What is it like to sit beside Picasso as he assembles a surprising self-portrait? To visit Chagall at the Paris Opéra at work on his latest masterpiece? To witness Brigitte Bardot posing for Kees Van Dongen? In this unique series of colorful photoessays, interviews, and anecdotes gathered from the popular French magazine Paris Match, we enter the private worlds of 11 legendary modern artists who bare their dreams, secrets, and visions to well-known writers, photographers, and long-time friends. Funny, poignant, whimsical, and revealing, these accounts bring unique perspectives to painters and paintings that over the last century have been transformed into cultural icons.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Paris Match is the Life magazine of France, but the je ne sais quoi that separates English-language journalism from French never seemed stronger than in Encounters with Great Painters, lavishly illustrated tributes (interviews isn't quite the word) to 10 famous artists, including Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Balthus, Francis Bacon, and Salvador Dalí. The 95 photographs dating from the '30s through the '90s are the main reason to buy the book. Here is Matisse at 80, lying in bed as he calmly manipulates a long stick with a piece of charcoal clamped at one end to produce the elegantly simple face of Mary Magdalen, part of a commission for St. Paul de Vence. Here is Picasso, cutting up an owlish photograph of his eyes by David Douglas Duncan and inserting them into a whimsical animal drawing. Here is the apocalyptic mess of Bacon's studio, where layers of plates and trash turn a table to rubble, and even the walls offer evidence of painterly struggle.
The tributes, however, are big on the sort of existential quotes that once seemed appropriate for the Artist to utter. ("I've never wanted anything in life and I've never made any decisions," says Braque. "Everything came together on its own.") In keeping with the pervasive tone of high-flown vagueness, the two Balthus essays never even mention the artist's much-debated imagery of young girls dreamily flaunting their sexuality. The amorphous quality of the book extends to its curious treatment of photo captions. It took this reader quite a while to figure out that the scattered remarks on the first page devoted to each artist actually match up (more or less) with the photos that follow. --Cathy Curtis
From Library Journal
Republished from back numbers of Paris Match, this delightful compilation of photo essays is a wish fulfillment for anyone who loves the work of the 11 legendary artists profiled within, which include Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Kees Van Dongen, Georges Braque, and Fernand L ger. Readers are treated to private visits with the painters all 20th-century masters late in life but still vibrant while at work in their homes and studios. There are some true photojournalistic gems here: the octogenarian Matisse in bed yet hard at work on his crowning achievement, the Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence; an ebullient Chagall painting the ceiling of the Paris Opera; Francis Bacon, his face as scrambled as those in his paintings, beset by immense piles of clutter in his studio. The only false note is an article devoted to an eminently forgettable and campy attempt by Salvador Dal' to stage an invasion of "Venusians," portrayed by swimsuit models. Yet even while clashing with the other profiles, whose subjects are more sincere, this piece documents the publicity-hungry Dal' in his declining years. Infused with the Gallic reverence for artists, this tribute is highly recommended for all libraries and may find popularity with young adults as well as adult lay readers and scholars. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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