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Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World
One of The Christian Science Monitor ’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
When Picasso became the story of how an obscure young painter from Barcelona came to Paris and made himself into the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
In 1900, an eighteen-year-old Spaniard named Pablo Picasso made his first trip to Paris. It was in this glittering capital of the international art world that, after suffering years of poverty and neglect, he emerged as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Fueled by opium and alcohol, inspired by raucous late-night conversations at the Lapin Agile cabaret, Picasso and his friends resolved to shake up the world.
For most of these years Picasso lived and worked in a squalid tenement known as the Bateau Lavoir, in the heart of picturesque Montmartre. Here he met his first true love, Fernande Olivier, a muse whom he would transform in his art from Symbolist goddess to Cubist monster. These were years of struggle, often of desperation, but Picasso later looked back on them as the happiest of his long life.
Recognition came first in the avant-garde circles in which he traveled, and later among a small group of daring collectors, including the Americans Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1906, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by the groundbreaking painting of Paul Cézanne and the startling inventiveness of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured and defined the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he’d gone mad. Only his colleague George Braque understood what Picasso was trying to do. Over the next few years they teamed up to create Cubism, the most revolutionary and influential movement in twentieth-century art.
This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is filled with heartbreak and triumph, despair and delirium, all of it played out against the backdrop of the world’s most captivating city.
When Picasso became the story of how an obscure young painter from Barcelona came to Paris and made himself into the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
In 1900, an eighteen-year-old Spaniard named Pablo Picasso made his first trip to Paris. It was in this glittering capital of the international art world that, after suffering years of poverty and neglect, he emerged as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Fueled by opium and alcohol, inspired by raucous late-night conversations at the Lapin Agile cabaret, Picasso and his friends resolved to shake up the world.
For most of these years Picasso lived and worked in a squalid tenement known as the Bateau Lavoir, in the heart of picturesque Montmartre. Here he met his first true love, Fernande Olivier, a muse whom he would transform in his art from Symbolist goddess to Cubist monster. These were years of struggle, often of desperation, but Picasso later looked back on them as the happiest of his long life.
Recognition came first in the avant-garde circles in which he traveled, and later among a small group of daring collectors, including the Americans Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1906, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by the groundbreaking painting of Paul Cézanne and the startling inventiveness of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured and defined the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he’d gone mad. Only his colleague George Braque understood what Picasso was trying to do. Over the next few years they teamed up to create Cubism, the most revolutionary and influential movement in twentieth-century art.
This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is filled with heartbreak and triumph, despair and delirium, all of it played out against the backdrop of the world’s most captivating city.
480 pages, Hardcover
Published March 13, 2018
158 people are currently reading
730 people want to read
About the author
Miles J. Unger
10 books81 followers"Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces"is the culmination of a life-long passion for the art and culture of Italy. As a child, I spent five years in Florence, and I have been haunted by the beauty and storied past of this most remarkable of cities ever since.
Over the years I have written for "The New York Times", "The Boston Globe," "The Washington Post", as well as numerous art magazines. For the past decade I've concentrated on the culture and history of the Italian Renaissance, writing biographies of three of the giants of the age: Lorenzo de' Medici ("Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici"); Machiavelli ("Machiavelli: A Biography"); and now Michelangelo ("Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces"). The last in this Renaissance trilogy is perhaps nearest and dearest to my heart, a labor of love and a tribute to the transcendent, unpredictable, and often difficult nature of genius.
Over the years I have written for "The New York Times", "The Boston Globe," "The Washington Post", as well as numerous art magazines. For the past decade I've concentrated on the culture and history of the Italian Renaissance, writing biographies of three of the giants of the age: Lorenzo de' Medici ("Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici"); Machiavelli ("Machiavelli: A Biography"); and now Michelangelo ("Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces"). The last in this Renaissance trilogy is perhaps nearest and dearest to my heart, a labor of love and a tribute to the transcendent, unpredictable, and often difficult nature of genius.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
January 16, 2020
A revelation of a book. So much of what I knew about this artist had to do with the later part of his life. This account takes the years up to about 1909 in consideration--up to the time that his Demoiselles D'Avignon was finally displayed (and years after the painting was completed).
I learned enough from this one that I now need to study these years of Matisse's work.
"The mark of a brush on the surface...became as important to the experience of the painting as the image it described. As Maurice Denis, a follower of Gauguin, pronounced, 'Remember that a picture--before being a war horse, a nude woman or some anecdote--is essentially a plane surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.' This declaration became a rallying cry of the avant-garde and a justification before the fact, of abstract art."
I learned enough from this one that I now need to study these years of Matisse's work.
"The mark of a brush on the surface...became as important to the experience of the painting as the image it described. As Maurice Denis, a follower of Gauguin, pronounced, 'Remember that a picture--before being a war horse, a nude woman or some anecdote--is essentially a plane surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.' This declaration became a rallying cry of the avant-garde and a justification before the fact, of abstract art."
August 25, 2018
Having recently viewed the Antonio Banderas docudrama "Genius: Picasso," I was sufficiently fascinated to ask a good friend and artist for his recommendations of a biography of the genius; this was one of two he suggested and I'm glad he did so.
Full disclosure: I am neither an artist nor sufficiently qualified to critique art with any real foundation (scholastic or otherwise) or sense of perspective, place or purpose. Like many fellow baby boomers, I have a sense of the names one is supposed to know and perhaps even the era/genre with which they're most closely associated. There is a handful of artists whose work I could recognize and attribute sans signature, with a critical vocabulary almost as limited.
Which is perhaps why I enjoyed "Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World" to the extent that I did.
Author Miles Unger not only delves into Picasso's early and formative ages and stages, he does so with a keen and schooled eye and a syntax that informs without leaving the reader reaching for the dictionary and thesaurus every other page. While I'm reasonably certain that I could never reach the same conclusions when critiquing Picasso or any other artist, I could appreciate his and, when comparing them with the paintings themselves, occasionally see how he arrived at them. Surely, there is more than a modicum of psychoanalyst in every critic.
The bigger question for me is whether or not Picasso would agree with him.
To me, this book was as much a study in studying art as it was a study of art.
Centered around "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," the piece largely credited with introducing Cubism as a revolutionary art form that could and did turn the art world upside down while adding a third dimension to a sphere previously constrained to two, it answered myriad questions about Picasso's process and product while raising considerably more about their impact and interpretation.
Though created when he was but 27, Picasso had been a critical if not commercial success for several years, bouncing between his Spanish homeland and Paris with the frequency of a train conductor. (That Paris was the recognized art capital of the world cannot be overestimated as an influence and motivator in his professional life. Would we be having this discussion if he were born and cut his teeth in Chicago?)
Though he came from some means, he lived the seemingly-requisite life of the bohemian starving artist, paying his dues while living in squalor, drinking more than he ate, partying until sunrise and finding more than his share of female companionship at virtually every turn. Fortunately, he was not alone, often the center of a relatively tight-knit circle of friends who found themselves in similar circumstances. Not necessarily well educated, they were reasonably well informed, well lived and seemed to inspire as much as they depended on one another. Their lives were lived with ears and eyes open, subject only to their examination and explanation. Until it came to art.
That said, was it Picasso's intention to turn the art world upside down when he spent the better part of two years working and reworking "Les Desmoiselles"? Was his self-described "series of non-sequiturs" more of an experiment in form and function or was it, as author Unger describes, an expression "personal rather than communal: he was concerned with lust rather than fertility, the extinction of his own consciousness rather than the survival of the community"?
