The paradox of Picasso and the role of the biographer: John Richardson in conversation with Robert Hughes

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The paradox of Picasso and the role of the biographer: John Richardson in conversation with Robert Hughes

24 Jan 2008

Speakers: John Richardson, Robert Hughes

"My work is my diary," Picasso said, and John Richardson addresses his paintings and sculptures in that light: not only as the stunning manifestation of the artist's protean imagination but also as a mirror, held up to the man himself, in which we can see what might otherwise have been hidden.

John Richardson's book, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, is the third volume of a biography that reveals the artist's life during the time that he created some of his most important sculpture and painting. These are the years that Picasso was part of a group in Paris that included Braque, Apollinaire, Miró, Man Ray, and Breton, and when in the south of France, spent summers in the company of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. It was during this time that he was married to the ballerina Olga Khokhlova and had his passionate affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was, as well, his model and muse.