A Day with Picasso

A Day with Picasso also contains a detailed precis of Cocteau's work, some contextual background about the subjects and their relationships to one another, and some sample drawings from the artists whose relaxed camaraderie is so vividly captured in these intriguing photographs.

Product Description
In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Kluever discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moise Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Cafe de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. The people were wearing the same clothes in each shot and had the same accessories. Their ties were knotted the same way and their collars had the same wrinkles. A total of twenty-four photographs--four rolls of film with six photographs each--were eventually found. With the challenge of identifying the date, photographer, and circumstances, Kluever embarked on an inquiry that would illuminate the minute texture of that time and place.

Biographical research into the subjects' lives led Kluever to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. He then measured buildings and plotted angles and lengths of shadows in the photographs to narrow the time frame to a spread of three weeks. Further investigation eventually allowed Kluever to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. A computer printout of the sun's positions on that date, obtained from the Bureau des Longitudes, together with the length of the shadows, enabled Klver to calculate the time of day of each photograph, and thus to put them in proper sequence.

In a tour de force of art historical research, Kluever then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs. With evocative attention to detail--noting when Picasso is no longer carrying an envelope or Max Jacob has acquired a decoration in his lapel--Kluever recreates a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early twentieth-century Paris.

Besides the central "portfolio" of photographs by Cocteau, the book contains additional photographs and drawings, short biographies of all the subjects, and a historical section on the events and activities in the Paris art world at the time.

This is an amazing book, as much for the ten-plus years it took to sleuth this story out as for the fact that anyone did it at all. The author, once he went to extraordinary lengths to collect these photos, even consulted the French Bureau of Longitudes to analyze the shadows in the pictures, in order to fix the time of day.

So, what do we have? Pictures of Picasso as a man in his mid-thirties (with a full head of hair!), in cafes and on the street with other artists, notably Modigliani and Kisling, and his then current amour, and other acquaintances. They cheerfully pose and mug for their friend Cocteau. And that's it, really. The text relates the story of how these photos were taken, and how the author discovered when, where, and by whom they were taken.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, he then adds chapters which deduce what kind of camera Cocteau used, maps of the area with the camera angles plotted, and selections of drawings, diaries, and correspondence that illustrate one detail or other of the pictures. It's all very interesting, in a headache-inducing way--rather like contemplating a picture painted on a grain of rice. And all this for the sake of recovering a long-ago afternoon of bar-hopping! _Le recouvrement du temp perdu_, indeed.


A excellent book on the artists early life .   November 1, 1998
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I havent ever seen a book like this before. Reading this book and following the complete pictures is the next best thing to having a time machine.This book answers those questions that we never had answered like how was he with his friends? etc. You will enjoy it.