Really, "the extinction of his own consciousness"? Suffice it to say that this is not what I see when I look at it, even after reading this book. (To summarize this quandary--among many--in one sentence when Unger has devoted an entire book to it is lazy and unjust at best.)
Bear in mind that the subject of debate, the impetus for revolution, the axis around which much of the art world has revolved and evolved for the subsequent 110 years, is a group of prostitutes lounging in a whorehouse. (Unger would've preferred "brothel.") Ahhhh, the power and pleasures of art.
I have known very few 27-year-olds, worldly or otherwise, artistic or not, who think in the terms attributed to Picasso by Unger. Which is not to say that Picasso wasn't one of them, it's just difficult to believe these (and countless other debatable and plausible interpretations) were what occupied the young Pablo's mind as he picked up his brush and faced the naked canvass before deliberately filling it with five naked women.
Did the oddly-turned head on the fifth woman turn the art world on its head and force it to more closely examine itself? Undoubtedly. Can I fully understand or articulate the reasons why, even after absorbing Unger's riveting analysis? Doubtful.
Does any of this make this biography anything less than fascinating? Not in the least. In fact, it may well change how I view art from this point forward.
And isn't that really the point? Enjoy.
Full disclosure: I am neither an artist nor sufficiently qualified to critique art with any real foundation (scholastic or otherwise) or sense of perspective, place or purpose. Like many fellow baby boomers, I have a sense of the names one is supposed to know and perhaps even the era/genre with which they're most closely associated. There is a handful of artists whose work I could recognize and attribute sans signature, with a critical vocabulary almost as limited.
Which is perhaps why I enjoyed "Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World" to the extent that I did.
Author Miles Unger not only delves into Picasso's early and formative ages and stages, he does so with a keen and schooled eye and a syntax that informs without leaving the reader reaching for the dictionary and thesaurus every other page. While I'm reasonably certain that I could never reach the same conclusions when critiquing Picasso or any other artist, I could appreciate his and, when comparing them with the paintings themselves, occasionally see how he arrived at them. Surely, there is more than a modicum of psychoanalyst in every critic.
The bigger question for me is whether or not Picasso would agree with him.
To me, this book was as much a study in studying art as it was a study of art.
Centered around "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," the piece largely credited with introducing Cubism as a revolutionary art form that could and did turn the art world upside down while adding a third dimension to a sphere previously constrained to two, it answered myriad questions about Picasso's process and product while raising considerably more about their impact and interpretation.
Though created when he was but 27, Picasso had been a critical if not commercial success for several years, bouncing between his Spanish homeland and Paris with the frequency of a train conductor. (That Paris was the recognized art capital of the world cannot be overestimated as an influence and motivator in his professional life. Would we be having this discussion if he were born and cut his teeth in Chicago?)
Though he came from some means, he lived the seemingly-requisite life of the bohemian starving artist, paying his dues while living in squalor, drinking more than he ate, partying until sunrise and finding more than his share of female companionship at virtually every turn. Fortunately, he was not alone, often the center of a relatively tight-knit circle of friends who found themselves in similar circumstances. Not necessarily well educated, they were reasonably well informed, well lived and seemed to inspire as much as they depended on one another. Their lives were lived with ears and eyes open, subject only to their examination and explanation. Until it came to art.
That said, was it Picasso's intention to turn the art world upside down when he spent the better part of two years working and reworking "Les Desmoiselles"? Was his self-described "series of non-sequiturs" more of an experiment in form and function or was it, as author Unger describes, an expression "personal rather than communal: he was concerned with lust rather than fertility, the extinction of his own consciousness rather than the survival of the community"?
Really, "the extinction of his own consciousness"? Suffice it to say that this is not what I see when I look at it, even after reading this book. (To summarize this quandary--among many--in one sentence when Unger has devoted an entire book to it is lazy and unjust at best.)
Bear in mind that the subject of debate, the impetus for revolution, the axis around which much of the art world has revolved and evolved for the subsequent 110 years, is a group of prostitutes lounging in a whorehouse. (Unger would've preferred "brothel.") Ahhhh, the power and pleasures of art.
I have known very few 27-year-olds, worldly or otherwise, artistic or not, who think in the terms attributed to Picasso by Unger. Which is not to say that Picasso wasn't one of them, it's just difficult to believe these (and countless other debatable and plausible interpretations) were what occupied the young Pablo's mind as he picked up his brush and faced the naked canvass before deliberately filling it with five naked women.
Did the oddly-turned head on the fifth woman turn the art world on its head and force it to more closely examine itself? Undoubtedly. Can I fully understand or articulate the reasons why, even after absorbing Unger's riveting analysis? Doubtful.
Does any of this make this biography anything less than fascinating? Not in the least. In fact, it may well change how I view art from this point forward.
And isn't that really the point? Enjoy.
May 6, 2022
I listened to this very heady book about Picasso and the time in which he lived and worked. The vocabulary was very high and the writing was very scientific. I enjoyed listening to it. I like thinking about that time of history when there was such a renaissance in art. And I slightly agree with the author that things have just "not been the same" since that time. He was referring to the world conflicts which have since followed. It is depressing to think about. I like cubism and it was fun to hear about its birth and evolution as an art form.
August 16, 2021
A spectacular account of Picasso's early years in Paris, and an intimate glimpse into the thriving, groundbreaking art scene in the City of Lights at the turn of the century. By far the best book I've read about Picasso, as Unger makes him come alive, both his genius and his disturbed psyche and relations with the world. Exquisitely written, I was sad to reach the end, because it's such an enjoyable and engaging account. Highly recommended.
August 18, 2021
Full of gossip, outrageous behaviour and works of art which sent shock waves through the established art world in the 20th century. If half of what this book says about Picasso's life is true, I am amazed he lived so long. Definitely an extraordinary man and the photographs show a wonderful progression of his art works and his own face changing over the years. And naturally 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon the most famous example of cubism painting. There is name-dropping galore, and Gertrude Stein is top of the list; famous and infamous people wanted to know Picasso. He married twice, and had countless mistresses and lovers which it is said fueled his artistic endeavours.
This quote explains a lot "For all its undeniable power, Portrait of Gertrude Stein feels disjointed, as if frozen in mid-thought. Picasso makes no attempt to resolve the dissonance between the face and the rest of the canvas that reflects two different stages of the difficult journey he'd embarked on. Another artist might have gone back and reworked the earlier passages in terms of the more rigid geometry of the final, but he allows instead to see the conceptual seams, regarding them as integral to the meaning of the work." Love it or hate it, Picasso represents a huge milestone in art history. An interesting read for those who want the inside story, warts and all.
This quote explains a lot "For all its undeniable power, Portrait of Gertrude Stein feels disjointed, as if frozen in mid-thought. Picasso makes no attempt to resolve the dissonance between the face and the rest of the canvas that reflects two different stages of the difficult journey he'd embarked on. Another artist might have gone back and reworked the earlier passages in terms of the more rigid geometry of the final, but he allows instead to see the conceptual seams, regarding them as integral to the meaning of the work." Love it or hate it, Picasso represents a huge milestone in art history. An interesting read for those who want the inside story, warts and all.
June 24, 2018
The book examines Picasso formative years as an artist, culminating in his first "exorcism" painting in 1907. Les Demoiselles L'Avignon was an upset to his friends and patrons, but Ungar explains how it formed a foundation for the work Picasso pursued for the rest of his career. Fascinating.
