Translate

Jul 21, 2011

Lucian Freud's perverse depictions of magnificent muck

 

A culture destroyer is dead but his "art" still lingers.
 
 
 

Lucian Freud's perverse depictions of magnificent muck

His painting's realism is governed by artifice - and his public persona was just as much a theatrical construction

A frightening authority … Freud in 2009.
A frightening authority … Freud in 2009. Photograph: Nick Harvey/WireImage

Raddled and old, a self-possessed, semi-naked fool in ridiculous shoes, Lucian Freud painted himself old and mad, looming in that awful room in west London where he spent day after day, decade after decade, scrutinising the horrible walls, the thin light as it fell on his subjects, those piles of soiled rags that he used to wipe off his canvases and clean his brushes.

He was in touch with his mortality. The paint he used was a magnificent muck, and with it he rendered ageing flesh, an Irishman's neck, a dog's fur, a baby's puddingy stare. He paid as much attention to the floorboards or the tangle of buddleia in the yard below as he would to a woman's belly, Leigh Bowery's feminine bulk, Bruce Bernard's stoic drunkard's poise, Lord Goodman's vanity, Sue the Benefits Supervisor's affected boredom.

He was interested in presence, and not only human presence: a lightbulb's glare, a dog's leg, a horse's arse, a frayed bit of carpet. The language with which he described people and things, animals and lovers, atmosphere and futility, was a frightening construction. I believe he shared more with his psychoanalyst grandfather than he liked to admit.

At the heart of his work is the confrontation between himself and others, himself andpainting. His painting's realism is all artifice. They are perverse in their complications, their studied theatricality. His art was in its way as mannered as Francis Bacon's (with whom he had a terrible and irrevocable falling-out), and his public persona was just as much a construction.

Freud liked to appear dangerous and unknowable, to men at least. He could seduce and threaten. Next to him David Hockney or Howard Hodgkin are artistic pygmies. Freud worked at being great. His art has authority, even though he seemed forever stuck in a postwar London of peeling stucco and disappointed lives. He would stare at people in restaurants, turn up at a young woman's flat with a live eel in his bag, spread rumours about himself and call his lawyers at an unintentioned slight. I wish I'd known him better.





+++



Fun stuff to read, tell and watch:

Now FREE to watch all 91 minutes: "Defamation," from Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/3rvhdvc

Some of His Best Friends Are Jewish: The Saga of a Holocaust Revisionist By Nathaniel Popper. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3v6m88c

...an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" allegedly defamed Israel. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pltqg2

"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Mike Santomauro. *Anthony Lawson's Holocaust Video "were the Germans so stupid"... Link: http://tinyurl.com/44nsrco

An anti-Semite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an anti-Semite.--Mike Santomauro. Link: http://tinyurl.com/42z9p8o

Start reading DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST in under a minute: http://tinyurl.com/3f8h874

Peace.

Mike Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367




__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___

No comments: