Volume 20, Number 10 · June 14, 1973
Looking Back on Picasso
By Anthony Blunt
Picasso: Birth of a Genius
by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot
Praeger, 288 pp., 64 color plates, 907 black and white illustrations pp., $37.50
Picasso: The Artist of the Century
by Jean Leymarie, translated by James Emmons
Viking, 320 pp., 108 color plates, 509 black and white illustrations pp., $37.50
Picasso on Art
by Dore Ashton
Viking, 224 pp., $3.50 (paper)
Henri Matisse: Ecrits et propos sur l'art
edited by Dominique Fourcade
Hermann, 368 pp., 21 F
Henri Matisse
by Louis Aragon, translated by Jean Stewart
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 2 vols., 752 pp., 155 color plates, 541 black and white illustrations pp., $75.00
Picasso's death sent a shock throughout the world, all the greater because we had come to feel that as he had already outlived all his contemporaries—only Chagall has survived him, and how smug he must feel—he would probably outlive everyone else and perhaps finally be carried up miraculously into heaven. His personality had something miraculous about it: his precociousness, his virtuosity, his versatility, his energy, his sudden changes whether of style or of mistress, his power to tease or shock without ever ceasing to be an artist—and towering above all these faculties or foibles, his genius. He has failed to achieve physical immortality but he will certainly attain immortality in the history of civilization.
Review, 3207 words
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