July 4, 2018
ERROR
Miles J. Unger’s “Picasso and the Painting that Shocked the World,” features an error on page 298. The birth year of French painter and Picasso collaborator Georges Braque is given as 1892, when a quick search shows that it was 1882… after all, the very next page has Braque “completing his military service in 1902,” an impressive achievement for a boy just into the double digits.
For me, noticing that error had a deeper meaning than the admittedly smug dickishness that usually accompanies such a find. I.e., before I noticed that discrepancy, I was beginning to wonder if, with “Picasso,” I was approaching an event horizon of reading a book and processing so little of it. Readers of any level know this feeling: you’re unable to keep focused on the words and you’re retaining so little you question if it would even be fair to say you read the book… so, noticing the DOB error gave me kind of a confidence boost that, yes, this book wasn’t getting the better of me.
Which isn’t an aspersion on Unger or “Picasso,” necessarily. I think I was expecting more a biography than an art book (a perception that should have been quashed by which section of the bookstore I found the book). So while Unger covers much of Picasso’s early life, a good portion of the narrative goes instead to art-theory descriptions of Picasso’s work, as well as many other painters from that era. In the process Unger more than makes the case for the 1907 “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” or “The Young Lades of Avignon” (crudely put, a painting of nude prostitutes), representing one of the most seismic shifts in a cultural endeavor the world has ever seen.
For me “Picasso” was at its best when it explained how the artist helped usher in modernism, and what that meant for the wider society. Unger credits Picasso and his painting with no less than separating the old century from the new one. However, as Unger shows in the exquisite last paragraph of the book, the separation was ultimately disappointing.
Miles J. Unger’s “Picasso and the Painting that Shocked the World,” features an error on page 298. The birth year of French painter and Picasso collaborator Georges Braque is given as 1892, when a quick search shows that it was 1882… after all, the very next page has Braque “completing his military service in 1902,” an impressive achievement for a boy just into the double digits.
For me, noticing that error had a deeper meaning than the admittedly smug dickishness that usually accompanies such a find. I.e., before I noticed that discrepancy, I was beginning to wonder if, with “Picasso,” I was approaching an event horizon of reading a book and processing so little of it. Readers of any level know this feeling: you’re unable to keep focused on the words and you’re retaining so little you question if it would even be fair to say you read the book… so, noticing the DOB error gave me kind of a confidence boost that, yes, this book wasn’t getting the better of me.
Which isn’t an aspersion on Unger or “Picasso,” necessarily. I think I was expecting more a biography than an art book (a perception that should have been quashed by which section of the bookstore I found the book). So while Unger covers much of Picasso’s early life, a good portion of the narrative goes instead to art-theory descriptions of Picasso’s work, as well as many other painters from that era. In the process Unger more than makes the case for the 1907 “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” or “The Young Lades of Avignon” (crudely put, a painting of nude prostitutes), representing one of the most seismic shifts in a cultural endeavor the world has ever seen.
For me “Picasso” was at its best when it explained how the artist helped usher in modernism, and what that meant for the wider society. Unger credits Picasso and his painting with no less than separating the old century from the new one. However, as Unger shows in the exquisite last paragraph of the book, the separation was ultimately disappointing.
The hope of those years, the faith in progress—that humankind that would move forever onward and upward until we had reached a perfected future—died in the trenches on the western front, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. Remembering the promise with which the new century had begun made the betrayal seem all the more bitter. For Picasso, and for all who lived through these troubled times, the myth of a lost golden age has grown more powerful with each passing year, its distant glow casting ever-longer shadows on the age to come. (p. 405)
October 25, 2021
While this book has some strong elements, far too many times I found myself shaking my head over its weaknesses. And then when I got to the big payoff -- the description of the "painting that shocked the world," and why and how it did -- my response was, "Meh. That's all he has to say about it?"
There's thing that journalists call: "burying the lead." (Actually, it's "lede," but if I wrote it that way, most readers would think I don't know how to spell.) This means that as a journalist you need to get the key point at the top of your article. Don't save it for the conclusion, which many readers won't get to. This book buries the lead. The lead is the famous painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Completed in 1907, about 8 years after Picasso first went to Paris, it is considered the first "modern art" painting because it skews perspective of some of the bodies, takes apart bodies to show different parts in different directions, and uses a flat visual plane that makes no effort to give realistic perspective. Some of these elements could be found in other Picasso paintings and those by others at the time, especially the flattening of the plane. But nobody put so much together in a single painting.
OK, so far so good. The problem is that the painting isn't even mentioned until about page 300 of a 400-page book. All the rest is the lead-in about Picasso's upbringing, his conventional artist father, his multiple attempts to reach success in Paris, his affairs, his friendships, and so on. The info about the painting should have been at the front, or at least some anecdotes about the painting and what it meant should have been there. Then we could have had some sense of what this was building to.
Furthermore, the discussion of the painting itself is actually kind of cursory. I summarized it above, and there isn't a lot more in this book. And what there is doesn't exactly sit right with me. The author writes a dozen times about the "ferociousness" of the painting, and I just don't see it. Yes, the women look directly at the viewer -- that is, turning on its head the objectification of women by men. But they're not ferocious as much as they are distorted. And I can understand that this can be perceived as violence towards them, but that's not the only interpretation. Neither do I fully buy in to the author's statement that everyone knew this was a painting of 5 women in a bordello, but that the niceties of the era didn't allow one to say that. Tons of paintings at the time were in bordellos. This could just be one woman shown in five poses in an artist's studio. I just don't see it as violent as the author says it is -- and he doesn't prove it to me.
This is a book weighed down by a lot of research and an author who seems to know a lot about his subject. But he can't get out of his own way in order to tell a crisp story and discern what's important and what has devolved into too much gossip. On top of that, the gossip material has been covered a thousand times in biographies, feature magazine articles, documentary films, etc. It's titillating, sure, but it's been done. In fact, it was being recorded in print even as the events he portrays were happening, because the artists and poets in this book were social media exhibitionists before social media existed.
My first complaint is the title: "the painting that shocked the world." I'll give Mr. Unger a pass by assuming he didn't write the title. But here's the thing. The painting didn't "shock the world" because it wasn't shown to the world when it was painted. According to Unger, Picasso showed it to 10 or 20 influential people, and when only a couple of them seemed to kinda understand it, he rolled it up and left it on the floor of his flat. For seven years. Really. Was it shocking to those who saw it? Yes, apparently. But did "the world" see it? Not by a long shot. And when it was purchased after seven years, it went to a private collector, so it still was seen by a very select few. And by the time those seven years had passed, Picasso, Braque and others had done hundreds of paintings using some of the principles and techniques he started to explore in the painting. So it would not have "shocked the world" at that point, even if it had been on wide display. Dumb title.
The exaggerated title represents the exaggerations or, at least, the breathless prose of the entire book. Over and over we're told that Picasso "changed the world." Literally, changed the world. Not changed painting or art. But "changed the world." Really? No proof is given in this book, except the observation that he became the most famous and richest artist in the world, thus paving the way for celebrity artists since. But how has that changed the world?
At the time Picasso was made a celebrity, the rapidly improving communications infrastructure (telegraph, movies, telephones, color printing, etc.) made celebrities in every field. There were athletic celebrities, movie stars, famous authors, and so on. Picasso was lifted by the tide, not the other way around, as the author claims.
