Bernard Buffet : the invention of the modern mega-artist / Nicholas Foulkes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Foulkes, Nicholas, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Buffet, Bernard, 1928-1999.

Buffet, Bernard.

Painters--France--Paris--Biography.

Painters.

Painters--France--Biography.

France.

France--Paris.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

483 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustration (some color), portraits ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Preface Publishing, 2016.

Summary:

It is said that asphyxiation brings on a state of hallucinatory intoxication ... in which case the 71-year-old artist who lay in his sprawling Provencal villa died happy. In the early afternoon of Monday October 4 1999, wracked with Parkinson's disease, and unable to paint after breaking his wrist, Bernard Buffet calmly placed a plastic bag over his head, taped it tight around his neck and patiently waited the few minutes it took for death to arrive. Bernard Buffet was the first artist of the television and the jet age. As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) he was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a discredited and demoralized country. While still in his twenties he had a Rolls Royce, a chateau, an island, high society at his feet and a glittering future ahead. Yet his extraordinary fall from grace was engineered by the very establishment that created him. Once hailed as a genius he was later shunned as a joke. Today, almost 70 years after he first shot to fame as a 20 year old prodigy hailed as a successor to Picasso, critical opinion remains sharply divided on the reputation of a controversial painter. Rich in incident Buffets remarkable story is played out against the backdrop of the beau monde of the 1950s and 1960s in locations as diverse as St Tropez, Tokyo, Paris, Dallas, St Petersburg and New York, before coming to its miserable conclusion alone in his studio. With the cooperation of the Buffet estate, this is the first in-depth biography of the artist to be published in English, and Foulkes has secured unique interviews and access to the Buffet legacy. Buffets story is an allegory for the corrosive commercial investment value of art markets today. His paintings are currently rocketing in value as he is rediscovered.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Death in Provence 9

Chapter 2 The Boy from Les Batignolles 13

Chapter 3 The Spectral City 20

Chapter 4 Existentialism à la Mode 31

Chapter 5 A Tale of Two Collectors 44

Chapter 6 Buffet goes to Hollywood 52

Chapter 7 The Prix de la Critique 63

Chapter 8 Marriage and Divorce Parisian Style 71

Chapter 9 Love on the Left Bank 81

Chapter 10 Honeymoon in the House of Death 90

Chapter 11 Isolation in Provence 100

Chapter 12 The Orestes and Pylades of the Atomic Age 108

Chapter 33 Picasso Means Nothing to Me, Matisse is Only a Décorateur 115

Chapter 14 Artist in a Rolls-Royce 123

Chapter 15 Paris Goes to Texas 134

Chapter 16 Apotheosis 139

Chapter 17 Number 6 Avenue Matignon 152

Chapter 18 An Artist's Home is his Castle 159

Chapter 19 A Tale of Two Coups de Foudre 170

Chapter 20 'The most beautiful woman's body I've ever seen in my life' 177

Chapter 21 'I want you without your past' 188

Chapter 22 The Fifth Republic 198

Chapter 23 Art Brut and Black Pearls 208

Chapter 24 The Coming of the Anti-Picasso 220

Chapter 25 Creativity on a Production Line 227

Chapter 26 A Slender Matador in a Large Suit 232

Chapter 27 The Most French of French Painters 242

Chapter 28 A light and a new road' 250

Chapter 29 Lunch in Louveciennes, Dinner in Moscow 258

Chapter 30 Breton Spring 270

Chapter 31 Alcohol, Tobacco and Pandora's Box 278

Chapter 32 Portrait of a Marriage in Crisis 290

Chapter 33 Pulling Up the Drawbridge 296

Chapter 34 The Canute of Contemporary Art 302

Chapter 35 The Howard Hughes of the Art World 314

Chapter 36 Descent Into Hell 321

Chapter 37 Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 331

Chapter 38 Big in Japan 343

Chapter 39 Another Decade, Another Chateau, Another Brush With Death 358

Chapter 40 The Milestones that Mark the Road 363

Chapter 41 The last big artist in Paris' 370

Chapter 42 Back in the USSR 382

Chapter 43 The Gates of Hell Ajar 392

Chapter 44 I Still Love Him 400

Chapter 45 The Mozart of Modern Art 408.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 425-467) and index.

ISBN:

9781848094444

1848094442

OCLC:

944026834

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

Inhaltsverzeichnis