A first step toward a biographical understanding of a provocative, complex artist.
A breezy biography of the celebrated British painter.
Since Lucian Freud’s (1922–2011) place in the contemporary pantheon has long seemed secure, it’s surprising that this is the first biography of him—at least until readers get to the acknowledgments, which refer to Freud as “a notoriously difficult subject to write about” with “an extreme penchant for privacy” that “discouraged all biographers in his lifetime.” Since his death, his “immediate circle has remained for the most part closemouthed.” The result is this work that feels more like a primer than the definitive last word on his subject. As traced by Hoban (Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, 2010, etc.), his life is plainly as fascinating as his art and deeply interwoven within it. As the grandson of Sigmund Freud, and the father of at least 14 children, the “hyperactively heterosexual” artist was “fundamentally incapable of romantic fidelity,” and his scandals included sleeping with many of his models and painting his children in the nude (which seemed to be his major relationship with many of them). Yet his most important relationship was with fellow artist and inspiration Francis Bacon, whose “influence would ultimately push Freud’s painting in a pivotal new dimension, from flat and linear to fully fleshed out.” Yet as central as Bacon was to Freud’s life and art, Hoban never determines whether they had a sexual relationship (as many who know both assumed) or why the two men who shared such a “strong affinity” would ultimately have such a bitter falling out. Throughout, the author mixes whatever revelations she can glean from his personal life with paragraph descriptions of dozens of his paintings. He once remarked that he expected great art to “astonish, disturb, seduce and convince,” and he fulfilled all with art that often seemed more intimate to him than a sexual relationship yet that for viewers, could have “an aura of taxidermy.”
A first step toward a biographical understanding of a provocative, complex artist.Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-11459-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Amazon Publishing/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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