Picasso Papers - Tapa dura

Rosalind E. Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University and an editor and cofounder of October magazine, is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), The Optical Unconscious (1993), The Picasso Papers (1999), and Bachelors (1999), all published by the MIT Press, and coauthor (with Yve-Alain Bois) of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997).

One of the country's foremost critics and theorists, Krauss here offers a unique, scholarly look at Picasso's numerous styles, with some of the most fascinating analysis examining the juncture between them. In the first section, the book's title becomes a play on the materials from which Picasso constructed his cubist works. Krauss deconstructs many individual pieces in terms of background and foreground and grants the newspapers the role of dialog among subjects. What is most interesting and unique about the analysis is her convincing argument that the introduction of color into the cubist palette was the impetus for the artist's abandoning that style. Later she discusses Picasso's frequent borrowings?from Ingress and Cezanne, Seurat and even photography?the idea of synthesis, and the existence of a work as unique hybrid. Throughout, she critiques the innumerable previous writings on Picasso, and in the book's final section she offers a deeper look at a few titles and the purpose they serve in the making of the Modern master. Not a biography for Picasso novices, this is nonetheless accessible to informed lay readers and deserves a place in larger public as well as all academic collections.?Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.