Enough criticism. I'll state what I like about it. It's entertaining to read. It covers a lot of ground, in the sense that scores of artists, poets, essayists, models, collectors, and art dealers are mentioned. The author does a good job of explaining who the people are and reminding us when the return to the stage at a later period. I like that the book is full of direct quotes taken from original sources, such as people's memoirs, interviews with media over the last 100 years, and novels. The author backs up a lot of assertions and anecdotes with first-hand quotes. And he also does a nice job of exploding a few myths that surrounded Picasso, while giving fair measure to a few that are unresolved (was he blackmailed into a homosexual affair for a while when he was broke?). And he challenges Picasso's falsehoods, such as his preposterous claim that he was unaware of African art until the 1940s, when there are people quoted as saying they saw him looking at African art in Paris museums and he had in his possession several pieces of African art that a friend of his had stolen from a museum in 1906 or 1907.
The author does a good job of showing the seamy underside of the Montmartre area and its famous inhabitants, which even in their day were being treated as if their hardships were merely charming. They really didn't have enough to eat. They really lived in squalid rooms without heat, electricity, or running water. There really were pickpockets and muggers all over the place. Their art really was hated, and they had to abase themselves to art dealers to get a few francs.
People really did commit suicide and have huge problems with opium. And the women were basically treated as chattel; the author pulls no punches about how bad that is in retrospect and why it was allowed to happen at the time, though there's no excuse for it. There's a really sad moment when he mentions a lovely young woman who was a sometimes washerwoman and sometimes model; but as a model, it was assumed she'd sleep with her clients since she was modeling nude when they told her to.
One of the best elements of the book is Fernande Olivier, a statuesque woman who was with Picasso during most of the key years in this book. She was married to someone who abused her, and she took up with Picasso in part for protection and in part out of admiration for him and his fellow artists. The author quotes from her two memoirs extensively, and she seems incredibly smart and sharp about Picasso and the atmosphere in which they lived. The love and anger, the heavy doses of opium, Picasso's jealousy, and the intensity with which he worked. She got pretty far with her life, including being paid off by Picasso to not publish her memoirs of life with him until after he died.
And this book does a good job at covering Picasso's influences, from the tortured Catholicism of his native Spain (though his parents weren't religious, it was all around them), to the women he loved (and treated with misogyny for his entire life), to artists such as Cezanne and Braque, to African masks, to poets. You really do get a sense of the fervor of Picasso's painting -- and the rest of his life -- as he explored the depths of his fears and negative outlook on modern life. You realize you wouldn't like Picasso at all, and he would hate you because you wouldn't live up to his standards of smarts and outrageousness. And yet, you'd never forget him either.
So, anyway, there's a lot to like in this book. If you know little about Picasso, this would be a good introduction, though I think if you've read about him already this doesn't break new ground. I like the definitions of how art was changing in that crucial period of the start of the 20th century in Paris, and I think the author does a good job of contrasting the various leading styles of the era. The milieu is captured well, too. But the book is highly repetitious and it fails in the task that is implied in its title: explaining to us why and how "Demoiselles d'Avignon" shocked the world.
There's thing that journalists call: "burying the lead." (Actually, it's "lede," but if I wrote it that way, most readers would think I don't know how to spell.) This means that as a journalist you need to get the key point at the top of your article. Don't save it for the conclusion, which many readers won't get to. This book buries the lead. The lead is the famous painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Completed in 1907, about 8 years after Picasso first went to Paris, it is considered the first "modern art" painting because it skews perspective of some of the bodies, takes apart bodies to show different parts in different directions, and uses a flat visual plane that makes no effort to give realistic perspective. Some of these elements could be found in other Picasso paintings and those by others at the time, especially the flattening of the plane. But nobody put so much together in a single painting.
OK, so far so good. The problem is that the painting isn't even mentioned until about page 300 of a 400-page book. All the rest is the lead-in about Picasso's upbringing, his conventional artist father, his multiple attempts to reach success in Paris, his affairs, his friendships, and so on. The info about the painting should have been at the front, or at least some anecdotes about the painting and what it meant should have been there. Then we could have had some sense of what this was building to.
Furthermore, the discussion of the painting itself is actually kind of cursory. I summarized it above, and there isn't a lot more in this book. And what there is doesn't exactly sit right with me. The author writes a dozen times about the "ferociousness" of the painting, and I just don't see it. Yes, the women look directly at the viewer -- that is, turning on its head the objectification of women by men. But they're not ferocious as much as they are distorted. And I can understand that this can be perceived as violence towards them, but that's not the only interpretation. Neither do I fully buy in to the author's statement that everyone knew this was a painting of 5 women in a bordello, but that the niceties of the era didn't allow one to say that. Tons of paintings at the time were in bordellos. This could just be one woman shown in five poses in an artist's studio. I just don't see it as violent as the author says it is -- and he doesn't prove it to me.
This is a book weighed down by a lot of research and an author who seems to know a lot about his subject. But he can't get out of his own way in order to tell a crisp story and discern what's important and what has devolved into too much gossip. On top of that, the gossip material has been covered a thousand times in biographies, feature magazine articles, documentary films, etc. It's titillating, sure, but it's been done. In fact, it was being recorded in print even as the events he portrays were happening, because the artists and poets in this book were social media exhibitionists before social media existed.
My first complaint is the title: "the painting that shocked the world." I'll give Mr. Unger a pass by assuming he didn't write the title. But here's the thing. The painting didn't "shock the world" because it wasn't shown to the world when it was painted. According to Unger, Picasso showed it to 10 or 20 influential people, and when only a couple of them seemed to kinda understand it, he rolled it up and left it on the floor of his flat. For seven years. Really. Was it shocking to those who saw it? Yes, apparently. But did "the world" see it? Not by a long shot. And when it was purchased after seven years, it went to a private collector, so it still was seen by a very select few. And by the time those seven years had passed, Picasso, Braque and others had done hundreds of paintings using some of the principles and techniques he started to explore in the painting. So it would not have "shocked the world" at that point, even if it had been on wide display. Dumb title.
The exaggerated title represents the exaggerations or, at least, the breathless prose of the entire book. Over and over we're told that Picasso "changed the world." Literally, changed the world. Not changed painting or art. But "changed the world." Really? No proof is given in this book, except the observation that he became the most famous and richest artist in the world, thus paving the way for celebrity artists since. But how has that changed the world?
At the time Picasso was made a celebrity, the rapidly improving communications infrastructure (telegraph, movies, telephones, color printing, etc.) made celebrities in every field. There were athletic celebrities, movie stars, famous authors, and so on. Picasso was lifted by the tide, not the other way around, as the author claims.
Enough criticism. I'll state what I like about it. It's entertaining to read. It covers a lot of ground, in the sense that scores of artists, poets, essayists, models, collectors, and art dealers are mentioned. The author does a good job of explaining who the people are and reminding us when the return to the stage at a later period. I like that the book is full of direct quotes taken from original sources, such as people's memoirs, interviews with media over the last 100 years, and novels. The author backs up a lot of assertions and anecdotes with first-hand quotes. And he also does a nice job of exploding a few myths that surrounded Picasso, while giving fair measure to a few that are unresolved (was he blackmailed into a homosexual affair for a while when he was broke?). And he challenges Picasso's falsehoods, such as his preposterous claim that he was unaware of African art until the 1940s, when there are people quoted as saying they saw him looking at African art in Paris museums and he had in his possession several pieces of African art that a friend of his had stolen from a museum in 1906 or 1907.
The author does a good job of showing the seamy underside of the Montmartre area and its famous inhabitants, which even in their day were being treated as if their hardships were merely charming. They really didn't have enough to eat. They really lived in squalid rooms without heat, electricity, or running water. There really were pickpockets and muggers all over the place. Their art really was hated, and they had to abase themselves to art dealers to get a few francs.
