Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography
Mailer's interpretive biography of the young Pablo Picasso (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) — 400 pages, 284 illustrations — drawing heavily on John Richardson's and other sources to read Picasso's early years through Mailer's own preoccupations with sex, ego, and the daring of God. Long in gestation; published after Mailer left Random House over a rights dispute.
Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography, published by Atlantic Monthly Press on 15 October 1995 (400 pp., 284 illustrations including 48 color plates, $35; London: Little, Brown). It is dedicated to his assistant Judith McNally; the discarded title was “Pablo and Fernande: Portrait of Picasso as a Young Artist.” The book had deep roots — Mailer traced three of his early-1960s self-interviews to an abandoned Picasso project (95.37; see 59.8, 61.10) — and a fraught path to print: completed in 1992, it took three years to clear permissions, and the dispute with John Richardson led Mailer to move it from Random House to Atlantic Monthly Press (93.5, 94.8).
The book
An “interpretive biography” of Picasso‘s youth, the book reads the artist through Mailer’s own lifelong themes — sex, narcissism, ambition, and “the presence of God.” The avowed atheist, Mailer argues, was “immensely aware of the presence of God in almost everything he did … on a parapet, if you will, daring God” (95.37). Mailer also exhibited his own line drawings, inspired by the work (see the 1993 Provincetown show).
Reception
The reviews were largely hostile, especially from professional art critics — Mailer called them “the worst I’ve ever gotten for a book” (95.49). Negative or mixed notices came from Michiko Kakutani (New York Times, again provoking Mailer’s complaint, 95.36), Michael Kimmelman (“Tough Guys Don’t Paint,” New York Times Book Review), Francine du Plessix Gray (“Stud Wars,” Los Angeles Times), Jim Lewis (Village Voice), and Roger Shattuck (New York Review of Books, January 1996); Kenneth Baker (San Francisco Examiner) and Robert Taylor (Boston Globe) were positive. Mailer defended the book in many interviews — with Barbara Probst Solomon (95.33), his sons Michael Mailer (95.37) and others, Pete Hamill (95.44), and Jay McInerney (95.47).
Related pages
- Pablo Picasso | John Richardson | Atlantic Monthly Press
- Oswald’s Tale (the year’s other book)
- 1995
- An Eye on Picasso (59.8) | The First Day's Interview (61.10)