Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters: Beaton, Capote, Dalí, Picasso, Freud, Warhol, and More [Hardcover]

John Richardson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2001

Robert Hughes has described Richardson's multivolume biography of Picasso as "a masterpiece in the making." In this collection of his best shorter pieces, culled from more than thirty years' artistic and literary commentary and reviews, Richardson demonstrates the same dazzling narrative style that has earned him the reputation as one of our foremost biographers.

As a contributor to Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, House and Garden, and The New Yorker, John Richardson has a reputation for stimulating readers with his frank, discerning characterizations of art-world personalities as well as celebrities from a variety of other milieus-- people such as Truman Capote, Armand Hammer, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, and Peggy Guggenheim.

As readers await the third volume of A Life of Picasso, they will be diverted by this witty, wonderfully intelligent collection of approximately thirty essays, extensively revised and updated for this publication, each of which is illustrated with artwork or photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the scandalous murder trial of a French art dealer's widow to photographer-designer Cecil Beaton's peculiar "romance" with Greta Garbo, this sinfully entertaining book lets readers brush up on 20th-century cultural history and the vagaries of human nature at the same time. While we wait for volume III of John Richardson's acclaimed Life of Picasso, the 28 sketches assembled here make an agreeable diversion, revealing Richardson's lighter side and formidable knowledge of art history. Admiring portraits of Chilean collector Eugenia Errazuriz ("Picasso's Other Mother") and British painter Lucian Freud are among the very few laudatory pieces in a collection notable for its enjoyable emphasis on the less edifying traits of the rich and/or famous. The Sitwells were spiteful mythomaniacs. Armand Hammer was "a veteran con man." As for the sexual proclivities of Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala... well, Richardson gives you all the gory details, some of which would have impressed the Marquis de Sade. Richardson appears as a character in several pieces: he worked for Hammer, spent a summer with Truman Capote in Venice, and sat for a portrait by Andy Warhol. But these appearances seldom seem self-aggrandizing; they're integrated into the essays with the same smoothness that distinguishes his prose. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Art writer Richardson (A Life of Picasso: Volumes I and II) scored a success with a recent memoir, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an account of his life shared with the (arguably) bitchiest art critic of the modern era, Douglas Cooper. He follows up that gossipy opus with more dirt 28 articles culled and updated, according to Richardson, from decades of journalism in such slicks as Vanity Fair and House and Garden about the famous and infamous, mostly the latter. He trashes a wide variety of notables, from Salvador Dal¡ to his former employer Armand Hammer, termed "a veteran con man." There are a few admiring essays, such as "Braque's Late Greatness," but only a very few. Mostly it is unrelieved bad-mouthing of the likes of "that simpering ninny Ana‹s Nin... whose narcissistic attitudinizing has addled many an adolescent mind." While some of the subjects seem to deserve this and worse, like the "ratlike ruthlessness" of art swindler Domenica Guillaume, others might merit a little more consideration, like Peggy Guggenheim, who is termed "a clown: an endearingly sad one of the `He Who Gets Slapped' variety," or the transsexual travel writer Jan Morris, whose sex-change operation Richardson violently disapproves of. With a talent for clearly describing intricate art scandals, such as the problems with painter Pierre Bonnard's legacy, Richardson also has an ear for plausible aphorisms, like "Pampered lunatics often reach a great age." Still, the near-continuous tone of grating disdain, which can entertain in a glossy mag article, palls over an entire book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (November 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679424903
• ISBN-13: 978-0679424901
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #516,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Richardson Goes Duck Hunting, November 12, 2002

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters: Beaton, Capote, Dalí, Picasso, Freud, Warhol, and More (Hardcover)

Having read the first two volumes of Mr. Richardson's "A Life Of Picasso," and having thoroughly enjoyed them, I went into this book with high expectations. Overall, I was disappointed. Granted, the book is a collection of some of the articles that Mr. Richardson has written for popular magazines over the past 30 years or so. The audience for, say, a "Vanity Fair" article is not the same as the audience for a scholarly journal. But Mr. Richardson acknowledges in the preface that he had hundreds of articles to choose from. He states that he made a conscious decision not to include his more academic essays. That is a shame. Because some of the material that is included, about such people as Lucien Freud and Brice Marden, for example, gives a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. Here is Lucien Freud on why he chooses to paint nudes of, almost exclusively, close friends and relatives: "Aesthetic and biological truth-telling is what my painting is all about.....the fact that a model would never find himself or herself in this particular situation were it not at the painter's behest makes for vulnerability.....vulnerability would not be an issue if I used professional models. But I don't, because professional models have been stared at so much that they have grown another skin. When they take their clothes off, they are not naked; their skin has become another garment." I would like to have seen more keen insights into the artistic process, such as this one, and less of the following (this is from the essay on Salvador Dali and his wife Gala): "One of my responsibilities (as vice president of the firm that acted as Dali's dealer) was keeping the artist to the terms of his contract- a one-man show of new work, every two years. This was no easy task, given that his eye was so bleary and his hand so shaky that assistants had taken over most of his work. I could not help feeling sorry for the seedy old conjurer with his rhinoceros-horn wand, leopard-skin overcoat, and designer whiskers, not to speak of his surreal breath." For the most part, you can't see any reason to dredge these essays up and put them into book form. There is a lot of gossip, particularly about peoples' sex lives (The Dalis, Vita Sackville-West, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.) and there are several pieces where Mr. Richardson takes on subjects that are just too easy to ridicule, such as Dr. Barnes, The Sitwells and Armand Hammer. (Hence, the title of my review.) Since Mr. Richardson states that he and his assistants had to do a lot of work to update these essays, there is really no excuse for some of the blatant errors- such as writing (in the essay on the Merchant/Ivory movie "Surviving Picasso"- where Richardson is trying to make the point that moviemakers have done a poor job of portraying major artists) that Anthony Quinn played van Gogh. (He did not. In "Lust For Life" Kirk Douglas played van Gogh and Quinn played Paul Gauguin.) In another piece, the statement is made that the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize is made in Norway. That's wrong. It is made in Stockholm, Sweden. In the essay on Pablito Picasso, Pablo's grandson, Mr. Richardson writes that it took seven years to settle the Picasso estate. As Picasso died in 1973, this would bring us to 1980. But the essay informs us that the estate was divided up in 1990. This may seem as though I am nitpicking. But, remember, Mr. Richardson is working on the third volume of his Picasso biography. The first two volumes have been rightly hailed as a tremendous achievement. The cheap shots and silly errors contained in "Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters" are beneath a scholar of Mr. Richardson's ability. I still give this book three-stars, as even though the collection is uneven, there are several good essays. Besides the pieces on Lucien Freud and Brice Marden, which I mentioned earlier, there are thoughtful articles on Klee, Miro and Braque, for example. On the whole, however, one gets the impression that Mr. Richardson's publisher wanted something from him while they were waiting for the third volume of "A Life Of Picasso." There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that a little more care should have been taken in deciding what that something was going to be.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mix of essays on artists, writers and tycoons, April 10, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters: Beaton, Capote, Dalí, Picasso, Freud, Warhol, and More (Hardcover)

Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters provides a mix of essays on artists, writers and tycoons, each illustrated with a photo or piece of art and selected by the author because they are about special people he's known. While non-artists are included, this is reviewed here for its focus on many of the fine artists Richardson has encountered, from Dali and Warhol to Marden and Picasso. Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters is an intriguing collection of images and insights.