A Weekend with Picasso

The twentieth century artist talks about his life and work as if entertaining the reader for a weekend

Grade 3-7-- Both of these titles are written as if the artists were conducting a personal tour of their studios and lives. Just as it's inappropriate to create unconfirmed conversations for biographies, it should be equally taboo to turn a distinguished artist into a chatty tour guide. The tone and terminology are all too often those of an earnest docent conducting a classroom tour, which is too bad because both books are beautifully produced and filled with high-quality color reproductions of paintings and photos of the artists, their friends, and their world. While not useful for biographic research, the texts do explain the artists' development. Rodari goes more into the intellectual process Picasso used and the ways he manipulated forms to startle viewers into seeing things in new ways. Skira-Venturi's text takes the form of a reminiscence and tends to wander from subject to subject with the emphasis on the places and people Renoir painted. A more reliable source for the artists' own thoughts can be found in the ``Artists by Themselves'' series (Knopf). For a clear analysis of artwork and its processes, stick with Ernest Raboff's books on Picasso (HarperCollins) and Renoir (Lippincott, both 1987). --Eleanor K. MacDonald, Beverly Hills Public Library
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