Meet your delightful new friend Brigitte, who is going to take you on a journey through 20th-century art and photography via an address book serendipitously acquired on eBay that just happens to have belonged to Dora Maar. Maar is best known today for having the misfortune of a relationship with Picasso, but she was a talented and interesting person in her own right--and unlike many people close to him, she survived to a ripe old age, although plagued by mental health issues. Page by page, entry by entry, Brigitte explores Maar's connections to the people she knew, imagining her world and injecting her own wry humor into her observations. Maar's life, immortalized as "the Weeping Woman" in Picasso's work, could have been quite depressing in another writer's retelling, but Brigitte manages to make it interesting and educational.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Finally in English! One of several innovative non-fiction titles I pressed into the hands, metaphorically speaking, of friends and strangers this past year. And it made my Best Books of 2020 list, the annual post of my favourite reads.
The full Instagram post with book covers gallery is at the link.

This is perfect for the Strong Sense of Place website: lovely writing, fascinating detail, tons of atmosphere. I really enjoyed the way it's a mashup of a detective story, memoir, and history — super compelling.

The journey of discovering Dora Maar was strange and fascinating. It shed some light on an enigmatic character and the author managed to show more than one facet of Maar's personality. This book goes to show how victims are not always simply victims.
The topic of the book and the address book as the starting point for such a complex journey is a difficult one. Evidence is not always found right away and the amount of research that went through it was astonishing. However, the author offered her own point of view too many times and, despite being mostly upfront about it, it still hurt the book a bit. The bird was out, no way of taking it back. In many situations, since there was no evidence at all regarding the intimate thoughts and the way things happened, but the author tried to imagine what the characters thought, how they reacted and she speculated a lot on all of these things. I actually thought at some point that perhaps writing a historical fiction about Dora Maar would have been a better choice since the freedom of adding fiction was there anyway.
Regarding the order of tackling the names, in a way I thought it was confusing, going from one to another in this manner, but I saw the logic in that and I appreciated the effort to make sense of such a source. It must have been very tough to decide how to connect the characters and who to research next. I also understand that not all the names were researched, thus making me think there might be more to the story. Since Dora Maar was not a likable character or person I imagine it hard to keep going at some point. But, perhaps just like the author, I've also had enough of her. 

All in all, it wasn't a bad book and I enjoyed reading about the time period and the characters that appear in Maar's address book. This is a good book to add to any research on avangarde art and the 20th century Parisian society. I'm glad to have received it!

An overdue and warmly welcomed contemporary look at Dora Maar, who was an artist in her own right and not just one of Picasso's paramours.

Although a catalyst of pure luck, the angle of finding Maar's notebook is narrative gold. It not only gives us a niche connection to Maar, but renders the relationship between writer and reader intimate: together we read Maar's notes, and together we will rediscover this brilliant woman.

Why can't I find second hand treasures belonging to the deities of history in my local Oxfam?

This book is delightfully written and tells about the intertwined lives of Dora Maar, (the famous photographer and contemporary of Man Ray), Picasso (who treated Mme Maar very shabbily), and virtually every artist in Paris in the 1930's through 1960's.  The mystery is born when the author finds an old address/date book in a vintage French leather "diary".  When she flips through it, she realizes that whoever originally owned this little book had been a person of some prominence who knew a long list of famous people in the golden days of Paris and the Lost Generation.  The mystery is untangled in a fascinating way, which also leads the author to tracking down people who may have known those whose names and addresses are in this little book.  The stories are many and gripping, especially for anyone interested in painters, sculptors, and writers of that era.  Ms. Benkemoun travels to various parts of France to track down answers to her questions, so if the reader enjoys "visiting" these places as part of the story, that is a bonus.  I highly recommend this book, and will be interested in other work by this author.

It all starts with the innocent purchase of a red leather notebook on Ebay. Author Brigitte Benkemoun was hunting for a gift, actually she was trying to replace a special edition red leather address and notebook. 

What arrived from her ebay purchase was more than she could imagine...and it turned into a hunt for the original book's owner.

