Guillaume Apollinaire's only book on art, The Cubist Painters, was first published in 1913. This essential text in twentieth-century art presents the poet and critic's aesthetic meditations on nine painters: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Marie Laurencin, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp. As Picasso's closest friend and Marie Laurencin's lover, Apollinaire witnessed the development of Cubism firsthand. This collection of essays and reviews, written between 1905 and 1912, is a milestone in the history of art criticism, valued today as both a work of reference and a classic example of modernist creative writing. In addition to a faithful and fluid translation of Apollinaire's text, Peter Read provides his own scholarly analysis of its importance in the history of modernism. He examines Apollinaire's art criticism, his relationship to the Cubist movement, and, more specifically, the genesis of Cubist Painters through its various revisions and proofs. Supported by all forty-five plates from the original edition, this new volume brings Apollinaire's vitality and vision to life for a new generation.

Played out against the backdrop of Paris before the start of the First World War, Tarr tells the blackly comic story of the lives and loves of two artists--the English enfant terrible Frederick Tarr, and the middle-aged German Otto Kreisler, a failed painter who finds himself in a widening spiral of militaristic self-destruction. When both become interested in the same two women--Bertha Lunken, a conventional German, and Anastasya Vasek, the ultra-modern international devotee of "swagger sex"--Wyndham Lewis sets the stage for a scathing satire of national and social pretensions, the fraught relationship between men and women, and the incompatibilities of art and life. Scott W. Klein's introduction places the novel in the context of social satire and the avant-garde, especially the artistic developments of the 1910s--including Cubism, Futurism, and Lewis's own movement, Vorticism--and explores the links between Tarr and other Modernist masterpieces. The book also features Lewis's Preface to the 1918 American edition, comprehensive notes, a glossary of foreign words and phrases, and a map of Paris.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

As early as the ancient Greeks, goddesses served as Muses for artistic creation. In essence, a creatively charged energy inspired the artist, leaving a unique and recognizable mark on the artwork. Picassos relationships with the women in his life was deeply formative, and he often represented them as Muses. He was particularly unabashed in the declaration of his feelings to one of them, Marie-Therese Walter, his youthful mistress of 1927. But at that point Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, thus forced to practice the utmost discretion. His marriage to Olga made him increasingly frustrated with her imposed bourgeois expectations. As a release from this marital burden, Marie-Therese was ever present in his work, often portrayed as Aphrodite with a wreath in her hair, a basket of flowers and fruits by her side. Marie-Therese was the Dream the Muse. This fertile period coincided with the strong influence of surrealism which helped liberate Picassos psyche from the straitjacket that Olgas lifestyle imposed on him. By 1935, however, the model and mistress became a mother to Maya, radically changing the role she previously had. The following year Picasso was introduced to a new woman, Dora Maar, an encounter that signalled the beginning of the end of Marie-Thereses exclusive claim on Picassos affections and the closing of an artistic period clearly marked by fertility. The Aphrodite Period (19241936) provides new insights and analysis of Picassos life as recently uncovered through the research of the Online Picasso Project. This time-span is one of the most illustrative periods of Picassos career in that it clearly demonstrates the close interdependence between sexuality and artistic creativity that characterize Picasso's entire output.

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. In "Picasso's Mask," Malraux's memories, at once personal and historical, evoke Picasso as a private man and as a legendary artistic genius. For over half a century, Andre Malraux (1901-1976) was intimately involved in French intellectual life, as philosopher, novelist, soldier, statesman, and secretary for cultural affairs. Malraux knew Picasso well, and here recollects a number of his conversations with the painter. In rich, evocative, and memory-filled prose, he has written an inspiring and moving reminiscence. "Picasso's Mask" is one of the most profound works in Malraux's remarkable oeuvre.