Creator: Edward Lucie-Smith
Publication date: 2007-05-01
RRP: £20.00
Price: £13.20
Review Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer Vol. 1 - A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon, Pop Culture War, and Gay History of Drummer Magazine: The Titanic 1970s to 1999 / Palm Drive Publishing:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1999-08-09
Dewey code: 790
Price: £9.99
Review Living on the Edge: The Freddie Mercury Story / Robson Books Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2001-12-31
Dewey code: 709.2
RRP: £9.00
Price: £10.74
Review The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper / University of Chicago Press:The eyes have it. Where Richardson's twinkled and Picasso's scorched with Andalusian mirada fuerte, Douglas Cooper, a comic fiend something between Dame Edna Everage and Ignatius Reilly, had "scary little avian eyes", one of which bore a sightless pupil shaped like an inverted keyhole from a Magritte, and a malevolent temper that poured venom like lava. It was impossible to work out which he hated more, himself or the world, but the one fed off the other with magnificent fury, while Richardson followed a step behind rebuilding bridges from the rubble and learning. Cooper pulled strings "so hard they snapped". Two quotations from Francis Bacon, no angel himself, bookend this curious, exasperatedly affectionate memoir by John Richardson, distinguished art historian and 1991 Whitbread Award-winning biographer of Picasso (who is put in the shade by Cooper's hefty shadow): the prophetic "she'll try to lure you to bed, and then she'll turn on you. She always does", finds its uncanny conclusion in "Didn't I warn you she was a thoroughly treacherous woman?". The sorcerer and his apprentice lived for 10 years in the grandiose "folly" Chäteau de Castille in Provence, where they entertained a circle that included Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Angus Wilson, Tennessee Williams and a range of the usual suspects from that period's artistic fraternity. When Richardson left Cooper for the lights of New York, the outrage of the spurned lover led him to burn his possessions, steal his paintings, denounce him to friends and employers, and even to attempt to arrange his arrest by Interpol. He was a duplicitous, sadistic bully, but, importantly, he was not a bore (among his more outrageous acts was loudly booing Queen Elizabeth II outside Westminster Abbey at her Coronation). Moreover, his knowledge for his subject, classical Cubism, and his pioneering collecting of the works of Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris, were an essential counterpoint to the staid, unenlightened policy of the Tate Gallery and its director, Sir John Rothenstein, for whom he held a deteriorating scorn which finally resulted in the "Tate Affair", when Rothenstein publicly thumped Cooper. [+]He was certainly not to first that wanted to. On occasion Richardson lapses into routine recall, but generally his delight in reviewing this formative, rites-of-passage period, re-ignites the fire in Cooper flaring nostrils, and borrows some of its flame to stoke a bitchy, enriching addendum to his Picasso magnus opus, which, appropriately, bears a dedication to his old sorcerer. -David Vincent.
Publication date: 2000-09-30
Dewey code: 823.914
RRP: £14.50
Price: £13.89
Review Bryher: Two Novels: "Development" AND "Two Selves" (Living Out: Gay & Lesbian Autobiographies) / University of Wisconsin Press:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1993-12
Dewey code: 305.42
RRP: £12.99
Price: £15.99
Review Letters from a War Zone / A Cappella Books,U.S.:
Publication date: 1999-05-13
Dewey code: 782.42164092
RRP: £8.99
Price: £8.98
Review Outlines : k.d. lang / Absolute Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2007-02-28
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.12
Review Original Youth: The Real Story of Edmund White's Boyhood / Green Candy:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 1987-02-19
Dewey code: 973
RRP: £10.99
Price: £6.33
Review Immodest Acts: Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Studies in the History of Sexuality) / Oxford Paperbacks:
Publication date: 2006-09-07
Dewey code: 362.299092
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.93
Review Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir / Little, Brown and Company:
Authors
- J.H. Natterstad
- Leah Levenson
RRP: £14.50
Price: £14.49
Review Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist (Irish Studies) / Syracuse University Press:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 1994-01
Dewey code: 782.1092
Price: £7.82
Review The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire / Vintage Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-01-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £8.95
Price: £3.99
Review The Comedienne / Millivres-Prowler Group Ltd:
Publication date: 2000-12-12
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £11.99
Price: £1.80
Review The Queen Is Dead: A Tale of Jarheads, Eggheads, Serial Killers & Bad Sex: A Story of Jarheads, Eggheads, Serial Killers and Bad Sex / Arcadia Books:
Publication date: 2008-05-21
Dewey code: 306.7662092
RRP: £17.99
Price: £8.42
Review Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life / SQUARE ONE PUBLISHING:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1995-06-29
Price: £6.99
Review Queens / Penguin Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2001-05-31
Dewey code: 823.912
RRP: £28.95
Price: £25.94
Review The Masks of Mary Renault: A Literary Biography / University of Missouri Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2005-03-01
Dewey code: 306.7663092
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.52
Review S/He / Alyson Publications Inc:
Publication date: 1998-12-01
Dewey code: 791.43082
RRP: £14.99
Price: £10.43
Review Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement / Duke University Press:
Publication date: 1994-10-13
Price: £16.95
Review Flings Over Fences: Ups and Downs of Gay Kindersley / Quiller Press:
Edition: 2
Publication date: 2008-01-10
Dewey code: 848.91409
RRP: £30.00
Price: £19.94
Review Simone De Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman / OUP Oxford:
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Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer Vol. 1 - A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon, Pop Culture War, and Gay History of Drummer Magazine: The Titanic 1970s to 1999, Living on the Edge: The Freddie Mercury Story, The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper, Bryher: Two Novels: "Development" AND "Two Selves" (Living Out: Gay & Lesbian Autobiographies), Letters from a War Zone, Outlines : k.d. lang, Original Youth: The Real Story of Edmund White's Boyhood, Immodest Acts: Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Studies in the History of Sexuality), Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist (Irish Studies), The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, The Comedienne, The Queen Is Dead: A Tale of Jarheads, Eggheads, Serial Killers & Bad Sex: A Story of Jarheads, Eggheads, Serial Killers and Bad Sex, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life, Queens, The Masks of Mary Renault: A Literary Biography, S/He, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement, Flings Over Fences: Ups and Downs of Gay Kindersley, Simone De Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman |
