A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism [Hardcover]

Natasha Staller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2001

In this groundbreaking book, Natasha Staller examines closely for the first time the complex and intricate dialogue between Picasso and the multiple cultures of his early life. Staller argues that to a degree never before imagined Picasso's revolutionary Cubism was saturated with his past - inspired in part by competing and colliding images, myths and ideas from a series of cultural legacies. She tracks Picasso on his odyssey through cultures: from Malaga, where he spent his first ten years, to La Coruna, Barcelona and finally to Paris, where he moved as a young man. Picasso's most fundamental attitudes, she contends, were all formed in Malaga. Yet Cubism could not have been invented had he not moved to Paris. Each culture became a prism through which he viewed the next; in each case he actively transformed what he found. Staller boldy illuminates what Cubism's radical attributes meant in historical and culturally specific terms. With vivid detail, she analyses an unprecedented range of new, often archival, materials - from coded messages senoritas sent with fans to ritual re-enactments of holy wars, from enchanted characters of fairy tales to superstitions, bullfighting treatises, provincial art-school manuals, three-minute films and Picasso's childhood works his parents saved from the time he was nine. A Sum of Destructions offers a new appreciation of Picasso's extraordinary ability to recast his cultural past as he grappled with his avant-garde present - to create stunningly original images, the most historically decisive of his life. Staller reinterprets major works from Demoiselles to Suze, and beyond, along the way transforming our understanding of both Picasso and his Cubist art:

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Staller views "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and the creation of Cubism as a defiant summation of Picasso's reactions to and interactions with his environment, beginning with M laga, where he was born, then La Corusa, Barcelona, and eventually Paris. Drawing on 20 years of research, she investigates the backgrounds of each of these places from a social and anthropological point of view. In her attempt to discover the background that eventually created the "Demoiselles" and Cubism, she provides details on such topics as early moviemaking, coded messages and gamesmanship, the Moors' relationship to Spain, Picasso's fascination with fetishisms, and the body language of fans, parasols, and handkerchiefs. However, in her effort to portray Picasso, the enfant terrible, she minimizes the supportive role of Braque, whom Picasso referred to as his wife in Cubism. She also omits Picasso's Saffron, Blue, and Pink periods and almost ignores Picasso's love/hate relationship with Matisse and the Steins, which may have been the main impetus for the creation of "Demoiselles." Still, Staller succeeds in capturing a Picasso who gave as good as he got and left behind a legacy under continuous exploration. The result is a unique, provocative, and enjoyable portrait of one of the most controversial painters in the history of 20th-century art. Recommended for large public libraries and all modern and European art book collections. Ellen Bates, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"....[A]mbitious....massive....an amazing account of an artist who, dissected a thousand times, never ceases to declare new truths." -- Jeanne Hamilton, The Commercial Appeal

"....[B]rilliantly maps the ways....Picasso's early preoccupations formed and informed the complex [Cubist] vocabularies....[S]ubtle, intelligent,....inspired...." -- Robert Lubar, New York University

"....[L]avishly illustrated....brilliantly research....a substantial and original contribution to the current state of knowledge on Picasso." -- Claude Cernuschu, Amherst Magazine

"Staller, over twenty-odd years of seemingly limitless research, has assembled a dazzling cultural kaleidoscope." -- Norbert Lynton, The Art Book, Oxford

"[Staller has] interesting things to say about how the artist's childhood experiences and visual memories affected his work." -- Frank Whitford, Sunday Times (London)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 438 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First edition. edition (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300072422
• ISBN-13: 978-0300072426
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #60 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Cubism

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating, July 9, 2005

By 

A. J. Sutter (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (Hardcover)

The organization of this book is striking. Although it starts with Picasso's childhood in Malaga and ends a few years after his arrival in Paris, it's anything but a chronological biography of Picasso's early years. The theme of each chapter is some class of cultural artifacts or fads -- mainly from popular culture -- that influenced Picasso in the years through his Cubist period. As a result, the narrative skips around while also having a general sense of forward motion: very appropriately, a Cubist sense of time.

The range of things described is incredibly broad. It includes popular religious objects, newspaper ads, academic history painting, fads for Esperanto and similar artifical languages, "the language of parasols" (which Spanish ladies learned from color trading cards enclosed in packages of chocolates), and numerous sorts of tchotchkes. I especially enjoyed looking at some of Picasso's guitar sculptures in the light of the paper cut-and-fold-up models that were popular when he was a child.

All of this cultural material is fascinating. Still, I wasn't always convinced of strong connections between some items and Picasso's paintings, especially in the first couple of chapters. It seemed to me that there might be alternative explanations for some features of his paintings, or at least that the case presented was occasionally a bit sketchy.

Nonetheless, the last several chapters are a great tour de force. Among the highlights are analyses of some of Picasso's collages. The bits of newspaper that Picasso used, and where he chose to snip them, weren't at all chosen at random. What's especially interesting is that some of them were chosen because of the stories or ads adjacent to, or on the reverse of, the cuttings he used, even though these aren't visible in the artwork.

The scholarship necessary to track down all these connections is mind-boggling. It's easy to understand why this book was more than 20 years in the making. The writing style, though isn't at all academic --and at times is quite earthy in ways I'm sure Picasso would have approved.

I was also impressed by the book's compassionate treatment (appropriately and unavoidably mixed with some bathos) of Picasso's father, a failed academic painter whose specialty was realistic paintings of pigeons. Most of all, the book is a great confirmation of Picasso's fundamentally comic sensibility. That makes the book a pleasure to read all the way through.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most enlightening book on Picasso yet written, December 5, 2003

By 

WriteStuff (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (Hardcover)

As impossible as it seems to say something new about Picasso, Staller manages not only that, but to summon up the entire ethos that surrounded and created him. An astonishing and beautiful book.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A triumph of fascinating and readable scholarship -, June 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (Hardcover)

Dr. Staller combined resolute scholarship with poetic exposition. She produced an astonishing enlargement of Picasso's "world of veils and fragments."