A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life

Richardson believes Picasso was ""as much sinned against as sinning,"" at least during the period covered here. This abundantly illustrated second installment of a masterly, indispensable biography puts Picasso in a new light. Shattered by the death in 1913 of the father he loved and hated, the rebellious son concealed his grief but later would claim that the countless pigeons and doves in his pictures were a form of ""repayment"" to his pigeon-fancying parent. The messianic artist we meet here was misogynistic but also generous and loving. Sulking and bad-tempered (perhaps due to his stomach ulcers), he also displayed brightness of spirit and intelligence. He was a macho pacifist; a hypochondriac; an animal lover gifted with a rapport with dogs and birds. Picasso is often accused of betraying his friend, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who was arrested in 1911 on charges of stealing Iberian sculptures from the Louvre--statues he and Picasso acquired from the thief, a Belgian drifter, but Richardson maintains that Picasso justifiably resented his friend for incriminating him in the theft. While Picasso escaped charges of receiving stolen goods, perhaps by pulling official strings, Apollinaire, released after days of interrogation and public humility, was devastated by the scandal. Currently a professor of art at Oxford, Richardson befriended Picasso and his circle in the 1950s while living in France, and the artist's friends--Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau, Georges Braque, Apollinaire, confidantes Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas--come vibrantly alive. In a tour de force of scholarship, sleuthing and critical empathy, Richardson charts Picasso's invention (with Braque) of cubism, his escape from it and his rebirth as a classicist. (Nov.)