People really did commit suicide and have huge problems with opium. And the women were basically treated as chattel; the author pulls no punches about how bad that is in retrospect and why it was allowed to happen at the time, though there's no excuse for it. There's a really sad moment when he mentions a lovely young woman who was a sometimes washerwoman and sometimes model; but as a model, it was assumed she'd sleep with her clients since she was modeling nude when they told her to.
One of the best elements of the book is Fernande Olivier, a statuesque woman who was with Picasso during most of the key years in this book. She was married to someone who abused her, and she took up with Picasso in part for protection and in part out of admiration for him and his fellow artists. The author quotes from her two memoirs extensively, and she seems incredibly smart and sharp about Picasso and the atmosphere in which they lived. The love and anger, the heavy doses of opium, Picasso's jealousy, and the intensity with which he worked. She got pretty far with her life, including being paid off by Picasso to not publish her memoirs of life with him until after he died.
And this book does a good job at covering Picasso's influences, from the tortured Catholicism of his native Spain (though his parents weren't religious, it was all around them), to the women he loved (and treated with misogyny for his entire life), to artists such as Cezanne and Braque, to African masks, to poets. You really do get a sense of the fervor of Picasso's painting -- and the rest of his life -- as he explored the depths of his fears and negative outlook on modern life. You realize you wouldn't like Picasso at all, and he would hate you because you wouldn't live up to his standards of smarts and outrageousness. And yet, you'd never forget him either.
So, anyway, there's a lot to like in this book. If you know little about Picasso, this would be a good introduction, though I think if you've read about him already this doesn't break new ground. I like the definitions of how art was changing in that crucial period of the start of the 20th century in Paris, and I think the author does a good job of contrasting the various leading styles of the era. The milieu is captured well, too. But the book is highly repetitious and it fails in the task that is implied in its title: explaining to us why and how "Demoiselles d'Avignon" shocked the world.
March 24, 2021
This book requires endurance, and will likely only appeal to those who are very interested in the life of Picasso. (I have a low key obsession with Bohemian Paris from the early 1900s to 1930s.) I read a little, moved on to other things, read a little more, took a break...this is not a quick read.
It is an exhaustive account of not only Picasso's life, but also an in-depth discussion of his art over the entire span of his career and a close look at the cultural and political context as he was coming up in Paris. The author really wants you to gain an understanding of his work, as well as the man.
A lot of this was over my head, to be honest, but I like the language of art even if I don't fully grasp the more academic commentary, so I soldiered on through the denser sections.
I really enjoyed learning more about Picasso, so I'm glad I put the time in.
It is an exhaustive account of not only Picasso's life, but also an in-depth discussion of his art over the entire span of his career and a close look at the cultural and political context as he was coming up in Paris. The author really wants you to gain an understanding of his work, as well as the man.
A lot of this was over my head, to be honest, but I like the language of art even if I don't fully grasp the more academic commentary, so I soldiered on through the denser sections.
I really enjoyed learning more about Picasso, so I'm glad I put the time in.
May 4, 2018
A romantic novel based on some loose trivia, masquerading as history. And the writing is rather unpleasant.
September 24, 2018
Maybe more people should have called Pablo Picasso an asshole.
August 5, 2018
Another book I'd really rather give 3 1/2 stars to.
Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World by Miles J. Unger (Simon & Schuster, 2018) is a solid addition to long, long, long bibliography already in place. I have read all three volumes of the biography by John Richardson and a hefty number of exhibition catalogs and articles. In fact, when I started organizing the Cubism course, I was startled to realize just how much stuff is already on my own bookshelves. In some ways, Unger’s exploration of Picasso youth and formative years is better than Richardson’s—perhaps because Unger isn’t speaking from the Mount Olympus of Picasso studies and goes to a great deal of trouble to detail the experiences that he will later use as evidence for his analyses of Picasso’s art.
At one point my husband pointed out I was deeply into the book and still had not arrived at the Demoiselles. I wasn’t surprised. I knew the Demoiselles had to provide the climax to the arc; my only question was how the author would bring the story to a close. He did that effectively by situating the Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) as the beginning of the seismic shift that changed Picasso from a symbolist painter of dark, personal and angst-laden narratives to a revolutionary who abandons message in favor of pure expressive form.
And generally I like the book pretty well.
On the other hand, I find Unger, like many authors writing for the popular nonfiction market to be unreliable on facts. Another reader pointed out that Unger gives Georges Braque’s birth year as 1892 instead of 1882. Yes it could be a typo, but it is an inexcusable one. I made a number of notes when I ran into his assertion on page 222 that “[Matisse’s] Luxe, Calme et Volupté, completed in 1904 and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, a vision of a sensual paradise based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, features Neo-Impressionism’s distinctive dots of pure color.”
Well no. Luxe was emphatically not based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. It was based on the poem “L’Invitation au voyage” (Invitation to the voyage”) from the collection Les Fleurs du Mal (“Flowers of Evil”) by Charles Baudelaire. The relevant lines that I always share with my students are:
L’à tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté
Luxe, calme et volupté.,/i>
There, all is only order and beauty,
Luxury, serenity and sensual delight.
This is not an inconsequential slip, a typo. Unger goes on to embed the error a few pages later while discussing the magisterial Bonheur de vie (1905-06) now in the Barnes Foundation collection.
Mistakes like this bother me. I like to recommend readable books to my students, hoping that they will find such texts a pleasure rather than the burden they find most of things I assign. I don’t, however, want my students learning things that are incorrect and casual readers, readers not familiar with content in a more scholarly way, are not in all likelihood going to recognize errors when they encounter them.
Generally Unger has excellent insights. What he has to say about works including the juvenilia, the Blue and Rose Periods and the transition to Cubism is interesting and thought-provoking. He also has a real knack for description. Unger is, however, “judgy.” He dismisses the conclusions of various scholars, he makes assertions about what an artist thinks or intends, and when I look for citations that uphold his opinions either there are non or the sources are the words of the many not entirely reliable witnesses, many of them former partners, who subsequently wrote memoires. And, while the painter Françoise Gilot Salk (b. 1921), who lives in San Diego, California, still recalls well her “life with Picasso,” and her eponymous memoir has been repeatedly mined for films and other books, no single recollection, no single point of view ever tells a complete story.
Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World by Miles J. Unger (Simon & Schuster, 2018) is a solid addition to long, long, long bibliography already in place. I have read all three volumes of the biography by John Richardson and a hefty number of exhibition catalogs and articles. In fact, when I started organizing the Cubism course, I was startled to realize just how much stuff is already on my own bookshelves. In some ways, Unger’s exploration of Picasso youth and formative years is better than Richardson’s—perhaps because Unger isn’t speaking from the Mount Olympus of Picasso studies and goes to a great deal of trouble to detail the experiences that he will later use as evidence for his analyses of Picasso’s art.
At one point my husband pointed out I was deeply into the book and still had not arrived at the Demoiselles. I wasn’t surprised. I knew the Demoiselles had to provide the climax to the arc; my only question was how the author would bring the story to a close. He did that effectively by situating the Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) as the beginning of the seismic shift that changed Picasso from a symbolist painter of dark, personal and angst-laden narratives to a revolutionary who abandons message in favor of pure expressive form.
And generally I like the book pretty well.
