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 itselfand#8212;its influences, models, and techniqueand#8212;to show how Freud reproduced reality on the canvas while breaking down the illusion that what we see is real.
Synopsis
A riveting life of the brilliant British artist, one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century.
Synopsis
Phoebe Hoban, author of authoritative biographies of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alice Neel, now turns her attention to Lucian Freud (1922-2011), grandson of Sigmund and one of the greatest painters England has produced.
Hoban follows Freud from his birthplace in Berlin to London (where he moved as a boy in the 1930s) and shows him with Picasso and Giacometti during a brief sojourn in Paris in his twenties. She illuminates how he developed his mature style, which produced meticulously detailed images that include portraits of his famously beautiful first two wives and his artist friends (among them the painter Francis Bacon) as well as Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth II.
Freud worked tirelessly in his studio and spent as long as several years on a single painting, which could require hundreds of hours of sittings. His insightful portraits went beyond exteriors to reveal the subjects inner lives. Lucian Freud will reveal how this stunning talent was developed, supported, and wielded.
Synopsis
A cinematic and biographical assessment of the twentieth century's greatest filmmaker, by one of our most versatile critics.
Synopsis
Part of James Atlas’ Icons series, a filmic and biographical assessment of the twentieth century’s greatest filmmaker, by one of our most versatile critics. Alfred Hitchcock presides over the history of film with a magisterial authority expressed in the silhouette that has made him recognizable around the world. No director has produced a more familiar body of work. From North by Northwest to Rear Window, The Birds to Psycho, his films are classics of the genre. In 2012, Vertigo was named the greatest film of all time by the British Film Institute.
Michael Wood, one of our most versatile critics, has given us a compact study of Hitchcock that deftly melds biography and criticism. He gives us the life, from a provincial suburb of London to the most posh precincts of Los Angeles, and a fabled career that began as a designer of title cards in the silent film era. He reads the films as visual texts, studying their plots to tease out their sometimes elusive meaning. And he reminds us that what we see is a Hitchcock film isn’t always what we think we see, that menace and murder lurk just beneath the surface. Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much is a virtuoso performance by a critic who knows everything.
Synopsis
Widely regarded as the greatest filmmaker of the twentieth century, Alfred Hitchcock had a gift for creating suspense and a shrewd knowledge of human psychology. His film career, spanning more than half a century, is studded with classics from The 39 Steps to Psycho, North by Northwest to Vertigo (which in 2012 unseated Citizen Kane as the best movie of all time according to Sight and Sound). A master of intricate storytelling, Hitchcock was one of the first directors whose films belonged to both popular culture and high art. By the end of his life, he had gone from being the overweight son of a greengrocer in a London suburb to Hollywood’s reigning director, whose cameo roles in his own films were one of their most anticipated features, and whose profile was recognized by millions (thanks to the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents).
Michael Wood describes this journey with the wit and erudition that are the trademarks of his work, showcasing his singular ability to detect hidden patterns within apparently disparate forms. Whether he is writing about Henry James or Hollywood in the 1920s, he is alert to the fundamental truth lurking behind the stated meaning. In Hitchcock, Wood has found his ideal subject—an artist for whom explicit statement was anathema, who made conventional plot a hiding place rather than a source of revelation.
About the Author
MICHAEL WOOD is one of our most versatile critics, conversant with both modern literature and film. A graduate of Cambridge University, he spent most of his career at Princeton, where he is a professor emeritus of comparative literature. Among his many works are The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction, Children of Science: On Contemporary Fiction, and America in the Movies, a survey of Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s.
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