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Love-Smitten Minotaur. More portraits of Marie-Thėrėse follow before the dark features of Dora Maar, Picasso's next love, appear. There are some cityscapes, bright as a patchwork quilt, and later a series on one of Picasso's favorite themes, the Minotaur. This time, the artist was thinking of a legend in which three muses come upon the Minotaur dying on a beach. Two flee at the sight of his ugliness, but one stays to nurse him back to health. "Forever thereafter, while she floated offshore, he spent his days sitting where she had offered the only love he had found in life."
The Picasso's Picassos done in the '30s are mostly domestic. Only one before 1939—that ol a nun torn asunder by a bomb during the Spanish Civil War-echoes the horror of Guernica. Picasso painted still lifes, a bird or two, portraits of Dora and Picasso's daughter Maia. But one da>' he finished an anguished woman who looked as if she were racked by some grisly disease. As World War II descended on Europe. Picasso's women became savage, lunatic figures done in colors that scream with rage. The agony vanished as suddenly as it came: once again, Picasso's Picassos came home.
Homage to Jacqueline. A strange, doll-like portrait shows his little daughter Paloma poking at some presents under a Christmas tree. His present wife Jacqueline makes her debut in 1954. One of the early portraits of her is a straightforward drawing of enormous tenderness. The final plate in the book is of a painting of three eels on a table. Picasso did it last year just after Jacqueline had cooked some eels for his lunch. On the back he wrote: "Homage to Jacqueline for a matelote that she prepared for lunch 3.12.60. offering to her through this painting a small portion of the immense desire I have to please her.''
David Duncan's book is not to be read as art criticism; his obvious fondness for his friend blots out any fault the painter might have. But this fondness gives the book an extra dimension. Picasso's Picassos are not just paintings but extraordinary human documents. Duncan's admiring text may not illuminate Picasso's genius, but it does light up the man—simple, passionate, earthy, and, at the age of 80, head over heels in love again.
*$24.95 until Dec. 31, 1961, $30 thereafter.