Lump: The Dog who ate a Picasso - Softcover

David Douglas Duncan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500512957 ISBN 13: 9780500512951

Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

A charming, original and uncommonly sensitive portrait of Picasso and his beloved dachshund, Lump

One spring morning in 1957, veteran photojournalist David Douglas Duncan paid a visit to his friend and frequent photographic subject Pablo Picasso, at the artist's home near Cannes. As a co-pilot alongside Duncan in his Mercedes Gullwing 300 SL was the photographer's pet dachsund, Lump. Photographer and dog were close companions, but Duncan's nomadic lifestyle and his other dog - a giant jealous Afghan hound who had tormented Lump - made their life in Rome difficult. When they arrived at Picasso's Villa La Californie that historic day, Lump decided that he had found paradise on earth, and that he would move in with Picasso, whether the artist welcomed him or not.

This is the background for a totally original book that offers an uncommonly sensitive portrait of Picasso. Lump was immortalized in a Picasso portrait painted on a plate the day they met, but that was just the beginning. In a suite of forty-five paintings reinterpreting Velasquez’s masterpiece ‘Las Meninas’, Picasso replaced the impassive hound in the foreground with jaunty renderings of Lump.

Today, as a gift from the artist to his hometown as a youth, all of those historic canvases are now the centerpiece exhibition in the Picasso Museum of Barcelona. Fourteen of the paintings are reproduced here in full colour, juxtaposed with Duncan’s dramatic and intimate black-and-white photographs of Picasso and Lump, bringing full circle the odyssey of a lucky dachshund who found his way to becoming a furry, super-stretched icon of modern art.

About this title

Review:

'Goes beyond mere entertainment, and offers an insight into a rarely seen world' --Black & White Photography

'Delightful' --The Art Newspaper

'The book works on two levels: as an affectionate and amusing portrait of an unlikely relationship, and as an explanation of what might otherwise seem an oddity within even Picasso's work' --RPS Journal

'A fascinating private study of Picasso at home' --State of Art

The 89 photographs in the book capture the joyful, informal atmosphere of the Picasso villa and the painter's adoration of the little dachshund'
--The Independent

'A fascinating series of photographs' --You Magazine

'Utterly original'
--Tatler

Synopsis:

David Douglas Duncan introduced Lump, a stray dachshund, to Pablo Picasso in 1957. It was love at first sight, and Lump became the artist's inseparable companion and sometime muse. This collection of photographs by the venerable David Douglas Duncan celebrating Picasso and Lump's relationship is an enchanting record of mini-chapter in the history of 20th-century art, with an improbable little character its hero.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0500512957
• ISBN 13: 9780500512951
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 100