Billy Klüver (1927–2004)

Very disappointing. Photos, Kiki, Paris in the 20s. I was so looking forward to it. It has hundreds of photos -- about three quarters of the space is devoted to photos, the other quarter is text. But the text is pretty much a laundry list of names with stories or explanations that are not particularly interesting or sometimes all that coherent. The photos are plentiful, but they aren't really telling -- just lots of people some of whom are identified at the bottom. It's hard work to keep show more track of it all. And in the end, it doesn't really talk much about Kiki.

A similar book but much, MUCH better is Willilam Wiser's The Crazy Years: Paris in the Twenties. There you find interesting text and photos that illustrate what the author is telling you. show less

Amazon.com : During the 1980s, Swedish-born Billy Klüver became a sort of amateur archivist, collecting early-20th-century photographs of the bohemian district of Paris known as Montparnasse. One day he stumbled upon a group of astonishing photographs depicting such seminal modernist figures as Modigliani; Picasso; his friend, the poet Max Jacob; and the poet and critic André Salmon as well as Picasso's mistress, P`querette. Like an archaeologist reconstructing an artifact, Klüver show more set about trying to determine how, where, and why the pictures were taken. The result of his efforts is the whimsical and engaging A Day with Picasso, centering around 24 pictures taken on the afternoon of August 12, 1916, over the course of four hours. The photographer? None other than Jean Cocteau, in an early experiment that perhaps prefigured his later films. Brought together by an exhibit at the Salon d'Antin, the famous subjects are shown laughing and clowning their way through a café lunch and later adjourning to a nearby restaurant.

A Day with Picasso also contains a detailed précis of Cocteau's work, some contextual background about the subjects and their relationships to one another, and some sample drawings from the artists whose relaxed camaraderie is so vividly captured in these intriguing photographs.

The New York Times Book Review, Rosamond Bernier : This very amusing and almost wildly ingenious little book is the true story in pictures of what happened to a group of friends in Paris during a four-hour period on Saturday, Aug. 12, 1916, when World War I was almost two years in progress.... We were not there? No, but this is the next best thing.

Review : "Klüver has brought off an astonishing feat. He has recreated an afternoon in Montparnasse so vividly and exhaustively that he has succeeded in illuminating a whole period of the artist's life and clarified key relationships. Thanks to his ability to apply scientific research and imaginative sensibility to iconographical problems, Klver is doing for twentieth-century art historians what Baedeker did for nineteenth-century travelers." -- John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso

Art Times, April 1999 : "A nice piece of detective work as well as an important historical documentary... A delightful look back at Parisian life among artists and friends." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Robert Fulford, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 27, 1999 : "The obsessiveness of the true researcher teeters always on the edge of craziness, but it's a form of craziness we can contemplate with curiosity and amusement rather than dread... For two decades, Billy Klver has been trawling through the archives of France, pursuing a bizarre self-assignment... The result of his labor, A Day with Picasso: 24 Photographs by Jean Cocteau (MIT Press, 99 pages, $23.95, paperback), is astonishing in its painstakingly assembled detail. It demonstrates archival research at its most exotic, a case of scholarship for scholarship's sake. Even so, I haven't opened a more charming or fascinating book in months." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Book Description in "Comments" show less

Hardcover edition in library

OM FÖRFATTARNA :
Billy Kluver är chef för Experiments in Art and Technology, en stiftelse som han grundade tilisammans med Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whiteman och Fred Waldhauer år 1966. Syftet var att ingenjörer skulle hjälpa konstnärer att förverkliga sina idéer. Han har organiserat många utställningar och har i stor utsträckning skrivit och föreläst om konst. Han innehar en Ph.D. vid University of California, Berkeley och har varit forskare i mikrovågselektronik vi Bell show more Telephone Laboratories.
Bill Kluver är född i Sverige. men flyttade till New York 1954. Där umgicks han tidigt i New Yorks konstnärskrctsar och blev god vän med ' bland andra Rauschenberg. Oldenburg och Andy Warhol. Vid Pontus Hulténs första beskök i USA. introducerade Kluver honom för dessa då okända konstnärer och de arrangerade tillsammans flera banbrytande utställningar på Moderna Museet i Stockholm under 60-talet t.ex. Rörelse i konsten, 4 Amerikaner och Warholut- ställningen.
Julie Martin utexaminerades från Radcliff College med en M.A. från University of Columbia. Hon var ursprungligen specialiserad på rysk utrikespolitik och anställdes 1968 vid Experiments in Art and Technology. show less