Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World

October 1, 2017

In 1900, 18-year-old Pablo Picasso arrived in the City of Light, fell in with a group of painters, sculptors, and poets determined to change the world, and slowly emerged as one of the greatest world changers of them all, veritably defining modernity with his masterly Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. How Picasso became Picasso, as reported by Unger (Michelangelo), who writes on art, books, and culture for the Economist.

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Starred review from November 6, 2017
Describing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon—the 1907 painting alluded to in the title—as the canvas that “splits art historical time into an old and new epoch, BC and AD,” the author of this riveting biocritical study makes a case that Picasso’s seminal work serves as both the linchpin for modernism in the pictorial arts and the primary focus through which people view Picasso’s artistic legacy today. Unger (Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces) vividly recreates the scene of early 20th-century Montmartre and Picasso’s studio in the Bateau Lavor, where the artist held court with a devoted band that included the writers Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, a host of struggling fellow artists, and the visionary collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. He describes how Picasso synthesized the ideas of artists who influenced him (especially El Greco, Gauguin, and Cézanne) into the underpinnings of Cubism. Unger even imparts an element of drama to the artist’s rivalry with Henri Matisse, as Picasso strives to find a form of expression that will capture “the technological and social innovations associated with modernity” (“a crucial task of the avant-garde”)—an effort that culminated in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. This engrossing book chronicles with precision and enthusiasm a painting with lasting impact in today’s art world.

November 1, 2017
Pablo Picasso's artistic evolution culminated in one huge, irreverent, iconoclastic painting.Economist contributor Unger (Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces, 2014, etc.), former managing editor of Art New England, focuses on Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to examine the artist's early career. This period of Picasso's life has been recounted in detail in memoirs (by his mistress Fernande Olivier, for example, and his friends Andre Salmon and Gertrude Stein), histories (Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years stands out), and biographies by art historians and scholars. Unger synthesizes this material into a graceful narrative but offers little new. He has uncovered, however, an unpleasant episode in Picasso's life when he and Fernande adopted a 13-year-old orphan, perhaps because Fernande "thought that a child in their life would bring them closer together." The project failed: after four months, it became clear that the girl's presence "was putting unbearable strains on an already strained situation," and the girl was sent back to the orphanage, escorted by their ever patient and loyal friend Max Jacob. Unger's Picasso is intense, brilliant--exuding "a dangerous charisma"--and selfish: his ability to compartmentalize "often amounted to callousness, particularly when an emotional entanglement threatened to interfere with his work." He was superstitious, seeing "magic in form and meaning in coincidence." For Picasso, Unger asserts, "art was not primarily a visual language but a method of manipulating unseen forces. Cubism was an attempt to invest the image with a potency greater than mere illusion." His belief in magical forces attracted him to African art, especially fetishes, and to "worn, rubbed, threadbare objects that carry the marks of human usage." He was a hoarder, as well, and many of his "humble scraps" made their ways into his paintings and sculptures. Unger offers perceptive descriptions of many of Picasso's major works, not least Les Demoiselles, a painting "too desperate, too restless, too multivalent, to serve as the manifesto of any movement."A fine, if familiar, portrayal of a bold, vulnerable, questing artist.

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February 15, 2018
In this vibrant biography, Unger tells the story of Picasso the man to illuminate Picasso the artist. We learn about Picasso's romances and financial woes, his philosophies, and, of course, his illustrious social circle (a virtual who's who of modernist artists, writers, and critics). But most enchanting is the way Unger places Picasso on the ground, be it waiting in the cold outside an elegant Parisian apartment building or enduring a daylong journey through the foothills of the Pyrenees. By invoking the artist's cold ears and tired feet, Unger reminds us that Picasso's groundbreaking work did not simply well up from his soul but was forged in relation to the world and the people around him. Because of this, Unger succeeds in making Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the book's titular painting, accessible. Heady modern art is made over as approachable and exciting. After three biographies of Renaissance greats (Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Lorenzo de' Medici), this is Unger's first foray into the twentieth century, and he ably brings it and its art to life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)