Paul Johnson

Career Spikes

Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist

By

Preface Publishing 483pp £25 order from our bookshop

Bernard Buffet (1928–99) is the only artist I have ever envied, and that was at a time when I was wavering over becoming one myself. We were born in the same year and we were both educated by the Jesuits, who at that time still encouraged vaulting ambition. He got himself expelled from the smart Lycée Carnot in Paris and then did the sensible thing and acquired a sound professional training at the city’s Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. By contrast, I spent three years at Oxford and two in the army, emerging as a BA and a captain, both useless for any practical purpose. By the time I took up my first job in January 1952, as a junior executive in a French publishing group, Buffet had made the big time.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Moore’s work has been so influential that the former ministers who provided him with much of his information now r… ,
    • 'Although he travels through time and space to find the best produce, his choices, delightfully, are not obvious.'… ,
    • RT : I regularly make purchases based on - it’s excellent.,
    • RT : I wrote about Yoko Ogawa's dreamlike, allegorical novel The Memory Police, newly published in English in a translat… ,
    • 'At this frankly apocalyptic moment for indigenous rights in Brazil, John Hemming’s "People of the Rainforest" is a… ,
    • 'I was dumbfounded by the view of the Berlin Wall from the eastern side. It seemed inconceivable that in under thre… ,
    • RT : Danger for ‘local’ staff, access in exchange for silence (and logos) - all sounds familiar in this fascinating look… ,
    Follow Us