A groundbreaking and richly illustrated study of the leading artist of the twentieth century. In this original and innovative book, Christopher Green explores how Pablo Picasso, through the manipulation of pictorial signs, explored ideas about the living and the dead. Oscillating between the animate and the inanimate, Picasso created objects that live, and figures that are as dead as objects.
Covering the period from the creation of the Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907 to the artist’s association with the Surrealists in the early 1930s, the book offers a journey through Picasso’s imagination and reveals—by way of Apollinaire, Breton, and Freud, among others—the ideas and reflections associated with life and death in his work.
Published in association with the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, the book also includes an essay on Picasso’s biomorphic motifs by the leading Spanish critic J. F. Yvars. 124 color, 9 b&w illustrations.

IN THIS GROUNDBREAKING NEW STUDY of the leading artist of the twentieth century, Christopher Green explores Picasso's fascination with ideas about the living and the dead. He shows how,through the manipulation of pictorial signs, Picasso oscillated between the animate and the inanimate, creating objects that 'live' and figures that are as 'dead' as objects. Covering the period from the creation of the Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 to the artist's association with the Surrealists in the early 1930s, the book offers a journey through Picasso's imagination and reveals - by way of Freud, Andre Breton and Guillaume Apollinaire, among others -the ideas and reflections associated with life and death in his work.Published in association with the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, the book also includes an essay on Picasso's biomorphic motifs by the leading Spanish critic J. E Yvars. Christopher Green, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, is an international authority on French art of the early twentieth century. His previous books include Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon and Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo.

Foreword
JORDI HEREU
Preface
PEPE SERRA
Acknowledgments
The Content of the Form
Picasso's Biomorphic Motifs
Life and Death in Picasso
Still Life / Figure, c.1907-1933
CHRISTOPHER GREEN
Ⅰ Picasso's Sun
Ⅱ Apollinaire, Breton, Bataille: The Dance and Life and Death Relationships
Ⅲ Transformations
Ⅳ Geometry and the Crystal; Death and Transcendence
Ⅴ Repeating Patterns
Ⅵ Mercure and the Theatre of Still Life
Ⅶ Monstrous Objects
Ⅷ Encounters
Chronology
Bibliography
Picture credits