Picasso Revisited

“You must not always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer”          

                          -Pablo Picasso, from A Life of Picasso: Vol. II

There are few artists whose histories could pervade a four-part and nearly two thousand page biographical chronicle with gripping authenticity and candor, and even fewer whose such biographies could warrant the type of ceaseless literary consumption that this one does. What began in the 1950s in the South of France as an interest in Picasso’s portraits has half-a-century later birthed arguably the most comprehensive written account of the life and work of Pablo Picasso.

Author John Richardson writes of Picasso as the master who saw himself as “the Mahdi of modern art”, the seemingly doomed lover who “felt more intensely about his art—to which all the women in his life would ultimately be sacrificed”, and the visionary with “the strong gaze that he turned on people he wanted to conquer, seduce, possess and, not least, shock.” These books have been Richardson’s life project, and the forth volume is no doubt going to be filled with the intimate and salacious insight into Picasso’s life that he has proven himself capable of penning throughout the first three.

Being a publication whose purpose is to celebrate the creative mind and spirit, it's only natural that we at Maker Magazine would devour Picasso’s biography on a journey through the artist’s home country of Spain. The third volume made the trip with us from Sotogrande to Malaga and Granada. Face your attention to the right for a dashing shot of the young Pablo with the backdrop of the Sotogrande Marina Club. The fourth and final volume is slated for a summer 2014 release, so with a little bit of dedication and a lot of quiet time you still have many months to power through the 1500+ pages that make up the first three. God speed!

Photo by Alex John Beck