MixedThe Washington PostAn ambitious new interpretation of Picasso\'s life ... But Cohen-Solal is not primarily concerned with the unfolding drama of Picasso’s art, his serial breakthroughs and serial lovers. Instead, she takes aim at Picasso’s adoptive country and what she sees as its systematic failure to embrace him ... Part dogged investigation, part extended polemic, Picasso the Foreigner is organized around a provocative claim: Because of his immigrant background, Picasso was continually rejected and marginalized by the French establishment ... Cohen-Solal lays out her case in a formidable battery of documents, statements, immigration policies and sociological research ... Cohen-Solal makes some interesting discoveries ... Less appealing is Cohen-Solal’s habit of overdramatizing her research ... A deeper problem with Picasso the Foreigner lies with its central argument. In Cohen-Solal’s reading, the United States — along with Germany and Russia — was far ahead of France in its openness to avant-garde art. This is incorrect.
Cynthia Saltzman
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewCynthia Saltzman, the author of two previous books about art, exposes the rich contradictions of the 1796 Italian campaign through the story of a prized Venetian masterpiece . . . What was Europe to make of the painting’s new home, a vast public museum stocked with war booty? In Saltzman’s scrupulous telling, there was rancor, but also awe.
Roy Morris
MixedBook PostFor all the rollicking humor and offbeat anecdotes, Gertrude Stein Has Arrived doesn’t make much of a case for her literary genius; even her observations about America seem rather run-of-the-mill next to her buoyant but eviscerating wit and her sheer stage presence. (Stein’s subsequent and little-read memoir about the lecture tour, Everybody’s Autobiography, on which Morris’s book amply draws, doesn’t offer much in the way of Tocquevillian insight).
