as well as a pleasure to read. The Triumphant Years takes up the artist’s life in 1917, when Picasso and Cocteau left wartime Paris for Rome to work with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on their revolutionary production of Parade. Visits to Naples, above all to the Farnese marbles in the Museo Nazionale, would leave Picasso with a lifelong obsession with classical sculpture as well as the self-referential commedia dell’arte. After returning to Paris and marrying one of Diaghilev’s ballerinas, Olga Khokhlova, he abandoned bohemia for the drawing rooms of Paris. Hence, his so-called Duchess period, which coincided with his switch to neoclassicism, and would ultimately be absorbed into a metamorphic form of cubism. In the summer of 1923, Picasso and his American friends Gerald and Sara Murphy transformed the French Riviera from a winter into a summer resort, when they persuaded the proprietor of the Hôtel du Cap at Antibes to keep the place open for the summer. In doing so, they made the Riviera Europe’s major playground. Mediterraneanism was in Picasso’s bones. Born in Málaga, he would always identify with this inland sea. In 1927 the artist’s life underwent a major chan≥ he abandoned society for a life out of the spotlight with a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl, Marie-Thérèse Walter. His erotic obsession with Marie-Thérèse would result in an ever-growing antipathy for his neurasthenic, understandably jealous wife. Balletic clues have enabled Richardson to identify a number of baffling figure-paintings as portrayals of Olga and reinterpret the work of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Picasso’s passionate love for his mistress and his passionate hatred for his wife can be fully understood only in light of each other. The last three chapters constitute an annus mirabilis—spring 1931 to spring 1932—during which the artist celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Challenged to scale new heights by the passage of time, Picasso lived up to his shamanic belief that painting should have a magic function. In the course of this year, he reinvented sculpture and to a great extent his own imagery in a bid to Picassify the classical tradition. The resultant retrospective in Paris and Zurich in the summer of 1932 confirmed Picasso as the leader of the modern movement. |
Table des matières
Rome and the Ballets Russes 1917 | 3 |
Naples | 21 |
Parade | 31 |
Droits d'auteur | |
35 autres sections non affichées
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
A Life of Picasso: The triumphant years, 1917-1932 John Richardson,Marilyn McCully Affichage d'extraits - 1991 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
Almine y Bernard André Apollinaire Archives Picasso artist ballet Barcelona Bather beach Beaumont Bemberg Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Boisgeloup Brancusi Braque Brassaï Breton cabana Cahiers d'Art château Cocteau commedia dell'arte costume cubist dancer dealer décor Derain Diaghilev Dinard Doña María drawings Eugenia Errázuriz figure Françoise Gilot friends gallery Gasman Gertrude Stein Gilot girls González Gris gueridon Harlequin head Hôtel Ibid Jean Juan-les-Pins Kahnweiler later Leiris Léonce Léonce Rosenberg London look Madame maquette Marie-Thérèse Mary Hutchinson Massine Matisse Matisse's Max Jacob Misia Modern Art monument mother Murphys Musée Picasso Museum of Modern never Nude Oil on canvas Olga's painter painting Parade Paris Paul Rosenberg Paulo Photographer unknown Picabia Picasso told plaster poet portrait Private collection Pulcinella Radiguet Ransom Center rue la Boétie Satie sculpture Skira Spanish Stravinsky studio summer surrealists Tériade took Tricorne Vilató Villa wanted wife Woman York Zervos