Group biography of modernists 1900-1910, including Picasso and Matisse

Group biography of modernists 1900-1910, including Picasso and Matisse

I loved everything about this book. Sue Roe has a truly lovely way of describing art and events of these artists in a period of their lives and work that is not as understood or considered as their later years. I read this book while traveling through Paris and Rome and it was the perfect read. I would suggest this to anyone and everyone who loves modern art. I feel much closer to this history after reading this beautiful book. ( )

Wonderful, colourful book about the second coming of Paris as the centre of avant garde art. Between 1900 and 1910, artists of the calibre of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque, Vlaminck and hangers-on like,Max Jacob, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas swirled around the decaying shacks and ramshackle windmills of Montmartre. The narrative is centred around the competition between the borgeouis family man Matisse and the womanizing vagabond Picasso, bit in actual fact Picasso's much more interesting lifestyle receives more attention than Matisse's button-down mojo. Picasso's life in his ramshackle, messy garret, where he domiciled with his mistress Fernande Olivier, who was determined to live a completely idle lifestyle, is described in intimate detail. Meanwhile he moves through his Blue Period, to the little-known Rose Period, through African-inspired art to the beginnings of Cubism. You will rarely find a better description of avant garde Paris, the meticulous description of the places and the people is wonderful. ( )

Gertrude Stein: "But it doesn’t look like me."
Picasso: “It will.”
- on viewing the Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906)

Sue Roe’s “In Montmartre” is a terrific introduction to not only the art world but also to other parts of Paris life and culture from 1900 to 1910. It centres around Henri Matisse (then in his 30’s) and Pablo Picasso (then in his 20’s) with alternating chapters, which include contacts with other painters but also models, gallery owners and art collectors esp. Leo and Gertrude Stein.

The book is full of anecdotes and trivia about not only artists and paintings but such things as the handmade sandals by Raymond Duncan (brother of Isadora) which were the favoured footware of the Steins, the beginnings of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes with Vaslav Nijinsky, the notorious Bal des Quat'z'Arts etc.

The number of illustrations in the hard-copy edition is limited so you really can get by with an eBook or even an audiobook edition (as I did) and search for larger photos of the paintings in other books or via the web.

If an art history/biography can be judged by how much it makes you want to see more of the paintings discussed, then “In Montmartre” is a total success.

For follow-up:
Picasso’s model and companion (from 1904 to 1912) Fernande Olivier also wrote about these years in her “Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier”.
John Richardson’s massive “A Life of Picasso”, esp. "A Life of Picasso, Vol. 1: The Prodigy, 1881-1906" ( )