Lucian Freud, Phoebe Hoban
Lucian Freud, Phoebe Hoban
3 Rating(s)
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Lucian Freud
Eyes Wide Open

Author: Phoebe Hoban

Series: Icons

Narrator: Phoebe Hoban

Unabridged: 4 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 04/15/2014


Synopsis

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.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.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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by M. on August 26, 2014

What should have been an amazing read, given the fascinating subject, turns out to be basically a straight reporting of the many lovers Freud had and the number of children he spawned, somewhat irresponsibly, though I doubt any of them, if they could, would argue their way back to their mother’s wom......more

Goodreads review by Moritz on November 14, 2020

This concise and engagingly written biography of Lucian Freud offers a good introduction to the artist and his legacy. Hoban does a great job in tracing Freud’s evolution as an artist through his paintings – from the illustrative, empathetically flat style of his early works (1940s through early 195......more

Goodreads review by Chris on November 29, 2024

This is worthwhile.......more

Goodreads review by Betty-Lou on May 22, 2022

Excellent, concise biography of Lucian Freud. Just what I was looking for.......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on April 27, 2014

Wow. I never respected the artist Lucian Freud nor his unsettling work. Now, at least, I understand how the man was driven by his deep-seated, personal, need to dominate - to command obedience even from the very colors going down onto the canvas. He mixed specific paint for every individual brush st......more


Quotes

“A first step toward a biographical understanding of a provocative, complex artist.” Kirkus Reviews“Biographer Hoban (Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art) returns with a lively, concise biography (part of Amazon’s Icon series) of realist painter Lucian Freud (1922-2011), in which he emerges as a vigorous philanderer, gambler, brawler, and social climber.” Publishers Weekly“Art biographer Hoban (Alice Neel, 2010) presents a highly effective, strobe-like brief life of British painter Lucian Freud…A strikingly incisive portrait of an unforgettable rapscallion and provocative artist.” ALA Booklist