Towards the end of 2008, Miquel Barcelo invited Michael Damiano, a 22 year-old North American student, to come and live in his studio in Paris. Throughout the following year, Michael got to know the painter very well indeed, spending afternoons with him in Paris, accompanying him on trips and speaking to those in his closest circle. This book, the result of this process of personal investigation, tells the story of the unique life of Barcelo, a portrait of a brilliant and contradictory man emerges, a man of enormous generosity and a large ego, with one side affectionate and other dangerous.