1. Pablo Picasso: Catalogs of the Printed Graphic Work, Volume One: 1904-1967 by Georges Bloch is the single most often referenced volume of Picasso’s various print catalogue raisonnés. Despite thumbnail pictures, it catalogues 64 years of Picasso’s printmaking career, all but the last four years, and thus provides a wonderful overview of his art in a single, handy volume. Alan Wofsy of San Francisco is the current publisher of the original French version, available at http://www.art-books.com/cgi-bin/artbooks/467-2.html. At the time of this writing (which I am now updating as of 2015), there is as yet no English version. But Bloch is mostly a picture book with little verbiage anyway, and the French is not hard to conquer.
2. PICASSO: THE REAL FAMILY STORY, by Olivier Widmaier Picasso, Prestel Verlag, 2004. I am a man of few idols, but, as my friend Joey says of me, when I find something I truly like, I take it till it kills me. In music, those idols are Garcia and Dylan, and, in art, it goes without saying. (We’ll leave literature alone for the while.) I accept my idols as flawed creatures since, as they say, to err is human. I’ve often said that I’m glad that Hitler was a lousy artist, because I’d have to draw the line somewhere. But though I’ve long considered Jerry a nice guy with a wonderful personality, I’ve thought of Picasso and Dylan as mean-spirited people with whom I probably would not have wanted to be friends, had the opportunity presented itself. Until now. Olivier Widmaier Picasso, son of Maya and grandson of Picasso and Marie-Therese, goes a long way in debunking what I now realize are the slanderous myths that shroud Picasso’s life in the sensationalistic media of our times. Arianna may know how to sell copy, but this book reads like a factual, accurate account.
Turns out Picasso was a nice guy! He was generous with all of his wives and mistresses. He couldn’t divorce Olga due to legal constraints and her obstructions, but proposed to Marie-Therese the very year his first wife died (she refused him, perhaps wisely). He was also very generous with many friends, strangers and various causes. He was a delightful, charismatic conversationalist and a good friend. If he retreated into reclusion late in life, it was only to create the most art possible in his race against death. He loved and cared for his children and grandchildren, with only occasional and understandable exceptions. Marina, that unfortunate basket case, was the product of an annoying, gold-digging mother with whom Picasso and Paulo, her ex-husband, wanted nothing more to do—the grandchildren unfortunately bore the brunt. Francoise Gilot, who wrote the only other memoir by a family member or consort that rings true, is more critical of Picasso, and serves as a perhaps useful foil for Olivier’s generally rosier account. One must of course admit that Picasso, like the rest of us, was no saint. But he certainly wasn’t the monster the media have made him out to be.
3. Picasso: Style and Meaning, by Elizabeth Cowling, Phaidon Press, 2002. This is an outstanding, thoroughly researched and very readable landmark book about the meaning of Picasso’s art and to the antecedents and development of his many styles.
4. Picasso: Magic, Sex, Death, by John Richardson, three lectures on two DVDs, 2003
5. A Guide to Collecting Picasso’s Prints, by yours truly (click the “Collecting Guide” link on the right)
6. Picasso: The Last Years, 1963-1973, by Gert Schiff. Though John Richardson’s essay in the Gagosian catalogue is wonderful, I think very highly of Schiff’s essay on Late Picasso, which he penned in the early ‘eighties, long before Late Picasso became fashionable.