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Freud at Work: Lucian Freud in Conversation with Sebastian Smee

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If you are an admirer of Lucian Freud's work, this book should definitely have place in your library. It essentially comprises of 3 parts, opening with a very frank and insightful interview with Freud by Sebastian Smee. Followed by two collections of colour and b&w photographs by Bruce Bernard and David Dawson. They cover all aspects of Freud in the studio - photos of Freud larking around as a Henry Moore sculpture, works in progress (often including the model), finished paintings, his studio, his dogs, horses, foxcub, etching plates and resulting prints, series of WIP paintings showing the stages involved in their creation. Over 120 photos in all, with the vast majority being in colour. Lavishly illustrated.

Smee, Bernard, and Dawson all had/have a close association with Freud and for me that's what makes this book so special. Throughout, Freud is just going about his business which is captured wonderfully by the photos. Bernard wanted to take carefully considered photos but Freud was having none of that, to the point of literally doing headstands. Bernard died in 2000, around the time that Freud was working on his Cezanne piece. Dawson picks up the plot from there, with photo's through to 2006.

For anyone interested in Freud's painting process, either out of curiosity or as an artist, the photo's provide a wealth of information. The adage "A picture is worth a 1000 words" could not be more apt. The Work in Progress photos range from the raw drawing on canvas through to finished pieces. A number of WIP photos also include the model, allowing for comparison between the flesh and the oil. Etching plates and the resulting prints are also shown.

Smee's interview reads like a couple of guys chatting over a pint down the pub. Over his career (and long may it continue!) Freud has met and hung out with numerous famous figures - Picasso, Giacometti, Bacon, Hirst, Auerbach, Bergmann, Balthus, Bowery, Queen Elizabeth II, even gambling with the notorious Kray Twins (1950/60 gangsters from London's east end). The interview is liberally populated with wonderful anecdotes. Freud also talks about the painters through history that he admires - Cezanne, Matisse, Corot, Chardin, Toulouse-Latrec and why. He touches upon living in London and anti-semitism, what led him to paint pictures of his mother, his grandfather Sigmund Freud, being sat at the bar and finding out that someone else was impersonating him - was he upset? Not really, he ended up painting the man's portrait.

For someone who is reknowned for his privacy this book is exceptional. I'm sure Freud had a huge say in how the book would look and its contents. His pride in a job well done is most evident.

If Freud is on your artistic radar, even as the merest blip, then do yourself a favour and own this book. Essential. 10 stars!

If the so-called School of London is your thing, here is a unique opportunity to watch the grand master at work. Not as good as a video, as possible with Auerbach and Bacon, but you take what you can get with the famously reclusive Freud, who clearly relishes enhancing his own reputation for eccentricity. (Remember the Snowdon photo of a wild-eyed Freud in his youth standing in front of his vintage Rolls Royce while wearing work clothes, like a scene right out of the 'sixties film Blow Up?)

Here we see the work of two photographers, both old friends, who were allowed to capture Freud at work over more than 20 years, as he painted single- and multiple-subject portraits of widely varying sizes, with subjects ranging from The Queen to Leigh Bowery. Most interestingly, this format allows us to see a large number of his paintings at various stages of completion, thus showing his process in a reasonable amount of detail.

Start with a sketch by Cezanne and adapt it to two models, then add a third, to make a contemporary painting. An earlier work starts with a nude model perched somewhat precariously in the cubbyhole high up on the wall. Her portrait on the easel below reveals just how brutal Freud can be in portraying the figure. When we saw the painting at Acquavella Gallery, we wondered if he actually had the model positioned in a nook in the wall. Now we know.

We see how the oil portraits of subjects such as Lord Fellowes and David Hockney start with oil sketches and go through development to the finished painting. The talented young British artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg, whose portraits of John Mortimer and Lords Sainsbury and Carrington are already in the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, is one of several artists who paint in a style very similar to Freud's, but close-ups of Freud's smaller portraits show the particuarly intensive reworking which make his work unique. He lays on paint heavily like Auerbach or Kossoff but with his own style, which, in the end, is inimitable.

Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles in full dress uniform makes a glamorous subject. We also see Freud painting a horse and his dog Pluto, and his latest young female admirer. We also see Freud developing the plates for his masterful etchings, some of the best work being done in that medium today.

A 30-page interview by David Dawson and Sebastian Smee is interspersed with the late Bruce Bernard's color photographs and David Dawson provides over 100 additional color photographs of the painter at work. It seems that there is a new monograph on Freud every eighteen months or so; this is one of the few works which focuses on his process.