On the other hand, I find Unger, like many authors writing for the popular nonfiction market to be unreliable on facts. Another reader pointed out that Unger gives Georges Braque’s birth year as 1892 instead of 1882. Yes it could be a typo, but it is an inexcusable one. I made a number of notes when I ran into his assertion on page 222 that “[Matisse’s] Luxe, Calme et Volupté, completed in 1904 and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, a vision of a sensual paradise based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, features Neo-Impressionism’s distinctive dots of pure color.”
Well no. Luxe was emphatically not based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. It was based on the poem “L’Invitation au voyage” (Invitation to the voyage”) from the collection Les Fleurs du Mal (“Flowers of Evil”) by Charles Baudelaire. The relevant lines that I always share with my students are:
L’à tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté
Luxe, calme et volupté.,/i>
There, all is only order and beauty,
Luxury, serenity and sensual delight.
This is not an inconsequential slip, a typo. Unger goes on to embed the error a few pages later while discussing the magisterial Bonheur de vie (1905-06) now in the Barnes Foundation collection.
Mistakes like this bother me. I like to recommend readable books to my students, hoping that they will find such texts a pleasure rather than the burden they find most of things I assign. I don’t, however, want my students learning things that are incorrect and casual readers, readers not familiar with content in a more scholarly way, are not in all likelihood going to recognize errors when they encounter them.
Generally Unger has excellent insights. What he has to say about works including the juvenilia, the Blue and Rose Periods and the transition to Cubism is interesting and thought-provoking. He also has a real knack for description. Unger is, however, “judgy.” He dismisses the conclusions of various scholars, he makes assertions about what an artist thinks or intends, and when I look for citations that uphold his opinions either there are non or the sources are the words of the many not entirely reliable witnesses, many of them former partners, who subsequently wrote memoires. And, while the painter Françoise Gilot Salk (b. 1921), who lives in San Diego, California, still recalls well her “life with Picasso,” and her eponymous memoir has been repeatedly mined for films and other books, no single recollection, no single point of view ever tells a complete story.
August 15, 2021
I wanted to read a book that chronicled a massive change in an artist's approach and output, and it seemed to me there was Picasso was a pretty natural place to start. I was not disappointed by Miles J. Unger's "Picasso and the Painting that Shocked the World." I am embarking on a little self-guided course on modern art history (a blind spot for me), and I think this has been a really nice starting point.
Unger has written a combination history-art appreciation of Picasso's life and work from his years as a teenage wunderkind through the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Unger asserts that in this painting, you can find the birth of Modern Art as we know it today. One of the book's best sections is the one hour (I listened on audiobook) he spends explicating the painting in deep detail as a kind of Rosetta Stone for art before and after the painting.
Structurally, the book works perfectly. Unger achieves his goal of walking his audience through the various periods in Picasso's developmental career, chronicling how personal and creative breakthroughs shifted his perspective and created the artist he would become. He doesn't fall for easy narratives (he was sad in his blue period!) but is also sure to help us see the painter as a very human person influenced by the world around him.
Where sometimes I found fault with the book was in its moment-to-moment style. It is difficult to write about art without seeming pretentious or precious and Unger falls into these traps from time to time. I find that writing about Picasso is difficult for scholars awed by his genius because they are too eager to make apologies for a guy who was clearly a womanizer and a dickhead. I think you could make the case that some things he did were abusive and while we don't necessarily need to spend all of our time focusing on that, if you are going to talk about his sex life, you ought to do so through a modern lens.
But, these qualms are minor in light of what Unger has achieved here. I am a dumbass when it comes to art history, and he has created a text that unlocks a real connection and understanding of a particularly important moment in our cultural history.
With his precise historical detail and critical eye, Unger helps us understand the hundreds or everyday instances and influences that impacted the master as he worked towards what would be one of his greatest works.
Unger has written a combination history-art appreciation of Picasso's life and work from his years as a teenage wunderkind through the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Unger asserts that in this painting, you can find the birth of Modern Art as we know it today. One of the book's best sections is the one hour (I listened on audiobook) he spends explicating the painting in deep detail as a kind of Rosetta Stone for art before and after the painting.
Structurally, the book works perfectly. Unger achieves his goal of walking his audience through the various periods in Picasso's developmental career, chronicling how personal and creative breakthroughs shifted his perspective and created the artist he would become. He doesn't fall for easy narratives (he was sad in his blue period!) but is also sure to help us see the painter as a very human person influenced by the world around him.
Where sometimes I found fault with the book was in its moment-to-moment style. It is difficult to write about art without seeming pretentious or precious and Unger falls into these traps from time to time. I find that writing about Picasso is difficult for scholars awed by his genius because they are too eager to make apologies for a guy who was clearly a womanizer and a dickhead. I think you could make the case that some things he did were abusive and while we don't necessarily need to spend all of our time focusing on that, if you are going to talk about his sex life, you ought to do so through a modern lens.
But, these qualms are minor in light of what Unger has achieved here. I am a dumbass when it comes to art history, and he has created a text that unlocks a real connection and understanding of a particularly important moment in our cultural history.
With his precise historical detail and critical eye, Unger helps us understand the hundreds or everyday instances and influences that impacted the master as he worked towards what would be one of his greatest works.
August 30, 2018
It took me so long to read this book! Not because it isn't interesting, but because it's so densely detailed - if you don't already know the difference between impressionism and fauvism, realism and symbolism, the role of classicism and why cubism is deemed so revolutionary, this feels like an art history course and it's slow reading. Also, Unger introduces his reader to what must be every friend, lover and acquaintance Picasso ever knew from the age of 18 in his attempt to understand the artist's inspirations and progress. Oh, and the Painting That Shocked the World (title) isn't even mentioned until chapter 8, page 254, or discussed in detail until after page 300. I learned more than I wanted to know about art that I don't like, but it was interesting enough to carry me to the last page, even if I don't appreciate the genius of cubism or allure of the hedonism that made it possible. I did enjoy being carried into turn-of-the-century Montmartre and being offered a peek into what's behind the disturbing art of Picasso. Unger's writing is crisp and clear, and creates a multidimensional world for his reader to slip into with characterizations that allowed me to feel like I truly met the historical figures that he writes about.
April 5, 2020
This is an amazing discourse and not just about Picasso and how his works changed our perception of art. It is also about the transition from Impressionisim to Fauvisim to Cubisim and even beyond. Unger shows us Picasso's life and how it impacted his vision but the book primarily focuses on his vision and the great leap it took from his blue and rose periods (e.g.Family of Saltimbanques)to what is called the 1st Cubist masterpiece "Les Damoiselles d'avignon. In between we are introduced to the styles and personalities of many other artists of this period (approx. 1904 to 1909)….Matisse, Braque, Derain as well as writers that were in Picasso's circle (Appolinaire, Max Jacobs and others). It begins as he leaves for Paris as a 19 year old, determined to make his mark on the art world and ends on a note of where that mark will bring us to art in the future. It is in no way pedantic,(although in some places I found the discussion of psychology and stylistic differences challenging to read) but an engaging story, well written and, dare I day it, a book that I could not put down until the end. My only complaint is that there were too few colored plates...but that's what the internet is for, I guess. Highly recommended for art history lovers.
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July 8, 2019This is a book that doesn’t know how to start and doesn’t know where to end. If you were to meet Miles J. Unger, you’d probably find that, like me, he can never leave a party. His separation anxiety forces “Picasso and the…” to linger on long after Picasso finishes painting Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. And the first chapter is so flowery, hyperbolic & melodramatic that his literary agent must have told him: “You got to begin POETIC!”
