markk

John Richardson died yesterday at the ripe old age of 95. He lived an incredibly full life that has enriched hundreds of thousands of people, yet I cannot help but feel a great sense of loss as he leaves his last, great project unfinished.

That project, of course, is his multivolume biography of Pablo Picasso. While far from the only one out there on him it's uniquely informed by his decades-long friendship with the artist. The first two volumes came out in the 1990s, while the third volume (which took Picasso's life up to 1932) was published twelve years ago. While the fourth and final volume is described in the obituary as "close to completion," I've seen similar descriptions of the book for the past three years now, which leaves me despairing of ever reading Richardson's treatment of Picasso's life during the Spanish Civil War, World War Two, or the years he witnessed firsthand.

Hopefully I'm wrong. Richardson collaborated on the third volume with Marilyn McCully and he was working with someone on the final book, so perhaps there's enough to bring it to a satisfactory end. But until that happens Richardson's books will stand as one of the great unfinished projects of nonfiction literature — and we're all poorer for it.