The Success and Failure of Picasso
by John Berger
On This Page
Description
Booker Prize-winning author John Berger gives us a stunning critical assessment of Pablo Picasso: At the height of his powers, Picasso was the artist as revolutionary: breaking through the niceties of form in order to mount a direct challenge to the values of his time. At the height of his fame, he was the artist as royalty: incalculably wealthy, universally idolized--and wholly isolated. Berger--one of this century's most insightful cultural historians--trains his penetrating gaze upon show more this most prodigious and enigmatic painter and on the Spanish landscape and very particular culture that shaped his life and work. Writing with a novelist's sensuous evocation of character and detail, and drawing on an erudition that embraces history, politics, and art, Berger follows Picasso from his childhood in Malaga to the Blue Period and Cubism, from the creation of Guernica to the painted etchings of his final years. He gives us the full measure of Picasso's triumphs and unsparing reckoning of their cost--in exile, in loneliness, and in a desolation that drove him, in his last works, into an old man's furious and desperate frenzy at the beauty of what he could no longer create. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Berger as always provides an intresting and unusual look at art. Although his ideas seem somewhat far flung at times, his books are peppered with accurate and revealing ideas, not just about art, but about politics and our society. He also gives an interesting dicussion on the myth of the artist.
Un retrato controvertido de la genial figura Una gran novela por el ganador del Premio Booker de Pablo Picasso Una madre y un padre viajan por Europa «hacia la boda» de su hija. La madre toma un autobús en Eslovaquia y el padre va en moto desde Francia. Se encuentran después de muchos años, y diversos personajes pueblan su historia: un chatarrero italiano, una pandilla de piratas informáticos, un redactor de enciclopedias, una Virgen pintada en una ermita… Ésta es una boda como sólo podía ocurrir a fines de siglo pasado, contada por un griego que no pierde la ocasión de citar a Sófocles. John Berger dirige su penetrante mirada sobre este pintor enigmático y prodigioso, y también sobre la cultura de un país que dio forma show more a su vida y su obra. En una senda que abarca historia, política y arte, Berger sigue el recorrido de Picasso desde su infancia malagueña hasta el periodo azul y el cubismo, de la creación del Guernica a los grabados que caracterizan sus últimos años. show less
Jul 20, 2022Spanish
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
149+ Works 17,139 Members
John Peter Berger was born in London, England on November 5, 1926. After serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946, he enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art. He began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. He then worked as an art critic for The New Statesman for a decade. He wrote fiction show more and nonfiction including several volumes of art criticism. His novels include A Painter of Our Time, From A to X, and G., which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in 1972. His other works include an essay collection entitled Permanent Red, Into Their Labors, and a book and television series entitled Ways of Seeing. In the 1970s, he collaborated with the director Alain Tanner on three films. He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre, The Middle of the World, and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. He died on January 1, 2017 at the age of 90. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Pablo Picasso
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 358
- Popularity
- 87,670
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- 8 — Chinese, English, Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 25
- ASINs
- 9
