Synopses & Reviews
In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Klüver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Café de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. The people were wearing the same clothes in each shot and had the same accessories. Their ties were knotted the same way and their collars had the same wrinkles. A total of twenty-four photographs -- four rolls of film with six photographs each -- were eventually found. With the challenge of identifying the date, photographer, and circumstances, Klüver embarked on an inquiry that would illuminate the minute texture of that time and place.
Biographical research into the subjects' lives led Klüver to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. He then measured buildings and plotted angles and lengths of shadows in the photographs to narrow the time frame to a spread of three weeks. Further investigation eventually allowed Klüver to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. A computer printout of the sun's positions on that date, obtained from the Bureau des Longitudes, together with the length of the shadows, enabled Klver to calculate the time of day of each photograph, and thus to put them in proper sequence.
In a tour de force of art historical research, Klüver then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs. With evocative attention to detail -- noting when Picasso is no longer carrying an envelope or Max Jacob has acquired a decoration in his lapel -- Klüver recreates a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early twentieth-century Paris.
Besides the central "portfolio" of photographs by Cocteau, the book contains additional photographs and drawings, short biographies of all the subjects, and a historical section on the events and activities in the Paris art world at the time.
Review
"An amazing feat of detective work." Michael FitzGerald , Artforum's Bookforum The MIT Press
Review
"Very amusing and almost wildly ingenious." Rosamond Bernier , New York Times Book Review The MIT Press
Review
Klüver has brought off an astonishing feat. He has recreated anafternoon in Montparnasse so vividly and exhaustively that he hassucceeded in illuminating a whole period of the artist's life andclarified key relationships. Thanks to his ability to apply scientificresearch and imaginative sensibility to iconographical problems,Klver is doing for twentieth-century art historians what Baedekerdid for nineteenth-century travelers. John Richardson, author of < i=""> A Life of Picasso <>
Review
In this tale of twenty-four photographs, Billy Klüver uses his gifts of research and narration to make us see and feel with Cocteau himself experience. How good it is to live for a while in a worthy world that is not our own. The MIT Press
Review
This is the kind of visual history, apart from works of art themselves, that is the most vivid and evocative. Klüver has not simply unearthed a suite of thrilling pictures, but he's managed to tell us, with all of the tools of the finest empirical history-writing, just how all the pieces fit. John Pierce, Visiting Professor of Music, Emeritus, Stanford University
Review
Klüver has brought off an astonishing feat. He has recreated an afternoon in Montparnasse so vividly and exhaustively that he has succeeded in illuminating a whole period of the artist's life and clarified key relationships. Thanks to his ability to apply scientific research and imaginative sensibility to iconographical problems, Klver is doing for twentieth-century art historians what Baedeker did for nineteenth-century travelers. Kenneth E. Silver, Associate Professor of Fine Arts, New York University
Review
An amazing feat of detective work. < b=""> John Richardson <> , author of < i=""> A Life of Picasso <>
Review
Very amusing and almost wildly ingenious. < b=""> Michael FitzGerald <> - - < -="" i="" -=""> - Artforum - < -="" -=""> - 's Bookforum
Synopsis
Best Critical Study, 1998 Golden Light Book Awards sponsored by the Maine Photographic Workshops
In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Klüver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Café de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. Biographical research led Klüver to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. Further investigation eventually allowed him to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. In a tour de force of art historical research, Klüver then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs—and re-created a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early-twentieth-century Paris.
Synopsis
-- Michael FitzGerald, Artforum's Bookforum