Bernard Buffet The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist

As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) Bernard Buffet was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a demoralized country. While still in his twenties he had a Rolls Royce, a chateau, an island, high society at his feet and a glittering future ahead. Yet his extraordinary fall from grace was engineered by the very establishment that created him. Once hailed as a genius he was later shunned as a joke. Today, almost 70 years after he first shot to fame as a 20 year old prodigy hailed as a successor to Picasso, critical opinion of his work remains sharply divided. His remarkable story is played out against the backdrop of the beau monde of the 1950s and 1960s in locations as diverse as St. Tropez, Tokyo, Paris, Dallas, St. Petersburg and New York. With the cooperation of the Buffet estate, this is the first in-depth biography of the artist to be published in English, and Foulkes has secured unique interviews and access to the Buffet legacy.

Nicholas Foulkes is the author of Bals: Legendary Costume Balls of the Twentieth Century and Patek Philippe. He is a columnist for Country Life; a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and luxury editor of British GQ. He is the founding editor of 'Vanity Fair on Art' and in 2009 he was appointed to the board of the Norman Mailer Center.