If you’re an art lover, this is an engrossing read. Unger draws not just from his own wide knowledge and considered taste but from an imposing array of journals, memoirs, biographies and periodicals. From these he offers a historically and psychologically rich account of the young Picasso and his coteries in Barcelona and Paris ... Readers enamored of this crucial moment in art history might complement Unger’s detailed telling with the more panoramic and accessible In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art, by Sue Roe. The two books together — Unger’s in close-up, Roe’s in the broad view — wonderfully capture how Picasso’s personal history, temperament and aesthetic development combined with the revolutionary currents in turn-of-the-century Parisian culture to bring about this unforgettable depiction of five primordial she-devils, a painting that Picasso’s writer friend André Salmon called 'the incandescent crater from which emerged the fire of present art.'
On the way to the hothouse, proto-Cubist summer of the Demoiselles, the shocker of his book’s title, Unger ably covers the El Greco-influenced 'Blue' and 'Rose' periods; the patronage of the Steins; and Picasso’s path-altering discovery of African art in the collection of the Trocadéro museum, the precise dating of which has divided scholars. Unfortunately, insistent platitudes and pigeonholing tend to mar Unger’s efforts. Picasso is 'bathed in the dazzling aura that surrounds all famous men' ... On the other hand, Unger appreciates Picasso’s boyhood talent without overegging its merits. He’s good on the Steins (particularly Leo’s insufferable condescension). And certain of Unger’s details were new to me. I had never, for instance, heard the rumor that Puvis de Chavannes was Maurice Utrillo’s biological father ... Writing in 1906, the year before the Demoiselles was conceived, the novelist and critic Eugène Marsan took his measure … 'Monsieur ... You might call him, to help you remember, the Callot of the saltimbanques, but you’d do better to remember his name: Picasso.’
Unger skillfully evokes a period when the stakes of art were so high that a painting had the power to destroy relationships. Picasso accepted the consequences. In an elegant metaphor, the author declares that 'those who had once shared [Picasso’s] vision and championed his cause were left behind on the platform while he sped off into the future.'
After an introduction steeped in present-day verbiage nostalgic for a time long gone, Unger succumbs to the sentimental draw and leads the reader back in time ... Written in an assured and confident voice, Picasso and the Painting that Shocked the World tells the real and earthy story of a scandalous painting, its unscrupulous painter, and the whirlwind turn of the century European setting in which it all came about, blindsiding people out of their Renaissance stupor.
In this vibrant biography, Unger tells the story of Picasso the man to illuminate Picasso the artist ... After three biographies of Renaissance greats (Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Lorenzo de’ Medici), this is Unger’s first foray into the twentieth century, and he ably brings it and its art to life.
He describes how Picasso synthesized the ideas of artists who influenced him (especially El Greco, Gauguin, and Cézanne) into the underpinnings of Cubism. Unger even imparts an element of drama to the artist’s rivalry with Henri Matisse, as Picasso strives to find a form of expression that will capture 'the technological and social innovations associated with modernity' ('a crucial task of the avant-garde')—an effort that culminated in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. This engrossing book chronicles with precision and enthusiasm a painting with lasting impact in today’s art world.
Unger offers perceptive descriptions of many of Picasso’s major works, not least Les Demoiselles, a painting 'too desperate, too restless, too multivalent, to serve as the manifesto of any movement.' A fine, if familiar, portrayal of a bold, vulnerable, questing artist.
