PICASSO'S MASK. Translated And Annotated By June Guicharnaud With Jacques Guicharnaud

olive & black 1/2 cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond.binding square & tight. covers clean. top edge has faint fox spots, other edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in vg cond. 1" tear on front misssing small piece, corners rubbed. not price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. first american edition. first printing (FPuUSA & NAP). 273p. 46 b&w illustrations. biography. memoirs. art history. philosophy. psychology ~Following Pablo Picasso's death in 1973, Andre Malraux was summoned by Jacqueline Picasso, the artist's widow, to her home at Mougins in the South of France. There, surrounded by Picasso's powerful last paintings "painted face to face with death," and his art collection destined for the Louvre, Malraux recollected Picasso's rebellious life and the metamorphosis of his art. Malraux's memories, at once personal and historical, evoke Picasso the private man and the near~legendary artistic genius. Three months later, Malraux returned to southern France to attend the opening of the exhibition "Andre Malraux and the Museum Without Walls" at the Fondation Maeght in Saint~Paul~de~Vence. Although Malraux had insisted that "the Museum Without Walls is by definition a place of the mind," the Fondation, in mounting the exhibit, had given tangible shape to Malraux's concept. The exhibit contained "a profusion of famous paintings . an El Greco next to a Tintoretto . Sculpture from India, China, Cambodia, and Sumer . masks from Africa, initiation helmets from Oceania." These art works from such widely disparate periods and places confirmed for Malraux that all "art is a manifestation of what are unable to see: the sacred, the supernatural, the unreal~of that which they can see only through art." In a speech at a dinner that evening, Malraux articulated his most deeply held beliefs about the place of art~"the revolt against man's fate"~in the modern world and the significance of the Museum Without Walls. Malraux's pilgrimage the next day to Picasso's tomb at nearby Vauvenargues provides a coda to this provocative and profoundly moving memoir. At the grave site, Malraux confronted the essential enigma of artistic creation for "it is from there that Picasso calls upon us, more violently than any of his predecessors, to understand that creation is as mysterious as death.".…