This is the story of that search, and the answers she found to questions she hadn't even asked, was only the begining of this exciting story.

This is the heartwarming and engaging journey through the addresses found in the book. 
And these were no ordinary names... these were the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the most influential people of that time. .artists, painters, writers...
And they all led to Ms. Henriette Theodora Markovitch, aka Dora Maar, woman, French photographer, painter, poet...and muse to Picasso.
She is "The Weeping Woman" in a Picasso painting. She was incredible, talented and overlooked.
This is an absolute must read!

4⭐

Thank you to NetGalley, Getty Publishing and the author Ms. Brigitte Benkemoun for the opportunity to read this Advanced Readers Copy of "Finding Dora Maar". The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.

Like many others, I only knew of Dora Maar as Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’. When I saw Finding Dora Maar, I realised I’d never thought to learn more about the muse, so my motivation behind reading this book was to find out who Dora Maar was.

My knowledge of the visual arts is amateurish. I studied art as a GCSE and have maintained a general interest in visual arts over the years. However, I felt a little overwhelmed by the name dropping in this book, and a lot of the references went right over my head. No worries, Google is an excellent resource. But I just want to point that out for anyone else who doesn’t come from an arts background. You probably won’t share the same enthusiasm as the author when she discovers who Maar was in contact with and which circles she mingled in, although that enthusiasm encouraged me to Wiki-research most of the people she mentioned!

The book begins with a compelling start when Benkemoun purchases a Hermès diary on eBay as a gift for her husband, which turns out to have belonged to Maar. She uses the contacts listed in the diary to piece together a picture of Maar. The author had her detective cap on, and I was ready with my popcorn.

I appreciated Benkemoun’s desire to humanise Maar and portray her as something more than just Picasso’s mistress or muse, and of course she was more than that; she was her own person with her own thoughts, ambitions and passions. Maar struggled with her mental health, and Benkemoun does a fair job of detailing her struggles with depression, with cruel Picasso, with her career as a photographer and artist and with the loss of her identity. Maar was a complex and troubled woman.

Maar was also anti-Semitic and homophobic. Near the very start, Benkemoun writes about Maar selling her work to the gallery owner Marcel Fleiss under the condition that he swears he isn’t Jewish (he decided to lie by omission). Fleiss also told her he saw Mein Kampf on Maar’s bookcase. Despite this, Benkemoun spent months trying to get to know Maar. She lost some of her motivation around mid-way, but was keen to find a spark or something to help her grow attached to Maar. She admitted Maar was unlikeable. This struggle for motivation showed through in the writing; it became tedious and draggy. 

Benkemoun kept looking for reasons behind Maar’s bigoted views whether it was her mental health, her upbringing, her religion or something else. Then, near the end of the book, Benkemoun says she saw Maar’s copy of Mein Kampf for herself, with a picture of Hitler standing in front of the Eiffel Tower tucked away inside. That’s when she said she decided she didn’t want to understand what Maar was thinking anymore, and that she disgusted her. This threw me off because Fleiss told her about the book way back. She was told about the anti-Semitic comments Maar had made. Why did seeing the book and the picture of Hitler produce this reaction when she was aware of it being on the bookcase and of the anti-Semitic comments that came out of Maar’s own mouth? The author doesn’t provide a clear explanation for why Maar had become disgusting to her only at this point and not before. She says one of the things driving her forward was the question Dora elicits: ‘How does someone turn from being an anti-fascist into an anti-Semite?’ This struck me as naïve. Just because someone is against one awful thing does not mean they are against all the awful things. 

According to one of the concluding passages, there were many versions of Dora Maar, but the Maar who was anti-Semitic and homophobic appears to have materialised in her later years. However, this idea of her suddenly becoming a bigot didn’t make any sense to me, and the justifications for thinking so fell flat. Just because she had friends who were Jewish and friends who were homosexual in her earlier years doesn’t mean she wasn’t anti-Semitic or homophobic then. It’s possible she had her bigoted views but wan’t too vocal about them because it wouldn’t benefit her to speak them. The author didn’t want to reduce Maar to this horrible and bitter person, even though so many parts of this biography show that’s exactly who Maar was – unless she really liked you (maybe). I think it’s appropriate to end this with a quote from Maya Angelou: ‘When people show you who they are, believe them.’

