The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Softcover

Richardson, John

4.02

89 ratings by Goodreads

9780712667081: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712667083 ISBN 13: 9780712667081

Publisher: Pimlico, 2000

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The Sorcerer's Apprentice by John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso, is a richly entertaining memoir of life with the brilliant but controversial art expert, Douglas Cooper - a fiendish, colourful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world's most important private collection of Cubist paintings.

John Richardson tells the story of their ill-fated but comical association, which began in London in 1949 and moved on to the Chateau de Castille, a colonnaded folly in Provence filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Braque, Leger and Juna Gris. Richardson unfurls an adventure lasting twelve years, encompassing artists and writers, collectors and the famous - Francis Bacon, Jean Cocteau, Dora Maar, Peggy Guggenheim and Anthony Blunt to name but a few. Central to the book is Richardson's close friendship with Picasso, which coincided with the emergence of the artist's new mistress, Jacqueline Roque, and which gave Richardson an inside view of the repercussions she would have on Picasso's life and work.

With an extraordinary eye for detail and ear for scandal, Richardson has written a unique saga from behind the scenes of one of the richest periods in European art.

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Review:

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" Ch�teau 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, L�ger 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

Review:

"A scintillating romp, riddled with insights into the art world; far funnier and more deserving of the title Men Behaving Badly than any television comedy...Brilliant." (Frances Spalding Sunday Times)

"A truly quirky, hilarious little book...It can safely be said that no book like it has been published before; or will be again." (Andrew Marr Express)

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice has the giddy effervescence of a Fellini film...A celebration of movement and sensuality: of light and colour, physical vitality and sexual freedom." (Andrew Rissik Guardian)

"Funny, informative and frequently scandalous." (Emma Tennant Independent on Sunday)

"Rackety, riveting, hilariously grisly." (Hilary Spurling Daily Telegraph)

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