This long interview, recorded with the Swiss critic Pierre Courthion when the artist was recovering from an operation in bed during the Nazi Occupation, was never published - until now.
The distinguished historian uses neglected sources to present CdeM as a much-traduced campaigner for the peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants, and as a patroness of the arts.
1870 was a cultural Golden Age, but it was also the background for the Dreyfus Affair and the violence of the Commune. This panorama is shown through the eyes of the age's personalities.
The role of surrealism and the cultural milieu of Paris in the 1940s helped inspire Boulez's emotional and radical music. CP's last book - on Eric Satie - was excellent.
In less than a month in 1870, the Prussian army invaded France, captured Napoleon III and changed the balance of world power. Its success had far-reaching effects...
Why was Cezanne revered by Rilke and Beckett, Picasso and Matisse? And does that early modernity speak to us now? An illustrated, ravishing study of Cezanne's uneasy art by the great emeritu... read more