James Lord arrived in Paris as a soldier during world War II. Intoxicated by the glamour of the city, he presented himself at Picasso's doorstep and, amazingly, was invited inside. Then he had the temerity to ask Picasso to draw his portrait. The master complied, and Lord became a part of Picasso's circle, where he met Picasso's mistress and inspiration for his greatest paintings, the formidable beautiful painter Dora Maar. "Picasso" and Dora tells of Lord's turbulent relationship with both Picasso and this legendarily mysterious woman. With a bold instinct for psychological truth he movingly chronicles their relationship, which had all the interests of a love affair.

PICASSO & DORA

Lord, James

Weidenfeld

The results of intensive research into the life and work of Alberto Giacometti is complemented by the author's personal remembrances of his experiences with the artist and sculptor and many members of his entourage

Giacometti: A Biography

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

When we look at a painting hanging on an art gallery wall, we see only what the artist has chosen to disclose--the finished work of art. What remains mysterious is the process of creation itself--the making of the work of art. Everyone who has looked at paintings has wondered about this, and numerous efforts have been made to discover and depict the creative method of important artists. A Giacometti Portrait is a picture of one of the century's greatest artists at work.James Lord sat for eighteen days while his friend Alberto Giamcometti did his portrait in oil. The artist painted, and the model recorded the sittings and took photographs of the work in its various stages. What emerged was an illumination of what it is to be an artist and what it was to be Giacometti--a portrait in prose of the man and his art. A work of great literarydistinction, A Giacometti Portrait is, above all, a subtle and important evocation of a great artist.

A Giacometti portrait

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

A POWERFUL STORY OF SEXUAL AWAKENING DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR FROM THE NOTED MEMORIST AND CRITIC In My Queer War, James Lord tells the story of a young man€™s exposure to the terrors, dislocations, and horrors of armed conflict. In 1942, a timid, inexperienced twenty-one-year-old Lord reports to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to enlist in the U.S. Army. His career in the armed forces takes him to Nevada and California, to Boston, to England, and eventually to France and Germany, where he witnesses firsthand the ravages of total war on Europe€™s land and on its people. Along the way he comes to terms with his own sexuality, experiences the thrill of first love and the chill of disillusionment with his fellow man, and in a moment of great rashness makes the acquaintance of the world€™s most renowned artist, who will show him the way to a new life. My Queer War is a rich and moving record of one man€™s maturation in the

My Queer War

Leaders & Notable People

The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) was arguably the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century. He was also--as James Lord persuasively argued in Giacometti: A Biography--a heroic figure whose vocation sustained him through a life of crippling anxiety and erotic guilt. Almost twenty years after it first appeared, Giacometti has attained the status of a classic, one of the most candid and complete biographies of an artist in our time. In Mythic Giacometti, Lord reveals the hidden "blueprint" of that work: a daringly literal, visionary interpretation of the myth of Oedipus as it affected the conduct and outcome of Giacometti's life. The result is a case study both in the development of an artist and in the writing of biography. Lord concentrates on the private totems of Giacometti's life-family legend, childhood memory, illness and injury, crucial sexual encounters, intimations of mortality-that amounted, in Lord's view, to signs of a tragic destiny directly linked to the central tragedy of Western literature.

Mythic Giacometti

Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir

As a young soldier at the end of World War II, Lord achieved his ambition of meeting Picasso. This elegantly written memoir recounts his subsequent intense and enduring relationship with the artist and with Picasso's mistress, Dora Maar, a legendary and reclusive figure. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

James Lord continues his series of intimate portraits with a cast of female subjects: Alice B. Toklas, Getrude Stein, Marie-Laure de Noailles, the French actress Arletty, Errieta Perdikidi, and his own mother, Loise Bennett Lord.

Six Exceptional Women: Further Memoirs

Community & Culture

With his critically acclaimed acute eye, James Lord has created another series of inimitably spirited, witty, profoundly moving portraits. Haunting, mesmerizing, and endlessly entertaining, Some Remarkable Men reverberates with Lord's unique gift for the intimate portrait.

Some Remarkable Men: Further Memoirs

Incisive reflections on more than twenty portraits of the author by some of the greatest artists of the last century
Over the course of his life as a friend and confidant of artists and collectors, and as a lover of art himself, James Lord has written some of the best accounts we have of modern aesthetic genius; his biography of Giacometti was widely acclaimed for succeeding, in the words of one reviewer, "in every way as one of the most readable, fascinating and informative documents, not just on an artist, but on art and artists in general" (The Washington Times). And yet through his connection with the great artists of his day, it was inevitable that Lord would himself become the object of the artist's gaze. In fact, from the time he was a young man, Lord sat for many of the major and minor painters and photographers of his day, including Balthus, Cocteau, Cartier-Bresson, Freud, Giacometti, and Picasso―in all but one case at the artist's request. In Plausible Portraits, Lord gathers, alongside these images, his reflections, penetrating the mind of artist and model alike in a sequence of illuminating double portraits of two masters at work.

Plausible Portraits of James Lord: With Commentary by the Model

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The author of Six Exceptional Women continues his series of memoirs with a collection of personal, sometimes haunting portraits of several prominent twentieth-century art promoters, including Isabel Rawsthorne, Peggy Guggenheim, Sonia Orwell, Ethel Bliss Platt, and Peter Watson.

A Gift for Admiration: Further Memoirs

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