Lucian Freud seems to gain in importance as a painter and as provocateur with every exhibition (or even frequent monograph) that appears - an d for good reason. Freud continues the tradition of figure painting, but clearly in his own language. His canvases are dense with detail of both body surface and psychic message. His tendency to find rather physically grotesque models (such as Leigh Bowery) and then paint canvas after canvas of those models, each work revealing even more bizarre statements about the sitter, has made him one of the most interesting painters of our day - and the gentleman is in his eighties!

Infamously reclusive, Freud paints everyday, producing huge canvases and diptychs/triptychs with what appears to be the greatest of ease. But this very fine book allows us to see the artist's struggle with the creative muse by admitting us into the studio, courtesy of interviewers David Dawson and Sebastian Smee and photographers Dawson and Bruce Bernard, a friend and admirer now gone who captured some of the more sophisticated views of the artist at easel and photographic images of the models along side the painted version from Freud's hands, imagination and talent.

Even for those who have collected museum catalogs and other monographs of the work of Lucian Freud these richly reproduced color photographs of Freud's paintings, given the new vantage of moving from the museum wall into the studio of origination with the additional images of the painter at work, constitute a superior art monograph of a current genius. The book is a conversation with a living genius, a painter who is far more interested in the paint and brush than he is with the observer - until now. Highly recommended for art collectors, educators, art students, and for those who remain fascinated with the human figure. Grady Harp, April 07

The value of this book, in my opinion, is the interview at the beginning. It gives real insight into Freud the artist in his own words. I haven't read other interviews with him so I don't know how redundant the interview is of past profiles. As for the photos, though, which are 99% of the book, they give no insight into Freud's working methods, they mostly show him goofing around the studio and have shots of his models and paintings. Thus, if you can get this cheap (i.e under $30) I recommend it for the interview but that info may be elsewhere (online?). The photos are not, IMHO, worth the price of the book, currently around $100 used.

This should be in any representative and figurative painters' library! Or any artists' library. Powerful and wonderful painter! It's great to see Freud work in progress!

This book pulls together mainly colour photographs taken in the artist's studio by two observers, one a very long-term friend of Freud's, the other an assistant and a model over many years. The photos do not, as the cover image and introduction suggest, show the artist in furious blurred motion attacking the canvas. The selection of photos mainly show the artist scumbling in paint before posed models; canvases midway towards completion; and completed canvases.

The book is perhaps most interesting to other working artists, for the glimpses provided of Freud's studio set-up and working methods. The photos show that this wealthiest of artists keeps a sparse and shabby studio, with plain undecorated wooden walls and a minimum of props for recumbent models (a tatty couch, ancient cot mattress, worn armchairs and a plain set of steps). A few sections of wall are smeared with surplus paint, while piles of discarded wiped rags litter a paint-flicked wooden floor. Light control seems to be the essential ingredient to this controlled environment, with curtains and shutters across the windows darkening the perimeter of the studio, while a sturdy central skylight highlights the day's sitter and the wet canvas resting in the centre of the room on a lightly titled easel.

The photos show the staged emergence of artworks on white primed canvas, including changes in compositions as the paintings evolve (mainly these involve shuffles of background elements). Each photo has a page to itself. But this photographic journal is a little weaker for leaving most photos uncaptioned, telling us little about dates, models or other germane background to each image. Some photos are ordered in useful little chronologic runs, but others seem poorly selected, including some out-of-focus snaps.

The book is preceded by an interesting interview with art critic Sebastian Smee, which, curiously, bears little relationship to the two collections of photographs. Freud is mostly prompted into regaling Smee with snippets from his life story and memories of his friendships with some of the characters and rogues around the British art scene in the late 20th century. The ancient workaholic sheds a little light on his techniques. He declares his concern to avoid repeating himself, perhaps explaining the impulsive and energetic look of his brushwork. Freud makes plain his aversion for being constrained by his drawings, at one point abandoning under-drawings ("I would make forms from the urgency of the paint, rather than having ready made forms"), although Smee points out he has lapsed back into the discipline of sketching outlines on canvas.

While this publication feels like two books in one (interview book, then photograph album), all contributors have achieved some intimacy with Freud and extracted from him some candour about his creative process. This is a quirky book, but an essential collectible for anyone who wants a definitive set of books on Lucien Freud. This is an abridged version of my review from ArtBookNews at Blospot.

magnificent view on the painter as painter.