
Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World
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Narrated by:
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Malcolm Hillgartner
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By:
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Miles J. Unger
About this listen
When Picasso became Picasso: the story of how an obscure young painter from Barcelona came to Paris and made himself into the most influential artist of the 20th century
In 1900, an 18-year-old Spaniard named Pablo Picasso made his first trip to Paris. It was in this glittering capital of the international art world that, after suffering years of poverty and neglect, he emerged as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Fueled by opium and alcohol, inspired by raucous late-night conversations at the Lapin Agile cabaret, Picasso and his friends resolved to shake up the world.
For most of these years Picasso lived and worked in a squalid tenement known as the Bateau Lavoir, in the heart of picturesque Montmartre. Here he met his first true love, Fernande Olivier, a muse whom he would transform in his art from Symbolist goddess to Cubist monster. These were years of struggle, often of desperation, but Picasso later looked back on them as the happiest of his long life.
Recognition came slowly: first in the avant-garde circles in which he traveled, and later among a small group of daring collectors, including the Americans Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1906, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Inspired by the groundbreaking painting of Paul Cezanne and the startling inventiveness of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured and defined the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he'd gone mad. Only his colleague George Braque understood what Picasso was trying to do. Over the next few years they teamed up to create Cubism, the most revolutionary and influential movement in 20th-century art.
This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is filled with heartbreak and triumph, despair and delirium, all of it played out against the backdrop of the world's most captivating city.
©2018 Simon & Schuster Audio (P)2018 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story
While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris. The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amid scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial.
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Try this!
- By Robert on 10-28-08
By: Ross King
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Last Light
- How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph
- By: Richard Lacayo
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the nation’s top art critics shows how six great artists made old age a time of triumph by producing some of the greatest work of their long careers—and, in some cases, changing the course of art history. Though these six artists differed in many respects, they shared one thing: a determination to go on creating, driven not by the bounding energies of youth but by the ticking clock that would inspire them to produce some of their greatest masterpieces.
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An art history course in one slim book
- By LC on 02-19-23
By: Richard Lacayo
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Paris in Ruins
- Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism
- By: Sebastian Smee
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the "Terrible Year" by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans-then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.
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Stunningly great narrator!
- By Julie Seavello on 12-26-24
By: Sebastian Smee
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Camille Pissarro
- The Audacity of Impressionism
- By: Anka Muhlstein, Adriana Hunter - translator
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time: a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas's and Mary Cassatt's experimental work, a support to Cezanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify.
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a good education
- By VMXO L. on 10-26-24
By: Anka Muhlstein, and others
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Picasso's War
- The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece that Changed the World
- By: Russell Martin
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Abridged
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From best selling author Russell Martin comes a stirring account of the town that inspired one of the world's most celebrated and controversial works of art, the painting Guernica's profound impact on the politics and culture of the 20th century, and the artist whose passion and artistic vision are unequaled in modern history.
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one of the best books I have listened to/read
- By Pinar on 03-05-09
By: Russell Martin
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The Greatest Nobodies of History
- Minor Characters from Major Moments
- By: Adrian Bliss
- Narrated by: Adrian Bliss, Beth Rylance, Sebastian Humphreys, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Henry VIII, and Queen Victoria fill bookshelves and fascinate scholars all over the world. But little attention is given to the ferret who posed for the Renaissance master, the servant who oversaw the Tudor’s toilet time, or the famous horse who thrilled the miserable old monarch. These supporting cast members have been waiting in the wings for too long, and Adrian Bliss thinks it’s high time they join their glory-hogging contemporaries in the spotlight. Fortunately, now they can.
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Nothing like his video comedy
- By Jono on 11-14-24
By: Adrian Bliss
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The Upside-Down World
- Meetings with the Dutch Masters
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond the sainted Rembrandt—who harbored a startling darkness—and the mysterious Vermeer, whose true subject, it turned out, was lurking in plain sight, Moser got to know a whole galaxy of geniuses: the doomed virtuoso Carel Fabritius, the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, the deaf prodigy Hendrik Avercamp. Year after year, as he tried to make a life for himself in the Netherlands, Moser found friends among these centuries-dead artists. And he found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that he was.
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Great Book
- By PaulB on 02-29-24
By: Benjamin Moser
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Hilma af Klint
- A Biography
- By: Julia Voss, Anne Posten - translator
- Narrated by: Doria Bramante
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.
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Ruined by narration
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-23-23
By: Julia Voss, and others
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Caravaggio
- A Life Sacred and Profane
- By: Andrew Graham-Dixon
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 18 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of John Richardson's Picasso, a commanding new biography of the Italian master's tumultuous life and mysterious death. For four hundred years Caravaggio's (1571-1610) staggering artistic achievements have thrilled viewers, yet his volatile personal trajectory - the murder of Ranuccio Tomasini, the doubt surrounding Caravaggio's sexuality, the chain of events that began with his imprisonment on Malta and ended with his premature death - has long confounded historians.
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Interesting life
- By Jean on 08-28-13
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Leonardo and the Last Supper
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art - The Last Supper. After a dozen years at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point personally and professionally: at 43, in an era when he had almost reached the average life expectancy, he had failed, despite a number of prestigious commissions, to complete anything that truly fulfilled his astonishing promise.
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Informative yet creative
- By Isabellabasil on 05-27-15
By: Ross King
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Van Gogh
- The Life
- By: Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 44 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials. While drawing liberally from the artist's famously eloquent letters, they have also delved into hundreds of unpublished family correspondences, illuminating with poignancy the wanderings of Van Gogh's troubled, restless soul. Naifeh and Smith bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist.
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Empathy for a True Artist
- By Sojourning Hope on 05-04-21
By: Steven Naifeh, and others
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Crossing to Safety
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the finest American authors of the 20th century, Wallace Stegner compiled an impressive collection of accolades during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a National Book Award, and three O. Henry Awards. His final novel, Crossing to Safety is the quiet yet stirring tale of two couples that meet during the Great Depression and form a lifelong bond.
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Amazing Stegner and his beautiful last book
- By Rebecca on 11-16-13
By: Wallace Stegner
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The Rising Sun
- The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
- By: John Toland
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 41 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."
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A political as well as military history
- By Mike From Mesa on 07-30-15
By: John Toland
Very enjoyable and informative.
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All around great story of an artist's life
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excellent book
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Throughly enjoyable on every level.
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I found this to be the most original and incisive analysis of both the Desmoiselles and Picasso’s creative psychology that I have ever encountered. Told with great narrative skill, this story is accessible to layman and expert alike.
An outstanding interpretation
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The history surrounding Picasso
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Recommended for Picasso fans
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I wish there was more!
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Informative, engaging discussion of Picasso & era.
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Powerful
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