When Brigitte Benkemoun bought an address book by chance on Ebay, she was amazed to find that it was Picasso's famous mistress Dora Maar's address book.  She decided to study this strange woman through her list of friends and acquantainces to find out more about her. And what friends she had! They included Jean Cocteau, Nicolas de Stael, Max Jacob and other glittering members of the Surrealists and Cubists. Benkemoun's account is written in a rather breathless manner, but it is engaging because she includes her own thoughts and struggles to understand Dora.

Picasso first wanted to know who she was when he saw her at a club, planting a knife into a table from higher and higher distances, with blood all over her hands. A talented young photographer and artist who always wore designer clothes, Dora should have had a brilliant career, but her relationship with Picasso, who treated her dreadfully, made her embittered and anguished, and mental illness began to plague her. She turned Catholic but that didn't seem to comfort her, and she also kept a copy of Mein Kampf even though she lived through the war, and knew of the horrors of the Nazi regime. Dora was interesting but difficult to like. I found this a pretty anguished, harrowing story. I felt that Benkemoun was somewhat anti-Catholic at times, which I found annoying.

I received this ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I have never before read a book like this; what a unique premise for a book and what stunning research went into its completion!  This was an exceptional book. Very well researched and just a well written book. An exceptional book on artists from the French avant garde. Amazing that someone could find such a treasure!

Brigitte Benkemoun finds the address book for muse and lover of Picasso, herself an artist with photography and paintings.
Dora seems like a complicated, fascinating women. To be surrounded by a lot of the famous painters, writers, poets of the hay day between 1930-1951. The address book likely written in 1951 is the starting point for Brigitte to delve into the people in her life. As an ardent lover of "modern" art, I loved this book. I have seen many paintings and works by the artists she had within her inner circle. Picasso seems like a really rough and intense person to be with and with all of his ex lovers, they remain scarred (of what I have read up till now).
Dora surely deserved to be seen as an artist in her on right, but alas what art becomes "famous' or "collectable' is often arbitrary.
A fascinating book read in two days. If you are an art lover, or are interested in the time period of the 30s-50s (the book goes up to the 90s), you will enjoy this.
I got this book as an ARC from NetGalley, with the English translation by Jody Gladding, so cannot comment on the original French version. But I love the persistance and dedication Brigitte showed this woman, and hopefully she will be remember as more than the "weeping woman'.

I found this such a compelling and engaging read, and a very unusual one. It all started when Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband bought a vintage notebook on eBay and when she started to look through it she realised it was an address book containing many names that she recognised. Some further detective work revealed that the notebook had belonged to Dora Maar and the names and addresses belonged to the great and the good of Parisian artistic and avant-garde circles – from Brassai to Andre Breton, Cocteau to Lacan. Benkemoun set out on a journey of discovery to track down the addresses and in this way explores Dora Maar's life and work through her friends and acquaintances. I found it an exhilarating journey, not least because Benkemoun actually met Maar in her older reclusive years so we get a glimpse of the real woman behind the notebook. Part memoir, part cultural history, part biography, part detective tale, this is essential reading for anyone interested in that era and in Dora Maar, Picasso  and their circle in particular.

Finding Dora Maar
An Artist, an Address Book, a Life
by Brigitte Benkemoun
Getty Publications
Arts & Photography. |. Biographies & Memoirs
Pub Date 19 May 2020
I am reviewing a copy of Finding Dora Maar through Getty Publications and Netgalley:
Finding Dora Maar merges biography, memoir and cultural history in one captivating book.
While searching for a replacement for his lost copy of Hermès Agenda Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When Brigitte opens it, the diary shows private notes dating back to 1951, as well as twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.
Brigitte comes to the realization that the book belonged to Dora Maar, Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman.” Dora Maar was a brilliant artist in her own right. The journal leads. to Benkemoun embarking on a two year long journey of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life.
Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating of Picasso’s former mistress, as well as a talented artist of her own right, Dora Maar.
Five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!

