We biographers are a merciless lot. We ask anything, however indiscreet, of anyone who knew our subject; we track down any scrap of paper that might bring us closer to the poor soul whose secrets we want to unearth.
It was 2011 when I asked Sir Nicholas Serota, director of London’s Tate museum, who was left among the great artists of the 20th century about whom there was not yet a biography. I had devoted almost a decade each to Balthus and Le Corbusier, doing my utmost to get to the truth behind the rumors and myths. My only requisite of my subjects was that they had to be geniuses and completely original.
