PICASSO’S ANNUS MIRABILIS

Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk). Until 9 September

The year 1932 was “pivotal” for Pablo Picasso, said Nancy Durrant in The Times. He had just turned 50, and his work was commanding record prices that allowed him and his wife, Olga, to live in a “fabulous” apartment in Paris, travel everywhere by “chauffeurdriven car” and mix with high society. Yet there is “nothing so deadening to art as comfort”, and Picasso was “itching to prove his continued relevance”. He was also having an affair with a young woman named Marie-thérèse Walter, then 22 years old. She would, unbeknown to Olga, become the catalyst for a radical new direction in his art. This is the context of a “dazzling” new exhibition at Tate Modern devoted to Picasso’s annus mirabilis. The show brings together more than 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures, charting his month-bymonth development throughout 1932 – and presenting an “extraordinary flowering of art”.

“Marie-thérèse is the central presence here, first to last,” said Laura Cumming in The Observer. You will recognise “her oval eyes, classical nose and radiant crop of blonde hair” – as well as her signature colour, lilac – throughout the show. “Here she is in post-coital bliss, reclining, sleeping, stretching, dreaming, nearly always pictured as if seen in, or from, bed.” Their affair was “clandestine”, and she is often disguised as something else, appearing as “a hazy purple memory” or a jumble of limbs in which one can “scarcely make out the figure”. Yet the mood of these paintings is unmistakable: when they appeared in Picasso’s first retrospective, in June 1932, it seems that Olga “finally realised what was going on”.

There’s something disturbing about these pictures of Picasso’s much younger mistress, said Will Gompertz on BBC News online. In The Dream, for example, Marie-thérèse is seen asleep in an armchair; “half her face has been turned into a phallus”. Moral considerations aside, this show will leave you “in no doubt that he was a truly great artist”. Nude in a Black Armchair, for instance, is a work “of such exquisite beauty, balance and sensuality you have no option but to stop and stare”. Curiously, though, it’s the misfires that make this such a great exhibition: there are some “real howlers” that make us appreciate his masterpieces all the more. Late in 1932, while swimming in the River Marne, Marie-thérèse caught a serious infection, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Picasso responded by producing a series of “spooky images” of her drowning and being saved. These strange pieces provide a “dark finale” to this wonderful, revelatory show.

Novelist Maggie O’farrell picks her favourite books. Her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death ( Tinder Press £18.99), is longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. The shortlist is announced 20 March

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1847 (Scholastic £5.99). The famous story of orphaned Jane: I reread this book every couple of years and each time I see something new. It is the most intricate and daring novel, with a perfectly mirrored structure, incisive characterisation and a shocking reversal halfway through.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham, 1998 (4th Estate £8.99). A brilliant and brave book that interlaces the stories of three women across time, including that of Virginia Woolf, as she is writing Mrs Dalloway. These characters, who seem entirely separate, are in fact

linked, but not in any way that you might expect.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, 1980 (Vintage £10.99). The twisting, expansive narrative of Kenneth Toomey, whose life is irrevocably intertwined with major events of the 20th century. Burgess is at his inventive, graceful best here.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, 1996 (Virago £9.99). I love all of Atwood’s books, but this is my favourite. It is a fictional account of reallife prisoner Grace Marks, who was accused of a double murder. Atwood imbues Grace’s story with humanity and intrigue.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, 2008 (Simon & Schuster £8.99). Strout is one of the best writers alive, and Olive Kitteridge – complex, cranky and uncompromising – her most memorable character to date. This novel is multivoiced, with each chapter narrated by a different inhabitant of a small town in Maine.

Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel, 2003 (4th Estate £8.99). Mantel’s memoir, about her early life and subsequent struggles with pain and illness, isn’t read anywhere near widely enough. She uses her clear, exact prose and unerring lexical agility to convey what it means to be ill, to suffer and to survive.