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Picasso: A Biography
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| List Price: | £10.99 |
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Product Description
A scholarly, passionate and brilliantly-written biography of Pablo Picasso by Patrick O'Brian, the famous author of the much-loved Aubrey-Maturin series, reissued in a stunning new cover. Patrick O'Brian's outstanding biography of Picasso explores comprehensively the life of this awe-inspiring artist. Enormously productive and hugely successful, Picasso continues to attract avid, insatiable public interest. O'Brian was a close friend and a neighbour of Picasso's, and the book reflects the closeness of their friendship and the immense erudition and warm wit of Patrick O'Brian. The man that emerges from the pages is full of contradictions: hard yet tender, mean yet generous, affectionate but cold, professing communism but retaining an essentially Catholic mentality, private despite his relish of fame. Critically, O'Brian's is the only biography to fully appreciate the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso's character and art. Sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedies and tragedies, suicides and wars tumble over each other in the vast chaos of Picasso's experience, He was 'a man almost as lonely as the sun, but one who glowed with much the same fierce, burning life.'
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #114023 in Books
- Published on: 2003-11-03
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 512 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
'Patrick O'Brian has written much the best biography of Picasso. It is full of information, the judgements both of Picasso as a man and as an artist seem to me remarkably convincing, and it is extremely well-written. In particular, the relationship between Picasso and the Catalan painters is given its true importance, both in his formative years and, as friends, throughout his life.' Kenneth Clarke
About the Author
Patrick O'Brian, until his death in 2000, was one of our greatest contemporary novelists. He is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey--Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He is the author of many other books including Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime's contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived for many years in South West France and he died in Dublin in January 2000.
Customer Reviews
Picasso, warts and all.
Readers of Patrick O'Brian may have expectations of high adventure in the Napoleonic wars with Aubrey and Maturin, but this thoughful analysis of the life of Picasso is far removed from that. What it does share with O'Brian's fiction is insightful perceptions of an exceptional man and as we would expect from O'Brian, language so beautiful that it is often breathtaking.
O'Brian's personal friendship with Picasso never compromises the objective and sometimes harsh observations penned by O'Brian. His take on the sycophants that surrounded Picasso and his observations on the importance of such people as Gertrude Stein and George Bracht to Picasso's development and evolution as an artist and as a man can't be understated.
O'Brian is pragmatic in his evaluation of Picasso's relationships with women. He was not a kind man. His art consumed him and left casualties in its wake. O'Brian sees truth as clearly as Picasso did, but with a more compassionate mind.
This is unquestionably the finest biography of Picasso ever written and probably ever will be written. Both Patrick O'Brian and Pablo Picasso have written their last chapter, but as we can still see Picasso in every work of art he produced so we can see O'Brian in all of the books he wrote, again and again and again.
Ian Hadley April 2009
A Mockery of a Biography
The idea of phony like Patrick O'Brian - a man who was not Irish as he claimed but an Englishman* - writing a biography is like giving freedom to a journalist who does not let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Unfortunately, O'Brian's style** is so bad that Picasso's biography is not remotely a good story.
The blurb claims that "O'Brian" was a friend of Picasso but, if this was the case, there is no evidence of it. Not once does O'Brian mention any conversation or meeting with Picasso although we do get a lot of vinegary opinions about how badly Picasso was treated by some of his women - particularly Françoise Gilot whose book "Life with Picasso" is a hundred times more entertaining and interesting than this despite its tattle-tattle and gossip.
O'Brian's work is not a biography. About 40% consists of vapid descriptions and opinions of a number of Picasso's works. The details about Picasso's life are sparse. The fact that the book does not even have any pictures of the paintings O'Brian refers to makes it even more tedious.
However, the most unpleasant part of this book is the way the writer feels free to criticize not only some of the unfortunate women who became involved with Picasso but also his children who understandably grew to dislike their father. I can't recall reading a more idiotic statement than this which aims to justify Picasso's abandonment of his own children: " Parents are supposed to love their children; yet surely there is the implied condition that the children should be reasonably lovable?" No, Mr O'Brian - or whatever your name was - they don't. Children are the responsibility of their parents - no matter how famous or artistic.
*If you don't believe me read Dean King's biography where you will learn that he was born in London and his name was Richard Patrick Russ. He was the son of an English mother and a physician of German descent. Nor was he a Catholic as he claimed.
** As you may have guessed I am no fan of his Aubrey/Maturin sea novels either.
