Richard Calvocoressi’s prologue to this well-researched biography states that if Douglas Cooper and Roland Penrose had been able to “bury their differences, work together, and combine their superlative holdings… London might have become, after the Second World War, the most important centre for early modernist art in the world.” The problem was Cooper, and no book could be titled better.
There’s a One-Eyed Yellow Monster [1]
Entering the art world as a dealer in the 1930s, this early commercial background never left Cooper. He financially backed the Mayor Gallery and played a key role in its exhibitions. At the time, it was the most avant-garde gallery in Britain, hosting the first UK shows of the work of Max Ernst, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró, among others. Cooper also built a superb personal collection of early Cubist art, taking advantage of the depressed economic conditions of the 1930s and his inherited wealth. He was, however, strong-willed, aggressively competitive, ambitious with commercial traits, resistant to direction, and could and did what he wanted. Still, he was capable of applying himself if he so desired. His focus on Cubism may have been influenced by Kahnweiler’s guidance. He loathed British Art, except for Graham Sutherland, with whom he did eventually fall out.
During World War II, he worked for RAF Intelligence, where he was posted to Cairo. There he was court-martialled for indecency, something he buried deep, never even telling his partner of 12 years after the war, John Richardson. Getting off on a technicality, Cooper was then posted to Malta, where he repeated the offence. He then became a Monuments Man, specialising in Switzerland, where, it is indicated, he may have profited from looted art.
Cooper’s writing indicates he could explain complex ideas in simple and clear ways, showing an apparently genuine concern to “open his readers’ eyes to unfamiliar forms of modern art”. This, along with his Cubist collection, meant that institutions were keen to borrow from him. What could go wrong? It was his personality. No doubt he could also be persuasive – and pushy. However, this book reveals little of that side of him, while there are multiple references to his appalling behaviour. Keen to curate exhibitions he lent to and be involved in (control?) their catalogues, he was desirous of a position at Tate. Lacking academic qualifications, this was out. In his youth, he had attended three universities but had not obtained any academic qualifications, failures that would haunt his desire to be taken seriously as an art historian at the highest academic levels. He had no interest in rational discussion; one agreed with him or did not; there was nothing to discuss, because he was always right. He exaggerated his war decorations and was not above exaggerating his role in matters artistic if it gave him a more central role.
In a curriculum vitae written for Benedict Nicholson, of the Burlington Magazine, Cooper himself listed his hobbies as “abasement of Tate gallery, humiliation of Sir J. Rothstein, crushing of ICA.” That he could be a thorn is an understatement. Such was his harassment of Rothenstein, Tate’s director, that during a public opening of a Diaghilev show, Cooper taunted Rothenstein behind his back, which led to the director punching him in the face. This was a major breach of protocol in the mid-1950s, and Rothenstein thought his lapse of self-control would end his career. But he underestimated how unpopular Cooper had made himself, and so Rothenstein survived. There followed further loud and abusive public outbursts from Cooper, one of which occurred in Tate’s restaurant, leading Tate and the Arts Council to refuse to work with him for 20 years.
Did he learn? Of course not! If one’s driving style is a feature of one’s personality, then multiple car accidents, including one that scarred his face and cost him the sight in one of his eyes, are indicative of his character. Decades later, there were still reports of his terrifying driving. Yet he could be charming and funny. He was friends with Braque, Léger, and, as mentioned in the title of the book, Picasso. Sadly, this book does not delve into what Picasso thought of him.
Despite being the author of some important books on Cubism, Cooper’s reputation has slipped somewhat since his death, if not significantly during his lifetime. Helped downhill by Richardson, whose memoir of their time in Provence was not fact-checked. (Richardson made a career from the introductions he gained from Cooper.) Cooper’s heir, Billy McCarty, sold his collection piecemeal and “diluted” his archive before it went to the Getty.
This biography is a much-needed, well-informed, and amusing account of a man who championed early modernist painting while simultaneously shooting himself in the foot.
[1] With apologies to J. Milton Hayes
Irascible: The Combative Life of Douglas Cooper, Collector and Friend of Picasso, Adrian Clark & Richard Calvocoressi, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2025.
Words: Dr. Clare Finn