Читать книгу Picasso: A Biography - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 7

THIS BOOK is an attempt at presenting Picasso whole, the man as well as his art; and its title is designed to emphasize the importance of those years of his life when he was Pablo Ruiz, his childhood in Málaga and La Coruña, and above all his adolescence in Barcelona. They shaped him forever; and since the enormous body of his work cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of its Spanish, and even more of its Catalan foundations, the early chapters go deep into his family background and his formative years, drawing on the immense collections of early works and documents that he presented to the Museo Picasso in Barcelona in 1970 and on many Catalan texts.

Art-historians have sometimes divided Picasso the painter, sculptor, draughtsman, lithographer, engraver, and potter from Picasso the man, and for their purpose no doubt the method answers; other writers have spoken of Picasso as though he were only incidentally an artist, concentrating upon the man as he was to be seen away from his easel. The present book aims at striking the mean between these two extremes and at showing a man who, though wholly devoted to his art, spending the most significant and perhaps even the greatest part of his life in his studio, nevertheless lived intensely outside it: yet it does not stray far into the field of criticism, analysis, or interpretation.

There are several reasons for this, and the first is that Braque was surely right in saying that the only important thing in art is that which cannot be explained. Then, while detailed analysis and technical description certainly have their value, they would be out of place in a book that is intended for the intelligent but unspecialized reader. And as for interpretation, that source of so many books about Picasso, it seems to me of value only when the author is a man as interesting as his subject. In the course of my reading I have necessarily waded through thick clouds of interpretative Teutonic metaphysics and a great deal of homespun psychology; but few of the writers came anywhere near this standard and little of what they wrote shed much light on Picasso. What I have done, therefore, when I come to an important picture, is to describe it as accurately as I can, without obtruding any attempt at explanation on the reader, still less telling him what he ought to think. Then I say something about its impact on me; and when, as it sometimes happens, this differs from the generally accepted view, I give that view as well: it is only for the very early or the very late work, where there is as yet no consensus, that I offer my own opinion and little more.

Since this is not a book for specialists I have not encumbered it with notes and references, nor with a bibliography. Indeed, the formal bibliography, referring the reader to books long out of print and to articles published in obscure journals fifty years ago, seems a show of erudition of little use to the general reader when it is genuine and ridiculous when it is false: many that I have seen give what they call the first newspaper criticism, an article by Rodríguez Codolá entitled Exposición Ruiz Picasso and published in La Vanguardia of Barcelona in 1897. But as Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño has shown in his Bibliografia crítica y antológica the article does not exist: nor did the exhibition.

Apart from the many learned and sometimes illuminating monographs on various aspects of his art, there are of course valuable works among the great number that have been written about Picasso; and no one interested in him can fail to find instruction in Barr or delight in Sabartés, Brassaï, Penrose, Fernande Olivier, Geneviêve Laporte, and some others. Yet it seems to me more useful to speak of them in some detail in the course of the book rather than giving a bald list of all the authors I have read.

But although I give no bibliography, it would be the basest ingratitude if I were not to acknowledge the great kindness and help I have received from Monsieur and Madame Pierre de Saint-Prix, and from many of the friends I have had the honor of sharing with Picasso. Most are mentioned in the text, but there are others whom I must beg to accept my thanks in this place, particularly Madame Marguerite Matisse-Duthuit, the Comte and Comtesse de Lazerme, Señor Maurizio Torra-Balari, and Monsieur Jean Hugo. And I should like to express my gratitude to Señorita María Teresa Ocaña of the Museo Picasso in Barcelona, to the kind people at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Barnes Foundation at Merton, Pennsylvania, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Louvre, the Bibliothèque nationale, and the Musée national d’Art moderne, who have been so very helpful and cooperative.