Lucian Freud

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Born: 1922

Died: 2011

Summary of Lucian Freud

Known for his honest anatomical and psychological observations, Lucian Freud rendered even the beautiful individuals (including Kate Moss) hideous. One of the most renowned portraitists of the late 20th Century, Freud exclusively painted people closest to him: friends and family, wives and maids and, last but not least, himself. His perceptive self-portraits covered six decades. Unusual with such lengthy careers among painters, his style was extremely constant. Perhaps inevitable the psychological intensity of his pictures and his famously lengthy sitting periods were linked to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic work.

Unapologetically, Freud represented a concept that originated in the Renaissance and which Leonardo da Vinci has been given: “Every artist paints his own.” “Every artist paints himself.” Freud was far from his work, a report that he made in his work, which referred to the work as “purely autobiographical” and to those individuals whom he painted as simply vehicles of figurative innovation: “I use the people to invent my pictures with, and I can work more freely when they are there.”

Freud was a major member of the London School, a group of painters devoted to figurative realism, at the time deemed reactionary, since it avoided the presence of modern trends at the time, such as minimalism, pop and conceptual art. Freud is aesthetically traditional compared to David Hockney, or even Francis Bacon, his contemporaries. However, the topic is nothing else.

While life drawing courses have always included nude designs, Freud’s emotive detail of genital paints distinguishes him from other painters in portraiture history. A botanical illustrator may consecrate a unique flora with analytical scrutiny and details, Freud paints main and secondary sex traits.

Freud owes much to the Expressionists of the early 20th century. Vincent van Gogh recalls his pronounced and expressive strokes Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, and his slanted view and anthropomorphic representations of chairs, shoes and other inanimate items.

Freud was one of the great 20th-century self-portraitists. He painted compulsively himself. While Rembrandt, Van Gogh or Schiele may be lacking, Freud’s self-portraits constitute one of the artist’s most comprehensive visual autobiographies, offering insight into the artist’s self-absorption and unrelenting drive.

Childhood

Lucian Freud was born into the Jewish family of an artistic middle class. His father Ernst was an architect, Lucie Brazo’s mother studied art history, and Sigmund Freud was a paradigm-changing psychotherapist. Freud and his family fled Berlin in 1933 and escaped from Hitler.

Freud started creating art at an early age – and showing it. In 1938 one of his drawings was chosen from Peggy Guggenheim’s London Gallery for an art display by youngsters. While the artist was seventeen, the drawing dates back to 1930, when Freud was eight.

In his mid-teen years, Freud made an acquaintance with poet Stephen Splender (and maybe had a sexual connection). Both were kept in contact many years, and Freud presumably was introduced by this friend to a network of male (and mainly bisexual) poets, painters and professors who were responsible for the support of a group of young artists during the war years. Through these groups, Freud met Francis Bacon, his greatest friend and adversary. More about these early years and interactions with Bacon is well documented in the book “The Art of Rivalry” written by Sebastian Smee.

Early Life

Despite his early brilliance, his unsatisfactory conduct has driven him out of many schools, once in a public street to lower his trousers. In 1939 Freud started a serious instruction in painting when he enrolled in Essex at the East Anglican School of Painting and Drawing. In 1941 Freud ended his studies in a short three months in the Merchant Navy, and in 1943 he started to paint professionally and produced one of his earliest significant works, the Painter’s Room.

A short spent time in Europe contributed to the work of Freud, in part when he became friends with Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti when he was in Paris in 1946. Once in London he joined the faculty of the Slade School of Art and started showing at galleries in London.

Freud developed a lifestyle and creative habits early on, which he would maintain throughout his career. He married Kitty Garman, painter Jacob Epstein’s daughter, a lovely and well-connected woman, but his infidelities rapidly broke apart. Next was Lady Caroline Hamilton Temple Blackwood’s heiress of Guinness, whom he saw at the reception coming out and officially met at a meeting sponsored by Ann Fleming, writer Ian Fleming’s wife. To her parents’ displeasure, the romance started while Freud was still married.

Freud had a violent temper while charming. His job, which he placed above everything else, was extremely strong; a factor alongside his usual unfaithfulness that contributed to the collapse of his numerous love connections. Freud is a vicious sexist, indeed: Blackwood said that he slept with her adolescent daughter, that his wives were frequently described as de-humanized specimens, that he had had many, many (he had acknowledged fourteen) children, and that he treated all of his sexual partners in horrific ways.

