Pablo Picasso
Spanish painter; the subject of Mailer's Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (1995), an interpretive biography of the artist's early years, and a lifelong touchstone for Mailer's thinking about creativity and ego.
Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painter, was a lifelong touchstone for Mailer’s thinking about creativity, narcissism, and ego — Mailer dated three of his early-1960s self-interviews to a Picasso project that never came off (95.37; see 59.8, 61.10). He returned to it decades later in Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (95.38), an interpretive biography of the artist’s youth, arguing that the avowed atheist was nonetheless “immensely aware of the presence of God in almost everything he did,” a man “on a parapet … daring God.” The book set off a quarrel with Picasso’s authorized biographer John Richardson.
Stub created during the 1995 ingest.
Related pages
- Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (95.38) | John Richardson | 1995
- An Eye on Picasso (59.8) | The First Day's Interview (61.10)