Customer Reviews

A Day with Picasso

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If you ever wanted to travel back in time and grab a bite and spend the day with Picasso, Cocteau, Modigliani et al., then this is probably the closest you'll ever get. Kluver's book is kind of a miracle, little gem, really. Who would have thought that one day in the life of a group of friends could be so interesting (albeit a very important group of friends). Perhaps they never thought about that day, or those photographs again. The book not only successfully outlines the day itself, but the whole context for the day. What was going on with whom, how so and so knew the other, what important gallery shows were coming at the time, etc.

The story also illustrates the marriage of Cocteau's bourgeous/fashion/aristocratic circles with the Montparnasse/Left bank artists...Picasso and Cocteau remained lifelong (though sometimes strained) friends, and this was during the early years of that relationship. The context of the story also brings in couturier of the day Paul Poiret (his home(!!) and adjacent gallery), and patroness Misia Sert, both of whom I loved learning more about after reading this book (Arthur Gold's Misia Sert is a GREAT read). Be sure to read the Notes when you read this book, they hold lots of great little nuggets of information, testament to Kluvers copious and detailed research.

Long ago, in a city far, far away, Pablo Picasso and some Montparnasse artist colony friends went cafe-hopping. The future film director Jean Cocteau, on leave from the Western Front, snapped pictures of the group indoors and out. Time passed, the friends went their separate ways, and the pictures were dispersed into different hands. Three-quarters of a century later, a Swiss electrical engineer collecting photos of the Montparnasse scene discovered that several of the photos seemed to have been taken at the same time. This book is the story of how he discovered other photos in the series in different collections around the world, how he discovered the identity of the photographer, and how he pinpointed the day and time the pictures were taken.

This is an amazing book, as much for the ten-plus years it took to sleuth this story out as for the fact that anyone did it at all. The author, once he went to extraordinary lengths to collect these photos, even consulted the French Bureau of Longitudes to analyze the shadows in the pictures, in order to fix the time of day.

So, what do we have? Pictures of Picasso as a man in his mid-thirties (with a full head of hair!), in cafes and on the street with other artists, notably Modigliani and Kisling, and his then current amour, and other acquaintances. They cheerfully pose and mug for their friend Cocteau. And that's it, really. The text relates the story of how these photos were taken, and how the author discovered when, where, and by whom they were taken.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, he then adds chapters which deduce what kind of camera Cocteau used, maps of the area with the camera angles plotted, and selections of drawings, diaries, and correspondence that illustrate one detail or other of the pictures. It's all very interesting, in a headache-inducing way--rather like contemplating a picture painted on a grain of rice. And all this for the sake of recovering a long-ago afternoon of bar-hopping! _Le recouvrement du temp perdu_, indeed.

I havent ever seen a book like this before. Reading this book and following the complete pictures is the next best thing to having a time machine.This book answers those questions that we never had answered like how was he with his friends? etc. You will enjoy it.