Synopses & Reviews
Phoebe Hoban, author of definitive biographies of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alice Neel, now turns her attention to Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund and one of the greatest painters England has produced.
Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open is the first biography to assess Freud's work and life, showing how the two converge.
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In Hoban's dramatic and fast-paced narrative, we follow Freud from his birthplace in Berlin to London, where he fled with his family in the 1930s, and then to Paris, where he mixed with Picasso and Giacometti. He led a dissolute life in Soho after the war, gambling and womanizing with fierce energy. He painted his wives nude, his children nude, himself nude. He married twice, had an uncountable number of children, and kept working through it all, painting everyone from close friend and rival Francis Bacon to Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. He sometimes spent years on a single painting, which could require hundreds of hours of sittings. However various his subjects, his intent was always the same: to find and reveal the character hidden within by means of his intense visual imagination.
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Along with its startling biographical revelations, the great thrill of Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open is the way Hoban deconstructs the art itself - its influences, models, and technique - to show how Freud reproduced reality on the canvas while breaking down the illusion that what we see is real.
Synopsis
Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was the Jimi Hendrix of the art world: in less than a decade he went from being a teenage graffiti writer to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. Phoebe Hoban's Basquiat, the first biography of this charismatic figure, charts the trajectory from the artist's troubled childhood to his volatile passage through the white art world of dealers and nouveau-riche collectors, chronicling the meteoric success and overnight burnout that made him an instant art-world myth.
As much the portrait of an era as the portrait of an artist, Basquiat is an incisive expose of the eighties art market that paints a vivid picture of the rise and fall of the graffiti movement, the East Village art scene, and the out-of-control auction houses. Ten years after the artist's death, Basquiat resurrects both the painter and his time.
Synopsis
A riveting life of the brilliant British artist, one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century.
About the Author
Phoebe Hoban has written about culture and the arts for Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Times. She has written regularly for both New York magazine and the New York Times. She lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
1.and#160;The Art of Lookingand#8195;and#8195;1
2.and#160;Learning to Be Lucianand#8195;and#8195;13
3.and#160;Women and Musesand#8195;and#8195;24
4.and#160;London Daysand#8195;and#8195;32
5.and#160;Beautiful Peopleand#8195;and#8195;45
6.and#160;Letting Goand#8195;and#8195;57
7.and#160;Carnal Knowledgeand#8195;and#8195;70
8.and#160;Channeling Courbetand#8195;and#8195;83
9.and#160;Intimations of Mortalityand#8195;and#8195;89
10.and#160;Bypassing Decorumand#8195;and#8195;95
11.and#160;New Viewsand#8195;and#8195;106
12.and#160;The Way of All Fleshand#8195;and#8195;112
13.and#160;Painting against Timeand#8195;and#8195;128
14.and#160;Not Going Gentlyand#8195;and#8195;135
15.and#160;Leaving the Studioand#8195;and#8195;144
Acknowledgementsand#8195;and#8195;153
Bibliographyand#8195;and#8195;155