Lucian freud biography book

I have to start by saying that William Feaver clearly had a long and interesting relationship with Lucian Freud, but this second volume of the biography is clearly more about FW than LF. Feaver never misses an opportunity to insert himself into the story, to express his personal (and not necessarily widely held) opinions about other artists, malign the painter Francis Bacon and secure for posterity how indispensable he was to Freud from the 1970s up to the end.

I reviewed volume one some months back. I conceded a star (gave four rather than three) just because of the quantity of information in the book. Not doing that this tine. The fact is that Feaver is not an accomplished writer when it comes to projects of this scale. Everything that irritated me in volume one was more irritating in volume two. Especially as Feaver as author exudes all the charm of a name-dropper trying to hit on one at some social event.

Feaver continues to simply toss long passages from Freud's letters, notes and recordings into the narrative as though Freud's memories and opinions are either correct or insightful. They are frequently neither. Feaver's style makes reading a taxing process because it is easy to lose track of who is speaking.

Feaver also periodically reminds the viewer that this is supposed to be a book about the art and not a book about Freud personally. Uh-huh. Right. And he inserts queries from Nick Serota, then Director of the Tate, and various gallerists and friends, about "how the book is coming along." Lest the reader forget that the book referenced is the one the reader is holding and, my, aren't we grateful to WF for such a gift.

On that note, Feaver constantly refers to lovers, ex-lovers, children (acknowledged and not) and grandchildren (acknowledged and not) but--presumably honoring Freud's demand that the book not be "personal"--doesn't provide an appendix or diagram that would provide a timeline and context for these names. Even Wikipedia recognizes the complexity in the partial list of offspring it provides: fourteen known, perhaps as many as forty all told. At an English wedding I attended back in the 1970s, the brother of the bride gave this toast: "I wish to the couple in their life together the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the children of the Tribes of Israel. It seems like Freud gave the Tribes of Israel a run for their money.

But my point is, the more names there are and the more relevant they are to the matter under discussion (Freud's daily life, the way he perceives people and sitters, and his art) the more important that the reader be able to get a grip on who they are, how old they are and how their mothers fit into the picture (pun intended). No, Freud wouldn't have wanted such a list in the book but he was dead ten years by the time it was published. Not only should Feaver have overlooked that stricture, his publisher Knopf should have thrown a few bucks to an indexer or graphic designer to put one together.

Another thing Knopf should have done was spend a little time identifying illustrations. Two small sections of color plates are nice, but there is nothing in the text that alerts the reader to those plates or to the few black-and-white figures elsewhere. Feaver goes on endlessly about a number of paintings not reproduced in the book and that is just annoying. Yes, I keep my cell phone handy so I can keep looking up works under discussion, but I don't think access to the Internet should be a prerequisite for grasping the content of a printed book.

Two books that do a really splendid job connecting the text with illustrations offer a comparison. One is "Francis Bacon" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, also published in 2021. Mary Beards's "The Twelve Caesars," also from 2021, is simply exemplary in terms of design. All of these books are art books and art is about things visual. Yes I know that getting permissions is a nuisance and can be inconvenient, but, hey, that's not the reader's fault.

The copyediting, moreover is sloppy. One double spread of photographs, one of which prominently features Feaver in a white shirt, omits identification of Richard Calvocoressi, then director of the Scottish National Museum and an art historian and museum professional of note. And some of those kids in the picture with Feaver belong to Calvocoressi.

Is the book useful? Yes. It has a tremendous amount of information in it, for the reader committed to developing an inclusive sense of Lucian Freud and his art. I will probably put it on my ongoing list of recommendations I might make to students and those interested in art. But it is also problematic for the way it skews understanding of Freud's peers, the art world of the period, especially the British art world, and offers a rag-rug of anecdotes when a sturdier weaving of facts is needed.

I emerged from the reading of "The Lives of Lucian Freud, Fame, 1968-2011" with, I think, less liking for Freud's art although certainly a more complete understanding of it. The unlikability of the painter is, moreover, secured more firmly in my mind.

And as for William Feaver? The circles we run in would never overlap--and I can only be grateful for that.