All Categories
Product Description This volume, with more than 400 reproductions, will be the most comprehensive publication to date on Lucian Freud, covering a span of seventy years and including many works not previously reproduced. The result is a corpus of great works that reveal him to be the premier heir today of Rembrandt, Courbet, and Cézanne. The book includes not only Freud’s paintings but also his sketches, woodcuts, and powerful etchings. While the bulk of his paintings are female nudes, his cityscapes, plant studies, and interiors, executed in his distinctive muted palette and visible brushwork, are all included. Freud, who has lived in London ever since his family left Berlin in 1933 when he was ten, has achieved preeminence through his ruthless perception of the human form. His importance has long been recognized in England, but his present super-celebrity status dates from a retrospective at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C., in 1987. William Feaver, painter and for many years art critic for The Observer, provides a unique account of Freud’s preoccupations and achievement. Startling, moving, profoundly entertaining, the book lives up to Freud’s advice to students when getting them to paint self-portraits: “To try and make it the most revealing, telling, and believable object. Something really shameless, you know.” From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. This testament to the massive oeuvre of one of Europe's most celebrated painters begins with an illuminating biographical sketch by Feaver (former art critic for the Observer) that depicts Freud's journey from favorite son to mediocre student, reveling womanizer to husband and father. Readers looking for a window into Freud's remarkable method and vision will benefit from the extensive quotes in this section, as well as the four interviews provided. The paintings themselves, richly reproduced, are intense portraits featuring a dark conflict between stark realism and profound emotional pull; his figures, usually nude, capture the vacancy and impact of death in their alarmingly static expressions. Freud's self-taught skill and precision are evident on every page in his careful, heavy brushstrokes (he often cleaned the brush after each stroke) and representational precision. Coming into fruition in the era of Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, Freud emerged, amazingly, as a figurative painter in the most traditional sense: "Expressionism is a translation from what is in life," Freud said, "Expressionism is exaggerated." In light of the stunning work displayed here, his negative opinion of the genre is earned. A necessity for art scholars and an absolute pleasure for the novice, this gorgeous collection of Freud's discomforting work is perfectly fitting in scope and heft. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review “Once you become accustomed to the heftiness of the Rizzoli book, with its nearly 500 pages of high-quality paper, you can find great pleasure in the numerous illustrations and the breadth of vision it gives of the artist’s development, with nearly 40 pictures that have never before been illustrated in books on Freud.” ~ The Art Book “This latest effort will be useful as a sweeping visual appreciation of a painter of major importance.” ~ Choice Magazine About the Author William Feaver is a painter, critic, writer, and curator. He is the author of Freud’s previous exhibition catalogue, Lucian Freud (Tate, 2002). He has curated the following exhibitions: Lucian Freud (2002 Tate and tour), Freud (2005 Museo Correr, Venice), and Freud & Auerbach (2006 V&A). Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. "Perhaps the chief source of pleasure in the aspect of a nude," Sickert said, "is that it is in the nature of a gleam-a gleam of light and warmth and life." This sense of arrested and arresting illumination was what Freud now struggled to achieve. How was he to paint warm and weighty nakedne