Picasso (Profiles in Art)
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Picasso’s Line Drawings and Prints (Dover Art Library) 
Minotaure 75ml EDT Spray Fragrance for Men 
The Tragedy art print by Pablo Picasso, 72cm x 57cm 
Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier Fernande Olivier was Picasso’s first great love. Happily for us, she had a lively writing style and a keen eye for detail, evident throughout Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier. Illustrated with more than 80 contemporary photographs and paintings, the journal is a compulsively readable account of the quarrels, escapades, pleasures and privations of the young artist and his circle between 1905 and 1912. The two met when Olivier was working as an artist’s model, having escaped a loveless childhood and a disastrous early marriage. This book smoothly melds retranslated material from her 1933 memoir (Picasso et ses amis) with the posthumously published Souvenirs intimes and selections from her correspondence, including her plaintive letters to Alice B Toklas during a lonely holiday with Picasso in rural Spain. Honest to the point of bluntness, Olivier–whom Picasso eventually abandoned for Eva Gouel, a younger, more passive friend of hers–sums up her lover as a workaholic, an impulse buyer (when he had cash) of bric-a-brac and good furniture, a contrarian who found charm in wearing peculiar outfits and pretending he had no taste and a jealous lover who often kept her locked up when he went out. She describes their home, the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, as
A weird, squalid building echoing from morning to night with every kind of noise: discussion, singing, shouting, calling, the sound of buckets used to empty the toilet clattering noisily on the floor … doors slammed, suggestive moaning coming through the closed doors of the studios.
As Picasso biographer John Richardson relates in an afterword, Olivier never rebounded from her rejection by Picasso. Her middle years were dogged by faithless lovers, financial woes and Gertrude Stein’s deviousness–agreeing to help Olivier publish her memoirs, Stein instead wrote her own version of the era. –Cathy Curtis
Customer Review: A Challenging Life!
Loving Picasso is a book that will touch your heart, and my moisten your eyes.
When we visit a museum and see wonderful paintings of striking women, seldom do we think about the conditions under which the art was created. Did the artists and the model have a relationship? If so, what was it? Did they have enough to eat while the work was done? Were they considerate of one another? Was the studio warm or cold? What was the model thinking about as she posed? How had the woman come to model? And so on.
I will never look at another painting or sculpture again of a human model without being filled with such questions, as a result of reaching about the life of Fernande Olivier from her private journal, letters, and memoir as presented in Loving Picasso.
This beautiful, charming woman lived an extremely difficult life. It was so challenging that few could have emerged from such awful circumstances without being distorted in mind and personality. Yet, Ms. Olivier seems to have avoided both, and been a light in the life of her many male admirers, female friends, and an inspiration to Picasso in his most innovative years.
From the book’s title, you will think that the material is mostly about the years when Ms. Olivier and Picasso lived together, but that’s only about half the book. The book is really an autobiography through the time when the two split up for the final time in 1912.
Readers will be rewarded with many intriguing views of the lives of “starving” artists in Paris, the many distinguished friends of Picasso and Ms. Olivier, and how Picasso changed as he went from an unknown to one of the recognized leaders of avant-garde art along with Matisse.
Having read about Picasso’s troubled relationships with other women, I was surprised to see that his relationship with Ms. Olivier was one of the most pleasant and productive connections he had in his life. Certainly, he often chose her as a model for his work, and we will always see her as the young person she was then. Many other details in here will either surprise or shock you about Picasso, and expand your understanding of his creative methods and personality.
One of the most charming parts of the book can be found in the many images of places where she lived, the people she knew, the paintings and sculptures for which she was the model, and her own drawings.
For those who have enjoyed Gertrude Stein’s, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, you will probably be interested to know that Ms. Olivier’s writing is considered to be a more accurate and complete version of many of the same events.
After you finish this rewarding memoir of a most unique person, I suggest that you think about what the purpose of life is. That’s a question with which Ms. Olivier had trouble coming to grips.
Follow your purpose!
