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Rating: 
Summary: A excellent book on the artists early life .
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Snapshot of the artist as a boulevardier
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Snapshot of the artist as a boulevardier
Review: 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.
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