recommend me a good book about picasso

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it needn't be a biography though it could be if you like. i just wanna read something about the p-man!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 15:58 (twenty years ago)

Volume 1

and

And Volume 2

and buy the nice hardback copies with all the great pictures.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 16:24 (twenty years ago)

wow, those look great!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 16:39 (twenty years ago)

John Berger's The Success and Failure of Picasso.

― Eazy (Eazy), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 16:59 (twenty years ago)

The Berger book is first-rate.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:00 (twenty years ago)

huh, maybe i will start with that, as it is significantly cheaper!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:02 (twenty years ago)

I have Mailer's "Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man" - lots of sex/love and some nice illustrations and colour pics. And Mailer's style, of course. If you want to borrow it after the Berger or whenever, you may!

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:13 (twenty years ago)

The girls would turn the color of an avocado
when he would drive down their streets in his El Dorado.

― elmo, patron saint of nausea (allocryptic), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:16 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, the Richardson books are expensive but they are also a lot...er...bigger! With more pictures!

There's a great book by his wife....title escapes me...hold on while I go to bookshelf...
oh yeah...haha...My Life With Picasso! It's excellent and I often see it in s/h bookshops for a couple of quid.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:47 (twenty years ago)

Arianna Huffington, as I recall, also wrote a biography of Picasso that got a lot of press... "Huffington v. Richardson" kind of thing. There was a great article in the New York review of books (or Vanity Fair, or the New Yorker...) that compared them. Not as easy as ordering from Amazon but one of those articles that you still remember 10 or 15 years later.

― Mitya (mitya), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 18:01 (twenty years ago)

that huffington book is basically one of those "every single detail in this book proves the subject was a complete raving asshole" hatchet jobs. it's fun to read though.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 20:26 (twenty years ago)

The Richardson books are pretty awesome

― dr lulu (dr lulu), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 20:37 (twenty years ago)

I see the third Richardson volume is finally scheduled for December 2006!

― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 20:42 (twenty years ago)

I don't know if this is that articlebut it does compare some of the various biographies mentioned above.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:17 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, seemed to haved fckd that up...anyway it came down pretty much in favour of the Richardson book.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:24 (twenty years ago)

haha, i was just gonna ask. but IS that article avail anywhere?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:26 (twenty years ago)

What about the g-man s1ocki? Giacometti: A biography by James Lord is fantastic too.

― dr lulu (dr lulu), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:26 (twenty years ago)

bring it on!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:28 (twenty years ago)

xpost - I think volumes 3 & 4 are permanantly delayed sadly. The Amazon date for publishing looks like wishful thinking. Richardson is getting on himself. I hope I'm proved wrong obviously.

He also presented a C4 prog about Picasso which was made into a DVD.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009ME9S/002-4715360-6220811?v=glance&n=130
I only saw part of this, but I remember it being excellent.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:39 (twenty years ago)

i just wanna second and third the Berger recommendation. great book.

― killy (baby lenin pin), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:40 (twenty years ago)

I can't find that article, but the New York Review of Books does have an amazing archive available to subscribers and some articles available for free, including this great little article (from 1964!) attacking Richardson for attacking Gilot (My Life with Picasso) and then Richardson replying to his attacker.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13050

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:49 (twenty years ago)

I also notice there's a whole load of the Berger book available on Abebooks right now for around the dollar mark, bargain!

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:51 (twenty years ago)

then it's berger time!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Have you read Patrick O'Brian's biography of him? I haven't, but I love Patrick O'Brian so much and I've got it lying around here somewhere. I will read it, I swear.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Wednesday, 15 March 2006 07:57 (twenty years ago)

Second the Berger if you want an idiosyncratic introduction that will occasionally astonish you with its insights and just as often make you want to throw it against the wall at the wrong-headedness of its author. Very short, and none the worse for that, but the illustrations are inevitably small and many in black and white in my edition.

First two volumes of the Richardson are sitting in my bookcases barely flicked through after several years. Not that I don't think they will be good, but they would need a big commitment of time, and so far I haven't found it. So about 60 quids worth of unread book.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 15 March 2006 09:41 (twenty years ago)

four years pass...

the p-man

― Princess TamTam, Wednesday, 10 November 2010 23:48 (fifteen years ago)

eight years pass...

John Richardson RIP. I wonder if he managed to complete the (excellent) biography.

― Carly Jae Vespen (Capitaine Jay Vee), Thursday, 14 March 2019 13:03 (seven years ago)

(question mark)

― Carly Jae Vespen (Capitaine Jay Vee), Thursday, 14 March 2019 13:03 (seven years ago)

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