Finding Dora Maar: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life by Brigitte Benkemoun  was an interesting read. When the author's husband loses his beloved Hermès agenda, she searches online and buys a vintage diary on EBay. When it arrives, they discover that the previous owner's address book is still in it, with listings of such artists as Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, and Jacqueline Lamba, among others. This leads to the discovery that the previous owned was Dora Maar, best known today as the subject of Picasso's 1937 Weeping Woman.

Maar was a painter, photographer and poet and, like the friends listed in her address book, was an innovative radical artiste who inspired artists who followed, including Picasso himself. Benkemoun, through tracing the names in address book, traces the history of the surrealists and artists around Maar. Quite an interesting read.

For many decades Dora Mar was written off as just Picasso’s mistress- one of them- the weeping woman. This  Engaging book written by a tenacious biographer determined to track the reclusive artist down puts Maar back on her well deserved pedestal.

I knew so little about Picasso's mistress and model, Dora Maar. What could have been just tedious research was turned into a fascinating story combining memoir, history and mystery. Another fascinating woman has been released from the shadows of history.

I knew absolutely nothing about Dora Maar before going into this book, other than the fact she was an artist. At the end of this, I did really feel like I'd gotten a glimpse into the person she might have been. At times, this was very hard to read. Maar really doesn't come across as an easy person to like, but she also had a pretty tough life and it was sad to see the way she was treated by the people around her, even if you get the impression she probably would've responded in kind. All in all, this was a fascinating read.

Quite frankly astonished by how much I enjoyed this book. I thought I would like it for the subject matter. I knew to dormer and interested in her work, but knew very little of her life. This way of exploring it, through an address book she left behind, was absolutely charming, wide ranging, and just plain fun and informative. Thanks so much for the Chance to read it!

I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a disappointment. The author, Benkemoun, buys her partner a “new” vintage agenda. What she didn’t expect is to find a list with telephone numbers and names from the French Surrealist scene: Picasso, Braque, Balthus, Giaccometti, Leiris, Ponge, Staël…the list goes on. The agenda belonged to no other than Dora Maar, Picasso’s ex-mistress and muse. Forever remembered as The Weeping Woman, Maar was an artist of her own right and intimately knew the snobs and hip artists of Paris.

By jumping from name to name, Benkemoun recounts the history of the people on that list, as well as their connections to Maar, unravelling the life of a complicated, depressive, bitter, sad and racist woman.
As expected, the author includes the complex inter-personal webs of the people in Maar’s life and circle. What emerges is an unsurprising depiction of people that create – oftentimes – impactful art but people that are also full of themselves. People that conversed and changed art, who usually belonged to leftist circles and fought Nazis, but that were also oftentimes incredibly vain, self-centered and abusive. For anyone who knows Picasso, it comes to no surprise that his behavior towards Maar and other women was asshole-ish at best, abusive at worst. Almost every person in this book seems to enjoy actively hurting others for attention, infamy and pleasure. No doubt that many had positive aspects and could do good – some of Maar’s friends seem to have been good people who care for her and helped her the best they could – but it seems that cruelty was a sport to them. Cruelty and selfishness. If you like to read about the lives of some of the most well-known Surrealist artists and dive into gossip, this is the book for you.

Of course, the focus is on Maar and how she felt about her life. In some part, Benkemoun manages to humanize a person that has lost her own identity in society. Forever The Weeping Woman and Picasso’s former mistress, Maar was first and foremost a person of her own right. An artist that gave up her career as a photographer because Picasso couldn’t have an equal partner. After he broke up with her by making his new twenty-something mistress his official mistress, Maar seems to have fallen into a deep depressive episode. 
I can sympathize with a person that has lost so much to an abusive person and has to piece together a new identity after public humiliation and giving up much of herself for a man that never truly respected her.

