The Lives of Lucian Freud: FAME 1968 - 2011
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, MAIL ON SUNDAY, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR
THE SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
'A dazzling tour de force' THE TIMES
'Does justice to Freud's pitiless genius as an artist' DAILY MAIL
'You can hear Freud's voice on the page' OBSERVER
'Mesmerising … the ideal companion to Freud's work' GUARDIAN
William Feaver, Lucian Freud's collaborator, curator and close friend, knew the unknowable artist better than most. Over many years, Freud narrated to him the story of his life, 'our novel'.
Fame follows Freud at the height of his powers, painting the most iconic works of his career in a constant and dissatisfied pursuit of perfection, just outrunning his gambling debts and tailor's bills. Whether tattooing swallows at the base of Kate Moss's back or exacting a strange and horrible revenge on Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger, Freud's adventures were always perfectly characteristic. An enfant terrible till the end, even as he was commissioned to paint the Queen and attended his own retrospectives, what emerges is an artist wilfully oblivious to the glitter of the world around – and focussed instead on painting first and last.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art, debauchery, nightlife, and lowlifes fill out this rollicking biography of the celebrated British painter. Art critic and curator Feaver (Frank Auerbach) follows Lucian Freud (1922 2011), grandson of psychologist Sigmund Freud, through his rise to the top of Britain's art scene, where his realist portraits thrummed with tension and suspicion, perhaps because of the marathon sittings his models endured or the pitiless depictions of flesh in his paintings. Feaver has much to say about the art "Here are individual fingernails and individual hairs, some with split ends," he writes of the landmark Girl with Roses, "as fully realized as the golden tresses of a D rer" but more about Freud's daily picaresque: the relentless womanizing (he fathered 12 illegitimate children), the studied eccentricities (he carpeted his studio with broken glass), the gambling addiction that saddled him with debts to gangsters, and the swirl of colorful acquaintances, from nobility to famous artists to petty criminals, all of whom he painted. Feaver heavily quotes from his interviews with Freud, and the artist's chatty, insouciant voice "I said, I'm going to pay you when I've got the money and if you kill me you won't get the money,' an argument that impressed them" suffuses the book. The result is a riotously entertaining narrative that immerses readers in Freud's beguiling sensibility. Photos.
