William Feaver

Lucian Freud

Rizzoli, New York

2007   |  298 × 248mm   |  488pp

A Freudian Slipcase. In 1997 I designed the catalogue for a show of Freud's early work at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. As good luck would have it, this took place at the same time as his first exhibition with Acquavella in New York, and the mercurial Freud decided he preferred the modest Edinburgh publication to the slick American production. For the next ten years I designed all Freud's catalogues, including that for the 2002 Tate retrospective, and books on the artist published by Jonathan Cape and Rizzoli, the one shown here. The author, Bill Feaver, and I thought it essential to put one of Freud's nudes on the front cover, but the Rizzoli marketing people in New York were nervous. They thought that key booksellers like Barnes & Noble would be reluctant to display the book. I suggested modestly hiding the full frontal cover in a slipcase mainly showing those famous floorboards. I had the last laugh; the image was cropped in such a way as to show the model's breast on the spine of the slipcase and her bottom on the spine of the jacket.