Lucian Freud, Adept Portraiture Artist, Dies at 88

[Hissyspit]

Source: New York Times

Lucian Freud, Adept Portraiture Artist, Dies at 88
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: July 21, 2011

Lucian Freud, whose stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art, died on Wednesday night at his home in London. He was 88.

He died following a brief illness, said William Acquavella of Acquavella Galleries, Mr. Freud’s dealer.

Mr. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud and a brother of the British television personality Clement Freud, was already an important figure in the small London art world when, in the immediate postwar years, he embarked on a series of portraits that established him as a potent new voice in figurative art.

In paintings like “Girl With Roses” (1947-48) and “Girl With a White Dog” (1951-52), he put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordinary people — many of them his friends and intimates — stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist’s ruthless inspection.

Read more: bit.ly/oNAIC5

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. He did very strange paintings.

[nolabear]

2. I truly admired his work.

He didn't do pretty. He didn't do idealized. One of his best models was a woman who is very fat, and he did nudes of her that are just...human. (Btw I saw an interview with her once and she is a delight.) As a student of his grandpapa's work, I think his own showed real curiosity and wonder, and not a little courage.

[leveymg]

3. He managed to consistently make his subjects even less attractive than they are in real life:

[Hissyspit]

4. I love that painting.

He was after truth. Attractiveness is subjective.

[leveymg]

6. Truth is in the eye of the beholder

To paraphrase a Supreme Court Justice, I can't define attractiveness, but I know it when I see it.

Truth is much more difficult to capture, and I'm not sure I see it in Freud's work. But, I am hard on my own painting, as well.

I think Bacon got closer to truth, and was more skilled, yet was even less of a romantic.

[glinda]

10. I think they both showed truth but in different ways with different outcomes.

[frazzled]

5. Fire the headline writer at the NYT

"adept portraiture artist"?

Sounds like someone on the sidewalk at the local art fair. C'mon, Lucian Freud was a major artist of his generation. (I prefer Francis Bacon, but Freud was more than merely an "adept portraiture artist").

[leveymg]

7. It's not a coincidence that both of us mentioned Bacon.

I'll agree that Freud was a major artist - I just don't think he was an excellent painter.

Like his self-portraits the most. Whatever truth is, this comes closest to my eye.

[Native]

12. Seriously!

[Hissyspit]

14. LOL Agreed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. And, just to tie things in to other news, the uncles of Matthew Freud - Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law

A very powerful PR guru, married to Elisabeth Freud.

Lucian and Clement wouldn't talk to each other for many decades:

Now that Sir Clement has passed away the question arises as to whether Lucian will bury the hatchet and attend his funeral, to be held next week. The brothers have not been on speaking terms for decades and tellingly Lucian did not join in the glowing tributes to his brother yesterday.

The pair, grandchildren of Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst, were said to have originally fallen out over a trivial affair: which of them was the rightful winner of a boyhood race.

One version of the story has Clement leading the race through a public park, only for Lucian to call out: "Stop, thief!" A passer-by apprehended Clement, and Lucian sprinted to the finish line. The location has been variously placed as Vienna, Pimlico and Hyde Park.

A rapprochement seems unlikely, however. Last year, when asked if they would ever be friends, Lucian said: "Why on Earth would I want to speak to him or see him again? I was offered a knighthood but turned it down. My younger brother has one of those. That's all that needs to be said on the matter."

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,2191,will-lucian-freud-attend-clements-funeral,82539

[glinda]

11. Lucian was crabby. Met him once at an opening. He kept staring at me until someone brought

me over to speak with him. I was told that I most likely reminded him of his models, all skinny and gaunt. But then I was an art student who ate cereal to afford school.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Link needs fixing - the bit.ly one goes to a 'Inside News Corp's US hacking scandal' story

[Hissyspit]

13. Too late. Here is correct one:

For some reason my phone wouldn't copy the correct one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/arts/lucian-freud-adept-portraiture-artist-dies-at-88.html