Picasso Cubism 1907-1917

Cubism, for Picasso, was a vast experiment which led him into aesthetic territory few other artists have explored. That sense of daring adventure permeates this marvelous album, essential to our understanding of cubism and Picasso. Spanish scholar Palau i Fabre ( Picasso 1881-1907 ) makes a plausible case for the view that the invention of a cubist vocabulary constituted a genuine revolution, not just an ivory-tower affair. He recreates Picasso's cubist phase as a tortuous battle, a stroke-by-stroke quest for perfection in a newly discovered pictorial kingdom. Despite the author's ponderous style (at least in this translation from the Catalan), this lavish monograph rewards readers with its thoroughgoing commentaries, its wealth of seldom-reproduced images and its thematic groupings of kindred art works on a single page or on two-page spreads. (Feb.)