The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper. - Review - book review

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper through John Richardson, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999; 324 pages, $2695 cloth

single good reason to follow the of gold rule and try to be considerate of everyone is to avoid winding up as a reviled cad in someone's memoirs. John Richardson's juicy tell-all (or chiefly all) book, The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper is a case in point. Taking a break from work upon the third installment of his acclaimed multivolume Picasso biography, the English-born of recent origin York author reflects upon personal experiences in postwar London, Paris, Provence and fresh York. The story centers upon his relationships with close friends and mentors, including Picasso, Braque, Leger and especially the high-strung and acerbic English art critic and Cubism adroit Douglas Cooper, with whom Richardson lived for a dozen years at the Chateau de Castille, a palatial 19th-century villa in southern France. Not all of the fabled art-world characters who appear in the work turn out to be alcohol- or drug-ridden profligates self-centered or self-loathing prima donnas, ruthles hustlers or bitchy queens--but a great many of them do. As decadent as many of the characters may appear to be however, most played important characters in resurrecting European culture from the ashes of the next to the first World War.

Dedicated to Richardson's lifelong buddy philosopher Richard Wollheim, the volume includes savory characterizations of writer and artist friends of the like kind as Jean Cocteau, James Schuyler James and John Pope-Hennessy, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, James Lord, Dora Maar, Renato Guttuso and Cesar, along with an unforgettable application of mind of Nicolas de Stael. Richardson, who has worked as a consultant for Christie's since 1966 also knew a certain quantity of of the most important collectors of the day; among those featured are Peggy Guggenheim, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, Helena Rubinstein, Emery and Wendy Reve Morton and Rose Neumann, and Victor and Sally Ganz. Picasso appears not seldom throughout the text, although, despite the book's title, he is not the focus of the story.

An unusual hybrid, Richardson's account is part autobiography, part travelogue and part biography of Cooper who unfolds during the course of the narrative from Richardson's mentor and lover to his hostile adversary. Exercising an almost Proustian recollection, Richardson paints a vivid picture of cafe society in the late 1940 and '50 as he call ups the milieu of Europe's privileged class. In these circles, the endles luncheons and dinners of rich nourishments and rare wines were battlegrounds of ambition, where gossip was repeatedly the weapon of choice. Richardson exhibits time and again how these treacherous social functions could evidence fatal to careers and reputations.

The son of a retired military officer and once-successful businessman, Richardson was born in 1924 Five years later his father died, leaving the family in an uncertain financial situation. Early upon the future critic showed an interest in art and literature, and was tutored by means of Vivian Sutherland, Graham's father. During the war Richardson worked as an industrial designer and, by dint of night, was on call as an air-raid warden. "I be delighted withed the Blitz," he writes. "It brought without the good nature in flat the nastiest people."

before long after the war, a crash course in art and high society ensu when he met Cooper Born in London in 1911 Cooper was heir to an Australian shipping and real-estate fortune. After studying at Oxford and the Sorbonne, he began assembling his celebrated collection of early Cubist paintings. In art circles, he was known for his eager vision, in spite of the fact that he had not to be found one eye as a ensue of a 1938 car accident. He was a prolific writer, contributing criticism to various magazines and newspapers. He also published several volumes on Cubism and numerous monographs upon individual artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Leger and Sutherland. According to Richardson, Cooper's best work is his catalogue raisonne for the oeuvre of Juan Gris.

by the agency of the time of their meeting in 1949 the older man had established his reputation as a brilliant critic and scholar, and also as an acid-tongued and cantankerous personality. He was regarded as one of the first art historians to apply the apparatus of traditional scholarship to present art.

"The disarrange was," Richardson states, "he regarded scholarship as a means of aggression rather than of enlightenment, just as he regarded virtually all other scholars who dared to write about `his' artists (not just cubists, on the contrary most French painters of the 19th and 20th centuries) as frauds and interlopers.... Negativism is its hold reward, which is why this former scourge of the art world has been virtually forgotten." In new years, with the exception of the 1970 review The Cubist Epoch, Cooper's works have mostly fallen out of print, and today's critics seldom consign to his work.

Richardson and Cooper's wild first date portended the agitation of the 12-year relationship to tread on the heels of While the handsome younger man was quite soused (and also humed from hashish fudge served at a party), Cooper invited him domicile to see his art collection. Richardson, ignoring Bacon's earlier warnings about Cooper could not overpower his curiosity about the renowned collection. "Does Cooper really have of that kind a good eye for new art?" Richardson asked Bacon, who intensely disliked Cooper "She's alone got one, so it better be good" was Bacon's catty reply