“What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn’t everyone look at himself in his own particular way?”

With these words, Pablo Picasso described the revolutionary methods of painting and artistic perspective with which he challenged the ways people and the world were defined. His life was a similarly complex prism of people, places, and ideologies that spanned most of the twentieth century. Acclaimed scholar Mary Ann Caws provides in Pablo Picasso a fresh and concise examination of Picasso’s life and art, revisiting the themes that occupied him throughout his life and weaving these themes through his crucial close relationships.

Caws embarks on a global journey to retrace the footsteps of Picasso, giving biographical context to his work from Les Demoiselles d’Avignon through Guernica and analyzing the changes and inconsistencies in his oeuvre over the course of the twentieth century. She examines Picasso’s attempts to balance various viewpoints, artistic strategies, lovers, and friends, positing the central figures of the Harlequin, the clown, and the acrobat in his art as emblematic of his actions. Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, and Roland Penrose all make appearances in these pages as Caws examines their influence on Picasso. Caws also delves into Picasso’s tumultuous relationships with his lovers Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque to understand their effects on his art.
ISBN: 1861892470
Publisher: REAKTION BOOKS

Sir Thomas Malory’sMorte Darthur (1469) is one of the best-known books in the world. Virtually all modern versions of the Arthurian legends are derived from its energetic,memorably phrased and remarkably individual telling of the stirring exploits of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Yet the identity of the fifteenth-century knight who wrote it has remained an enigma for centuries. The only known records of his life imply that he was a criminal, accused of rape, ambush, rustling and attacks on abbeys, and in prison for most of his life.

Using evidence from new historical research and deductions from the only known manuscript copy of Malory’s masterpiece, Christina Hardyment resolves the contradictions into a thrillingly exciting life, marked by great achievement as well as deep disgrace. She reveals Malory as an experienced soldier who fought against the French with Henry V in France and was closely connected with the Knights Hospitallers’ battles against the Turks in Rhodes, an expert on tournaments who was a connoisseur of literature, and a loyal subject deeply involved in the troubled politics of the Wars of the Roses who intended his great work to inspire the princes and knights of his own times to high endeavours and noble acts.

Christina Hardyment has not only given Sir Thomas Malory a life worthy of King Arthur’s greatest chronicler; she has also set it against a fascinating background: the age which marked the high-water mark of medieval chivalry but which was also an essential bridge from the Middle Ages to the modern world.
ISBN: 0007114893
Publisher: HARPER COLLINS

ISBN: 185043753X
Publisher: I.B.TAURIS