What I cannot sympathize with is the fact that Maar was a fascist and anti-Semite. Benkemoun does everything in her power to minimize Maar’s political views, attributing her anti-Semitism to: mental illness; her Nazi father (he was a Croatian fascist); artistic provocation; a joke; her fundamentalist Catholicism; her frustration with not becoming a famous artist on her own merits.
Benkemoun thinks that because Maar used to be in leftist anti-fascist circles that she also must have been not-anti-Semite and that is ridiculous. It’s obvious that the author doesn’t know how hatred of minorities works and thinks, like many, that it starts with wanting to eradicate them and not, like it actually does, with “jabs” like: “I don’t want to work with Jews” or “Jews control the world” or “Those fucking homos”, etc. etc. All things Maar has said and thought, as proven by this book. Also, anti-Semitism is also present in leftist circles, albeit less prominent but there is also discrimination amongst those who supposedly fight discrimination. I mean, even withing the LGBQT community there are people that are racist or against trans rights, so maybe she shouldn’t see this as a zero-sum game.
It’s also highly likely that Maar was in those leftist circles because she was with Picasso and not because she actually believed in any of the politics. From all the evidence, it seems that she didn’t give a fuck about the Nazis and them killing Jews, she was only scared that she could be confused as one and be deported. That is all. And that is all in the book, laid out by Benkemoun, who still hesitates calling her anti-Semite until the very last page. And when she finally calls her an anti-Semite, she immediately explains her hatred as frustration. Unfounded frustration but nonetheless a result of “being scorned” by the art world that was ruled by Jewish people. This is conspiracy Nazi level stuff and it remains largely undiscussed.

There is no doubt that Maar suffered greatly because of Picasso but Maar was equally abusive to other people. Yes, I feel for her and understand that her adoration of Picasso – a repulsive person – made her suffer. Picasso messed her up big time. But Maar was also incredibly abusive, despotic, racist, homophobic, manipulative, self-aggrandizing and snobbish like pretty much anyone in her circle. Her mental illness and depression do not excuse her behavior. I can relate, as a depressive person myself and as someone that struggles to find their own career in a competitive field, to Maar’s suffering in regards to her mental health, lost identity and stagnating art but none of this is an excuse for her abhorrent behavior and views and Benkemoun wants to free Maar from her sins by being vague or giving her countless reasons for being an anti-Semite, homophobe, racist or abusive person. 

I appreciate the effort of trying to making Maar a person and showing her character, positive attributes and flaws, but Benkemoun trivializes and rationalizes too much of Maar’s views, to the point of white-washing her. Only a person with immense privilege and with no skin in the game can push the negative aspects of Maar aside and say that they love this person because she was brave and strong.
In essence, this book is about privilege – Maar’s, that of her circle, the men, the author, the translator. I found this book to be incredibly frustrating and disappointing because it does something I love – find a riddle and solve it with archival material and digging, digging, digging! – but turns it sour by being superficial and ultimately white-washes a person that held terrible views of marginalized people. The misogyny in this book is called out pretty consistently, but the rest? Racism? Anti-Semitism? Homophobia? Named but ultimately excused with the flimsiest of “arguments”.


If you want some gossip and drama in form of a quick and accessible read, then this is for you.

I received an advanced digital copy of this book from the author, Getty Publications and Netgalley.com. Thanks to all for the opportunity to read and review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. 

In Finding Dora Maar, the author happens upon an address book tucked into a vintage Hermes diary.  Through extensive research, she dis covers that it belonged to the legendary surrealist painter and photographer Dora Maar. 

After so long as being regulated to the position of Picasso's mistress and muse, his "Weeping Woman", here we see Dora Maar through her interactions with the most notable artists and thinkers of the Surrealist movement. We see her as a cantankerous old woman who humiliates a Jewish art dealer, an angry young woman, heartbroken and sad.

An awesome surrealist take on the biography style. The author takes entries at random, hopping through time and people.

5 out of 5 stars.   Highly recommended.