Staffan Ahrenberg, a Swedish collector of contemporary art, was familiar with Cahiers d'Art's lovingly designed art books, including a famous catalog of Picasso works annotated by Christian Zervos, from his father's library. One day when he was passing by the gallery in 2010, he ventured inside and asked two questions: "Who owns Cahiers d'Art?" and "Would he sell it?"

Cahiers had been languishing since its founder, Mr. Zervos, died in 1970. Mr. Ahrenberg, who bought the gallery and publishing rights in 2011, is now reissuing "Pablo Picasso," or as art world denizens call it, "the Zervos," the most prominent catalogue raisonne of Picasso's paintings and drawings. Comprising 33 volumes and more than 16,000 images, it was the result of a four-decade collaboration between Mr. Zervos and the artist. "Zervos served Picasso very well, and Picasso was very grateful," said John Richardson, the Picasso biographer.

The pre-order price will be $15,000 for the set; upon the work's release in November, it will climb to $20,000. But the price, Mr. Ahrenberg said, is "irrelevant" to his target audience: "You can't buy anything original by Picasso for less than $500,000, or maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, that's any good."

And, he says, the price is a relative bargain compared with vintage sets, which themselves are collector's items routinely selling for around $60,000 at auction and going for close to $200,000 in pristine condition.

There are many catalogs of Picasso's work, but art dealers tend to speak of the Zervos, published between 1932 and 1978, with reverence. "It's the go-to catalog for Picasso," said Larry Gagosian, whose gallery will be selling the book. "The sheer volume of works and the accuracy are remarkable."

"Some days Picasso painted four or five paintings - in one day - and that's all chronicled," he added. "The actual date is noted in the index. You get a sense of how he worked on a given day or week or period, how one style morphed into another."

A select group of publishers have long sought to turn books into high-end art objects. Next month, for example, Taschen is releasing a $9,000 two-volume edition of "Genesis," a book of photographs by Sebastiao Salgado, that weighs 130 pounds and stands nearly four feet tall. Each of 500 copies will be sold with a signed print and a custom stand designed by the architect Tadao Ando. Another 2,000 collectors' editions priced at $3,000 come with stands but no signed print.

Cahiers d'Art is aggressively marketing the Zervos. Sotheby's will also be involved in selling the catalog by singling out top international art collectors, especially anyone who has bought or sold a Picasso at auction.

The entire Zervos will be translated into English for the first time. And true to the original, all the images will be printed in black- and-white.

Whether Cahiers d'Art can make money is another question. By the time Mr. Ahrenberg acquired the business, it had not published anything new in decades, he said, and was deriving much of its revenue from reconstituting and selling full sets of the Picasso catalog.

The New York Times

(China Daily 06/30/2013 page12)