MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Picasso Dictionaries

(Picture: Malost)

(17.11.2022) How to warm up – for writing a book on Picasso? I am choosing this way: by writing reviews of the research tools that I have appreciated the most (and I am adding one that I have created myself to that list).

(Picture: amazon.com)

One) Johannes M. Fox, Picassos Welt (2008)

›Picasso’s world‹ comes in two volumes, 1419 numbered pages (including 2 pages of author’s curriculum vitae), and since I am fortunate to own this Picasso dictionary, I can say that it has an architectural quality to it, and, in my view, also does represent the solid persistence of an architect. Its author, Johannes M. Fox, who actually spent his professional life in the pharmaceutical industry, had been interested in Picasso for thirty years, and worked seven years for this book, which allows to enter and to study Picasso’s biography, apart from it covering persons, places, dates, events, references, techniques, political influences and familial character, at any point in his life; and it allows to study the spaces, where Picasso lived and worked, in so-called longitudinal sections. Brief: It does allow the reader to walk these spaces – and to have anything explained that might come up within these spaces, be it, in the contexts of these longitudinal cuts itself, or in other lemmata, since the book is very comprehensive.
Johannes M. Fox does not represent the academic research on Picasso, yet in a careful and solid manner he did recreate, in shape of a book, a cosmos, a world, he had been living with for a very long time (and was it Gombrich, who said that he actually never had worked on anything that he actually had cared for? whatever conclusion one might draw from that). The book has a very solid quality and a sober and characteristically restrained tone. In my view it is – along with the Online Picasso Project (OPP) – the best research tool available today, but it is only available in German. And the sad news, actually the only sad news, as to this marvellous two volumes, is that the publisher went bankrupt, and it, the book, did never get the attention it actually deserved to get (while here and there, gallerists, or Wikipedia articles might be referring to this dictionary). As usual the academic world had no actual understanding for quality, this was the work of an outsider, and if it did get noticed at all, this resulted in the book being ignored by the academe. Shame on you (again). And it has to be said: although the era of the printed book might come to an end, this is the kind of book to keep, or the kind of book to reinvent. Because the architectural quality of the book would easily allow it being adapted (and perhaps also updated) in digital form.

(Picture: amazon.com)

Two) Pierre Daix, Le nouveau dictionnaire Picasso (2012)

Pierre Daix was also a very persistent man, but the style of his persistence was a different one. Not that of an architect. Or, if it was, Daix, again and again, created the same building again in new ways. Also his Picasso dictionary does exist in two editions (the earlier edition was published in 1995). And one might mention here as well that Daix also published memoirs twice, not his memoirs twice, in slightly reworked manner the second time, but twice: memoirs, from different angles, from various points in his life, looking at his life. Memoirs that are interesting to compare, but it does also require a sort of persistence from the reader, to get all the nuances Daix might offer as an author (also revealing many things, rather between the lines). I have not checked, if the 1995 dictionary does show a very different angle, since this earlier edition is not available to me, but I do own the 2012 edition.
Pierre Daix was also, apart from being a journalist, art historian, writer of novels and so on, a Picasso biographer. But I am actually wondering, if Daix was indeed in a good position to be a Picasso biographer. And I an wondering, I have my doubts, for two reasons: a) because Picasso showed to be very willing to help him (which makes me a bit suspicious) and b) since Daix and Picasso had actually a very confident relation, up to 1962, when the idea of writing a Picasso biography came up. This confidence might have been a help, but also a problem. Since Daix had constantly to negotiate (with himself), about how much he was to allow himself to reveal of what he did know about Picasso. And this problem shows with all his writings. Since: to get the full information from Daix, one has actually to study everything Daix ever published, and he did publish a lot. The informations he had on Picasso are not simply available in a condensed manner in shape of his dictionary. No, it is not that. His dictionary does offer a lot (950 pages, but paperback format), but while working with it, one does notice that one or the other lemma has also the quality of memoirs. Daix does reveal things that only he could know (since he was close to Picasso, and heard things from him, as well as he could observe him from close). But if one does compare with other writings by Daix, one does learn that, often, other publications reveal more. Or different aspects. So I am trusting Daix (while being aware that his relation with Picasso was paradoxical and complicated), but I am trusting rather the full Daix, Picasso expert, who was not willing to reveal everything at all time. And full Daix is not to be found in the Daix Picasso dictionary.

Three) Dictionnaire amoureux villa La Californie

This is meant to be a new entry to my Dictionary of Imaginary Art Historical Works: the Dictionnaire amoureux villa La Californie, done by myself (in imaginary fashion). A nostalgic project? Perhaps. But one that would do justice to a house that I have visited only in imaginary form, by way of looking at pictures (by Edward Quinn, above all, in my childhood), but a house, that, now, I have also studied in its topography and historical meaning as a historian (of Picasso in 1956). I have come to know the Chinese artists that, in 1956, visited this place. I have read flamboyant descriptions by Jean Cocteau of that place that, often, he did visit (perhaps less often than he did wish so), I do know all the animals (including various goats, and also including their literary meaning) La Californie was ever populated with, and all the plants as well as trees, all the visitors as well as their presents, all the informants, spies and secret places, and I do know where exactly the children, then, buried their treasure trove in the garden (perhaps it is still there). All will be revealed in this dictionary – but only in imaginary form.

(Picture: DS; Google search)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
HOME

Top of the page

Microstory of Art Main Index

Dietrich Seybold Homepage

© DS