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 change; 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.
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Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Psychological profile... Reading John Richardson's biography of Picasso, I was struck by the fact that Carl Jung labeled Picasso "schizophrenic."
Art publisher, Christian Zervos, dealing with Picasso in 1932, wrote that "I know the pleasure he gets from seeing someone suffer physically or mentally. For instance, when he is at his chateau, he takes great pleasure in having his Saint Bernard dog attack the cats and watching them agonize as their backbones crack."...
Richardson dismisses this characterization of Picasso as... more info
Volume 4, Please. I have all 3 volumes of John Richardson's incredible "Picasso" biography, plus a host of others on Picasso and Matisse.I eagerly await Volume 4, which will have to cover the last forty years of Picasso's life.Probably more condensed, by necessity, than the earlier volumes. I saw J.R. on the Charley Rose TV show the other night, and he looked remarkably vibrant for an octogenarian. He was there with Picasso's grandson to talk about the new Picasso exhibition in NY, and did not talk about Volume 4, except to... more info
A Life In Full Anyone with a deep interest in art history will want to buy and read this highly instructive book. John Richardson draws from a deep well of personal and professional knowledge in writing this lively volume covering fifteen critical years in the career of the last century's foremost artist.
Picasso Part 3 I love Picasso and to read about him as a regular guy living his life is very revealing in that he is human as well as a protean god of Art. Loved this book as it continues the story along. The only real criticism I have of J. Richardson is that it seems he's in a rush. Quite a difference from the slow but sure tone of the first two books. It seems for some reason that he went in and took out a lot of stuff some stupid editor told him was too much for any one to care about. Wrong. I sure hope he finishes... more info
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