This excellent narrative by art historian and journalist Miles Unger culminates in Pablo Picasso’s creation of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907. In exploring the groundbreaking work, Unger combines the personal story of Picasso’s early years in Paris – his friendships, his romances, his great ambition, his fears – with the larger story of modernism and the avant-garde.
I thought I’d be interested in reading a new book about Picasso’s early years but as I read on, instead I found my thoughts drifting towards wondering why I had thought that. There’s just something that doesn’t hold up about the idea of a painting shocking or changing the world. The book left me unconvinced. It does present a pretty detailed account of Picasso’s early years and his journey to cubism, a journey that never really managed to capture my interest… never really gave me a reason to care. For the most part I blame the author. He has a tendency to repeat the same anecdotes (or ones that say essentially say the same thing) multiple times, leaving me with a strange feeling that I kept losing my place in the book and re-reading the same passages. Also, in some not especially interesting areas, there seems to be an excess of detail. Does anybody really care to read page after page on seemingly all the art dealers in Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century and the hard bargains they drove? Time and again, paintings seem to be excessively described, often in almost the same terms. Simply showing more illustrations would probably have been helpful. While the book is only 400 pages long, it ultimately felt closer to an 800 page slog. If some of the repetition and padding had been edited out, I imagine there would be a somewhat recommendable 250-300 page book hidden between the covers.
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