Birmont, Julie and Clement Oubrerie — Pablo 1. Max Jacob

Paris, Dargaud, 2012. Premiere/First. Hardcover. Color-illustrated boards with red/black lettering on spine. 88 pp. with color cartoon images throughout. Text in French. Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie’s PABLO tackles something big: what – and who – turned a young Spanish painter into Picasso? Set between 1900 and 1909, their four-volume series covers Picasso’s earliest years in Paris. It’s a true story, but one whose details are largely forgotten. Birmant presents it with sympathy for the elements at its heart: youth, love, friendship and artistic transformation. The series is based on Fernande Olivier’s memoir Souvenirs Intimes. Picasso’s first great love, Olivier is still known as “la belle Fernande“. Her book is a close-up view of the seven years she spent with the painter – mostly in the infamous Bateau Lavoir or “Laundry Boat”. A ramshackle artist colony built on the side of a hill, this held twenty-five studios but only one water faucet. Yet the Bateau Lavoir (a reference to the Seine’s fetid floating laundries) housed many a poor creator who later became prominent. In addition to painters such as Andre Derain and Modigliani, Pablo’s neighbours there are writers, actors and poets. The communal atelier nurses their rivalries and affairs – and it is here that Picasso and Braque initiate Cubism. Like Picasso’s art, PABLO is many histories in one. But all of them have an overall backdrop: that of expansive Belle Époque Paris. Thanks to the city’s flourishing network of studios, dealers and salons, it was known to be the capital of art. Back in Barcelona, Pablo was a prodigy; in Paris, he was able to change the history of perception. Each volume is focused on a meeting that changes his life. In the first, poet Max Jacob becomes his guide to Paris. Fine .