But the rest of the book is perfectly fine – a fraternal portrait of an ambitious young talented Spanish painter who tries over and over– four times – to move to fabled Paris. You know why Picasso made those Rose Period paintings?* He was TRANSLATING Apollinaire poems into pictures! (Pablo never went to college; these loony French poets were his professors.) His painting is – arguably – a form of literature.
Speaking of which, Unger can describe a painting simply, clearly, convincingly. (I wish I could give you examples, but I listened to the damn thing on CDs, so the book subsequently evaporated like spilled ginger ale.)
*And the Blue Period? All ripped off of El Greco! (Up until the Rose era, Picasso was a tragic Spanish painter.)
But the rest of the book is perfectly fine – a fraternal portrait of an ambitious young talented Spanish painter who tries over and over– four times – to move to fabled Paris. You know why Picasso made those Rose Period paintings?* He was TRANSLATING Apollinaire poems into pictures! (Pablo never went to college; these loony French poets were his professors.) His painting is – arguably – a form of literature.
Speaking of which, Unger can describe a painting simply, clearly, convincingly. (I wish I could give you examples, but I listened to the damn thing on CDs, so the book subsequently evaporated like spilled ginger ale.)
*And the Blue Period? All ripped off of El Greco! (Up until the Rose era, Picasso was a tragic Spanish painter.)
May 14, 2021
A very detailed and well written book about Picasso's history in drawing. It really provides a perspective of how his environment, his family, and his friends influenced his art. His upbringing in Barcelona to the capital of bohemian life and art in Paris served as a backdrop to how he incorporates the world around him. He very much lived the quintessential artist life - poor although created every day and he stuck true to his art though. He was influenced by Matisse, Cezanne, and Braque throughout his artistic career. But his Les Demoiselles D'Avignon was the breakthrough. He was tortured by it day in and day out in creating this. His vision was beyond anyone's but he stayed true to it which takes incredible courage. I understand Cubism a little more as well as the author explains in much detail which helps. I thought I knew a lot about Picasso already after reading Francoise Gilot's book Life with Picasso (which is referenced a lot in the book). But this book takes it a step further. This is Picasso before he meets her. Picasso truly had an amazing life. He really is someone to be in awe of as an artist. He's life is reflected in his art and vice versa.
April 1, 2023
Did the MoMA commission this book? I downloaded the audiobook on a whim and I kind of assumed that the "shocking" painting was Guernica, not Les Demoiselles. The author takes 15.5 meandering hours to say that - even though Picasso didn't love the painting (he kept it rolled up in the corner of his studio), even though no one thought it worthwhile to purchase at the time - without Les Demoiselles somehow cubism wouldn't have made it into the capital-A Art world.
The other wrong assumption I made was that this book was from decades ago, because it seems as if it didn't age well. Wrong. It was originally published in 2018. The author lumps primitive and childlike drawings into the same category as art from other cultures, and, spoiler alert, this is the stroke of "genius" that Picasso (and a bunch of other painters around that time) had that was so shocking to the art world.
If you're into euro-centric perspectives on art history that are mildly insulting to other cultures, then this book is fine. If you're looking to learn a bit about Picasso himself, this book has some "fun" tales and outlines his early life nicely. Other than that, it's rather tedious.
The other wrong assumption I made was that this book was from decades ago, because it seems as if it didn't age well. Wrong. It was originally published in 2018. The author lumps primitive and childlike drawings into the same category as art from other cultures, and, spoiler alert, this is the stroke of "genius" that Picasso (and a bunch of other painters around that time) had that was so shocking to the art world.
If you're into euro-centric perspectives on art history that are mildly insulting to other cultures, then this book is fine. If you're looking to learn a bit about Picasso himself, this book has some "fun" tales and outlines his early life nicely. Other than that, it's rather tedious.
August 13, 2018
What a fantastic decade opened the Twentieth Century! Science and Math were transformed by the insights gained. Then came Picasso's huge canvas "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" challenging not only the few who originally saw the work but the other artists who were pushing the boundaries of Western art following the wave of Impressionism.
This book is a history of the young Picasso who left Spain to paint in Paris, living a Bohemian lifestyle with other artists of the time. They shared ideas, wine, space, women, and drugs. It was a crazy time and place, well captured by this book.
I'm not sure I understand the canvas Picasso painted, even after reading this excellent history, but I have a greater appreciation than I did of the changes that occurred. I was surprised how deeply African art affected Picasso, showing him that art can give life to the demons that surrounded him, but by being depicted are then controlled. A wild idea, just one more to help appreciate his art.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I'm not an artist. But I do appreciate a well-researched, well-written history.
This book is a history of the young Picasso who left Spain to paint in Paris, living a Bohemian lifestyle with other artists of the time. They shared ideas, wine, space, women, and drugs. It was a crazy time and place, well captured by this book.
I'm not sure I understand the canvas Picasso painted, even after reading this excellent history, but I have a greater appreciation than I did of the changes that occurred. I was surprised how deeply African art affected Picasso, showing him that art can give life to the demons that surrounded him, but by being depicted are then controlled. A wild idea, just one more to help appreciate his art.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I'm not an artist. But I do appreciate a well-researched, well-written history.
December 14, 2018
The fascinating story of the young Picasso
This is a very interesting story about Pablo Picasso and his band of fellow travelers living in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century, as they sought - successfully - to change the course of modern art. In the early years these artists created an avant garde world of their own. They were talented, but also poor and unknown. They were bold, but also had to struggle with their doubts and demons. They were not always very nice to one another, but they feed off one another’s talents and energy.
Picasso was at the center of it all - the most charismatic, the most talented, the most enigmatic, the most difficult to love. It is a fascinating story about the man and the genius before the rest of world knew about him.
The book is written by an author well versed in art and art history. Some sections can be a little tough for the general reader but it is well worth the effort, and the reader who perseveres will be well rewarded and better educated.
This is a very interesting story about Pablo Picasso and his band of fellow travelers living in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century, as they sought - successfully - to change the course of modern art. In the early years these artists created an avant garde world of their own. They were talented, but also poor and unknown. They were bold, but also had to struggle with their doubts and demons. They were not always very nice to one another, but they feed off one another’s talents and energy.
Picasso was at the center of it all - the most charismatic, the most talented, the most enigmatic, the most difficult to love. It is a fascinating story about the man and the genius before the rest of world knew about him.
The book is written by an author well versed in art and art history. Some sections can be a little tough for the general reader but it is well worth the effort, and the reader who perseveres will be well rewarded and better educated.
December 2, 2023
I chose this before I went to Spain. I was not all that familiar with Picasso beyond the works that I generally recognized and of course, my favorite, Guernica. There was a lot here that surprised me, particularly the painting done in his youth, which was exceptional for his age. I was also unaware of the enormous volume of works and the breadth of his artistic endeavors. I had heard, but now know without a doubt, that the gentleman was such an inveterate horn-dog that he could have become a member of Congress.
"An older man -- Picasso had turned sixty-four the past October -- taking a young woman under his wing can generate a powerful sexual charge, and he was not above exploiting his fame to lure impressionable girls into his bed."
I was amused when touring the Museo Picasso in Malaga, where the tour guide showed us how to identify the various side chicks that were commemorated in his paintings.
"An older man -- Picasso had turned sixty-four the past October -- taking a young woman under his wing can generate a powerful sexual charge, and he was not above exploiting his fame to lure impressionable girls into his bed."
I was amused when touring the Museo Picasso in Malaga, where the tour guide showed us how to identify the various side chicks that were commemorated in his paintings.
