Thinking about Freud (not that one)
A short review of Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
Today is going to be a shorter letter. Or review actually.
Yesterday I made my way through the crowds of tourists to the National Gallery in central London to see the new Lucian Freud exhibition. I got my ticket for free (thank you Claire!) and had read very little press before making my way to the hallowed halls of the Credit Suisse exhibition gallery.
Marking the centenary of the painter’s birth, Lucian Freud: New Perspectives is the first major Freud exhibition in ten years. The exhibition features more than sixty of the British painter’s works, spanning the length of his prominent life and career. Simplicity and restraint are the premises of the exhibition. Rather than an in-depth inquiry into the controversial painter’s love life, artistic process, or personal genius, curator Daniel Herrmann chose to let Freud’s work stand alone, a visual homage to a modernist master.
Freud, the grandson of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, died in 2011 at the age of 88. A mammoth of 20th-century art, he is best known for his striking portraits and self-portraits. Freud was a master scrutinizer of life and his paintings captured wide-ranging individuals. Models, office workers, plutocrats, heads of state, whippets, and his numerous lovers and daughters are all painted by Freud in carefully composed frames. While Freud valued a distinct sense of realism in his portraits, they never represent a real moment in a subject’s life. Rather, portraits were carefully constructed in his harsh west London studio. Take, for example, the painting Large Interior, Notting Hill. Here, Freud chose to paint over the face of model Jerry Hall after she was unable to complete her sittings because of illness. Rather than painting Jerry breastfeeding her infant son Gabriel from memory, Freud instead replaced her head with the head of his male assistant David Dawson.
This kind of artistic fabrication reflects the harsh reality of Freud’s genius. The painter, beyond the portraits, is also known for his self-obsessed and distinctly destructive personality. Sitters famously sat and suffered for hours while he demanded to observe every detail of their bare bodies. He dismissed friends and family, thought little of his daughters, and cheated repeatedly with his many wives, all in pursuit of some truer artistic reality. Such controversies are mentioned only in passing in the National Gallery’s new exhibition in an attempt to engage the viewer with the genius and, at times, the mundanity of Freud’s body of work.
The exhibition begins with a collection of Freud’s early works where his subjects are quirky, almost cartoonish, painted with sharp features and flat faces. In both Girl with a Kitten and Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait), muted tones, youthful beauty, and stark backdrops draw you into the paintings. The inclusion of thistles, roses, and other vegetation in Freud’s early portraits is a nod to their symbolic use in Renaissance portraiture. In Girl with Kitten, the tiny brushstrokes that compose Kitty Garmen, Freud’s first wife, could be compared to Dutch and Flemish Renaissance paintings in particular.
As we move on to Freud’s later portraiture, bodies begin to transform into landscapes of their own. The naked form fascinated Freud and his attempts to capture it in its minute detail reflect the artist’s obsession with artistic honesty and brutality. In Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, Freud chooses to paint the sitter Sue Tilley asleep on a leather chaise, head draped on her hand. The agile bodies of the lions which decorate the carpet behind her are implicitly contrasted with Tilley’s slumbering form. Similarly, Naked Portrait II features an unnamed woman asleep on a battered couch, head resting against a pillow and knee lolled open. Even with the subjects’ implied consent, these portraits are inherently expositionary. Asking us to look and to look some more, Freud forgoes the personal in search of the sublime.
Comparatively, in Two Men, Freud strikes an arresting balance between vulnerable and visceral physicality. In the picture, one man sleeps nude, his face buried in his forearm, while the other appears clothed lying on his back. What would be an impersonal moment of opposition becomes instead a scene of quiet intimacy as the hand of the clothed figure rests gently on the other’s naked calf. Turned away from each other in sleep, the two men nevertheless communicate an ambiguous affection which Freud captures with devotion. The same striking care is paid to the clothed figure’s ruffled blue shirt as to the lightly glowing bare back of the naked man.
Freud’s ‘naked portraits,’ as the artist coined them, extended to his many wives and lovers, to his own daughters, and to the painter himself. Who his subjects are, what they feel, what they desire – all of these questions are secondary to their nakedness. This juxtaposition, even within the context of the sitters’ consent, often feels like a deliberate incitement. Nothing is safe from Freud’s all-seeing brush. Do these portraits capture such moments of vulnerability honestly – or do they exploit them? This is a universal question central to Freud’s work. The answer, of course, is both.
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives attempts to let viewers answer such a question for themselves, stripping back Freud’s body of work to its component visual parts. While the range of paintings on display creates a narrative imbued that sidesteps any singular reading, I was left wanting more. More of Freud, more of his sitters, more of his history – both good and bad. For those familiar with Freud, the exhibition presents a rebellious retrospective that foregrounds the artist’s ambiguity. However, for those less familiar with the British painter, such historical elision does a disservice to both Freud and visitors. Understanding the contradictions of an artist allows one to better contextualize their work, to more sincerely come to one’s own conclusions about both art and artist.
Regardless, the exhibition is captivating in all its complexity. It attempts to mirror the same brutal honesty that Freud so assiduously sought in his portraits. Perhaps the best delineation of this shared ethos is Freud’s portrait of Elizabeth II. Hung amongst the multitude of other portraits in the second exhibition room, the small portrait of the queen is treated with the same harsh objectivity as every other face. Coils of grey hair sit atop a face filled with wrinkles. Unhappy eyes are set beneath heavy brows. The overlarge crown feels slightly out of place. Here, Elizabeth II is both absolute monarch and insignificant model. As Jonathan Jones describes, ‘Face to face with a monarch, an artist has only two options: be a courtier or a truth-teller. Freud takes the path he always does, warts and all.’
With love : Avery
Wonderful piece! I was totally in love with the exhibition :)