Plausible Portraits of James Lord

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.