May 16, 2018
I've never been a huge fan of Picasso's work, but I am a fan of great writing. To me, the author displays incredible insight and empathy for the events in Picasso's early life and how they affected the man and his art. I guess I identified with so many of the insights that I found the writing too pithy to be read in large doses.
The story itself, about the creation of and world's reaction to Picasso's "Les Demoiselles," was new to me and quite interesting. The interrelationships of people, place, and historic moment that the author skillfully laid out is an interesting and entertaining read.
I'm generally very skeptical of an artist's or art critic's use of a lot of flowery verbal gobbledygook to express and explain their intentions and inspirations for their artworks. To me, it usually sounds like a lot of BS used to obfuscate their lack of understanding as to where their art came from or where it's meant to go. I think Unger's explanations, while they may appear to be bordering on BS, are actually based on his research -- letters, journals, memoirs from Picasso's contemporaries that provide commentary and insight into the artist and his work at the time of creation -- and therefore are more credible and believable.
The story itself, about the creation of and world's reaction to Picasso's "Les Demoiselles," was new to me and quite interesting. The interrelationships of people, place, and historic moment that the author skillfully laid out is an interesting and entertaining read.
I'm generally very skeptical of an artist's or art critic's use of a lot of flowery verbal gobbledygook to express and explain their intentions and inspirations for their artworks. To me, it usually sounds like a lot of BS used to obfuscate their lack of understanding as to where their art came from or where it's meant to go. I think Unger's explanations, while they may appear to be bordering on BS, are actually based on his research -- letters, journals, memoirs from Picasso's contemporaries that provide commentary and insight into the artist and his work at the time of creation -- and therefore are more credible and believable.
May 29, 2018
The author focuses on Picasso's early years in Spain and Paris, culminating around 1907 when, at the age of 25, he completes "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." This work is credited with ushering in Cubism. Calling it "the Painting that Shocked the World" seems to be a stretch. Picasso showed "Les Demoiselles" to a few friends, fellow artists and collectors in 1907, and then tucked it away. Nine years later, at the height of World War One, it finally made its public debut at an exhibition in Paris. At this point Cubism had already been embraced by other artists and critics.
Mr. Unger delves deeply into Picasso's complicated psyche, and describes in detail his relationships with the other artists of his time. I never took an art appreciation course in school, so I found all this to be enlightening.
Mr. Unger delves deeply into Picasso's complicated psyche, and describes in detail his relationships with the other artists of his time. I never took an art appreciation course in school, so I found all this to be enlightening.
October 7, 2018
An excellent read that flows along with the events of the period it covers. There is an art to writing about an event like Picasso’s painting of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon that simultaneously reveals the leading characters surrounding the event as well as the cultural and social environment of the time.
If you are intent on reading through the lives of the famous artists of the past then this book falls into the category of essential reading.
As an artist I am always intrigued when people ask if I teach art as if to be able just to hand over the capacity to paint in an instant. I see many paintings crudely produced as if to copy famous artists but the artists having never struggled like a Picasso or Van Gogh. From reading history written as well as found in this book, the truth is that greatness comes out of adversity and perhaps from no-where else. It is a good read.
If you are intent on reading through the lives of the famous artists of the past then this book falls into the category of essential reading.
As an artist I am always intrigued when people ask if I teach art as if to be able just to hand over the capacity to paint in an instant. I see many paintings crudely produced as if to copy famous artists but the artists having never struggled like a Picasso or Van Gogh. From reading history written as well as found in this book, the truth is that greatness comes out of adversity and perhaps from no-where else. It is a good read.
March 13, 2018
Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World by Miles J. Unger is a well researched biography of Pablo Picasso's early life as well as his friendship and association with many great 20th century artist.
I was interested how he was more upset by what his colleagues though of his art vs what the public thought of his art work.
The one painting they focus on the most and is considered controversial Les Demoiselles d'Avignon The Brothel of Avignon. It was a shock to most of the world during his time as an artist.
This book by Miles J. Unger gives a opening for people to talk about the famous artist and what became of him. Wonderful books for a book club.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy
I was interested how he was more upset by what his colleagues though of his art vs what the public thought of his art work.
The one painting they focus on the most and is considered controversial Les Demoiselles d'Avignon The Brothel of Avignon. It was a shock to most of the world during his time as an artist.
This book by Miles J. Unger gives a opening for people to talk about the famous artist and what became of him. Wonderful books for a book club.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy
June 15, 2018
I am a big fan of historical non-fiction that slices off a piece of a larger story or longer life, and this is a fabulous example. Picasso was so long-lived and his career so multi-variant that it is almost impossible to sum him up, but, by focusing on the period of Picasso’s career bounded by his earliest days up to his “invention” of Cubism, this book does an impressive job of helping the reader understand how Picasso came to understand himself as an artist and his place in the emerging-20th-century’s avant-garde while also exposing the demons that both fueled his artistic genius and nearly destroyed him as a person.
August 21, 2018
This was not a great book, I found myself going to sleep while trying to read it. There are many interesting things that happened to, and during the life of Picasso, but the author fails to wrap me up in the story. there are some wonderful vignettes, but as a whole, I find the writing style lacking.
Additionally this book leaves me thinking of Picasso as a narcissistic bastard (figuratively) who only had people around who he could use. I find no redeeming qualities about the man behind the art. I will also note, the art is not of my taste either, but I was putting that aside for this book, hoping something about the painter would close the gap for me with his art. It failed.
Additionally this book leaves me thinking of Picasso as a narcissistic bastard (figuratively) who only had people around who he could use. I find no redeeming qualities about the man behind the art. I will also note, the art is not of my taste either, but I was putting that aside for this book, hoping something about the painter would close the gap for me with his art. It failed.
October 11, 2020
Before reading Unger's book, I made the mistake of reading Huffington's biography of Picasso. Huffington seemingly had no interest in Picasso's work as an artist. Instead, she spent the 500 pages writing about what an awful human Picasso was. But I am much more interested in Picasso's art than his bad behavior, and so I am very glad I read Unger's book. This biography is primarily focused on Picasso's early years in Paris and the work that led him to usher in the modernist movement. After reading this book, despite all his warts and rough edges, one can't help but be awed by Picasso "the creator."
November 16, 2020
Very good book. Really though when you have a book or audiobook and it discusses a certain piece of art for 10 minutes...it really would be helpful to include a photo of the piece so you don't have to go online and find a photo. Perhaps it's time for a new "media book" full of hyperlinks to any pictures or media connected to the topic being written about.
Ok though..this is a good opener if you want to learn about Picasso's intentions with his art.
I think the writer knows his stuff but hey it's just his opinion right?
Picasso did however shake up the established art world with his new perspective.
If you want insight into why he did this, this book will show the way.
Ok though..this is a good opener if you want to learn about Picasso's intentions with his art.
I think the writer knows his stuff but hey it's just his opinion right?
Picasso did however shake up the established art world with his new perspective.
If you want insight into why he did this, this book will show the way.
April 26, 2021
This is an engrossing book for anyone interested in modern art. Unger describes the early education and life of Picasso--how he was classically trained but wanted to go to Paris. The atmosphere in Paris at the turn of the last century was exciting--it was indeed the center of the art world. Within ten years Picasso would go from being an unknown Spanish painter to the most controversial painter in the world. Indeed his painting Les Demoiselles D'Avignon seems to have come straight from Picasso's imagination.
The author gives a vivid description of Parisian life at the time and has left me wanting more!
The author gives a vivid description of Parisian life at the time and has left me wanting more!
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