Life with Picasso

By: Francoise Gilot, Carlton Lake, Lisa Alther - introduction

Narrated by: Mary Sarah

Françoise Gilot was in her early 20s when she met the 61-year-old Pablo Picasso in 1943. Brought up in a well-to-do, upper-middle-class family, who had sent her to Cambridge and the Sorbonne and hoped that she would go into law, the young woman defied their wishes and set her sights on being an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of 10 years, during which Gilot gave birth to Picasso's two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso's muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become.

Life with Picasso, written with Carlton Lake and published in 1961, is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist at the height of his fame; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career.

©1964 Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake (P)2020 Tantor

Insufferable Narrator

I can't even finish this book because the reader or narrator is so ridiculous and irritating, with the most pretentious manner of speaking imaginable. A slightly breathless, affected tone that completely distracts from the story ruined this book for me.

Loved it

Great story telling and very stylistic narrator, fitting with book's characters.

It's a great preview of what kind of person Picasso was, or rather how Francoise perceived him as.

it's interesting to think how, if he wasn't a hopeless narcissist, he would have likely never reached the heights he did as his name wouldn't have been as inflated as it is now. By hearing about his childhood, it seems like his ego was inflated very early in life, only backed up by all the people loving his work.

Like one of the books characters says, a great artist, but a terrible human being.

Which begs the rather sad question. How many artists like him, with art that was equally as good if not better, simply never made it because they didn't have the ego needed to inflate the value of their own art? How many people in other jobs lose opportunities to their more narcissistic colleagues that have no problem taking it all and advertise themselves much better? And where are we headed as a society which rewards narcissism better than altruism?

Overall a great read, I would recommend to anyone.

The writing is superb, the narrator is irritating

The story was so good that I forced myself to abide the narrator, who over emphasizes the pronunciation of each letter in each word. The story deserves 5 stars for its anecdotes and insights into relationships. It also illuminates Picasso as a person, not just an artist.

Ok Story, Annoying Narrator

I would have pushed through to hear this story but the narrator has the most annoying way of reading. She over-pronounces the French words (I am bilingual and it was so distracting to hear her try so hard to sound French that it was difficult to even understand the word she was trying to say). Also, the story is really not terribly compelling. I was interested to hear this story, at first, but was disappointed.

MUSE SPEAKS

really what more could you ask for? she's smart and wise and knows when to walk away; it's almost as if Francois was a plant for posterity.