Freud, however, was a popular character and he attracted attention to himself, wherever he went with his travel companion, an animal hawk, tied to his wrist or shoulder. He did not spend many hours a day painting eating, gambling (which is generally recognised as one of his best self-destructive characteristics) and lounging with the trendy British aristocracy, socialists and artists like his painter Francis Bacon, with whom he had a great deal in the community. The two impacted one other tremendously till their relationship terminated.

Mid Life

Portraiture quickly became Freud’s primary topic. It was not an easy procedure to sit down for a picture of Freud and it frequently took months of many hours to satisfy the artist. The renowned British painter David Hockney claimed to have sat on Freud’s picture for hundreds of hours over many months (as described by critic and writer Julian Barnes.)

Despite a good relationship with his grandfather when Lucian Freud was young, and even later on, when he was in London he sometimes decided to wear the coat of Sigmund, the artist tried to avoid further links with the famous psychiatrist in his work, to reject his psychoanalytic method and to deny that this had anything to do with his art.

Freud was frequently an absent parent by his own admission. Many of his children understood that their art was the greatest way to connect with him, so they posed to him as they grew older and had to sit as long as the gruelling sessions were needed.

The method of Freud, compulsive in his efforts to record every detail and defect, frequently led to conflict between the sitter and Freud himself. His work developed in line with the instruments with which he tried to reduce this aggravation, and a major technical achievement in the mid-career hung on a move to tightening hog-hair pins, which enabled him to paint broader and to decide to stand while working. Freud said, “My eyes went totally crazy, sat down and couldn’t move. Small pins, delicate linen. Sitting down was more and more irritated to drive me. I felt I wanted to get rid of this style of functioning….” While sand brushes were gently applied, Freud’s switching to another kind of brush led to major improvements in technology and effects. His art was more painting and layered in the 1960s, with heavier, freer strokes. Freud also started to concentrate on what he called “naked portraits” detailed nudities that were nearly invariably unfavourable. His portrayals of his children remain the most contentious.

Late Life

The late 1980s gained worldwide prominence. This was partly owing to a strong four-country retrospective in 1987. As a consequence, the American art dealer William Acquavella represented him worldwide. Later portraits by Freud feature many renowned topics, including artist David Hockney, art critic Martin Gayford, and even Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to large-scale painting, towards the conclusion of his career, Freud produced numerous grafts, a technique he had concentrated on as a student and artist in his early years.

Freud’s reputation as a woman has not waved with the age; a fact has been verified when the Octogenarian was the country’s second desirable bachelor in 2002 by the British magazine Tatler. Supermodel Kate Moss expressed her want to meet him, and the artist painted her picture. In 2004 the 82-year-old artist produced two paintings of Alexandra Williams-Wynn, his thirty-two-year-old lover, which included The Painter Surprised by a nude admirer, who portrayed her naked and wrapped her in his studio in the legs of the clothed artist.

Freud’s rigorous, compulsive painting technique never eased. In his decades of labour all morning, midday breaks and then paints the whole evening, the artist said, “I work every night and every day. I do nothing else. I do nothing else. There is no other point.” Freud continued to labour until his death at the age of 88 from bladder cancer.

Freud’s challenges to portraiture norms inspired legions of figurative artists. The alternative paradigm of masculine representation created by his pioneering series of portraits of Leigh Bowery set the grounds for others, like John Currin and Eric Fischl, who were socially rebellious figurative artists. In Jenny Saville’s art, Elizabeth Peyton and Luc Tuymans, Freud’s visceral and unapologetic attitude to the nude continues on.

Famous Art by Lucian Freud

Girl with a White Dog

1950-1951

Typical of Freud’s early years, a girl with a white dog is made with a sand brush which he almost like a drawing used to apply the paint with linear accuracy. The delicate shading creates a variety of textured texture that is gentle, warm and tense. The coat slid off the shoulder of the sitter and showed off its right breast. Coupled with the lady and the dog’s vacant gaze, the silent hues and weak outlines give this picture a flatness overall.

Reflection (Self-portrait)

1985

Freud’s self-portraits, a company he returned to often throughout the years, provide intimate insight into his mind. This is one of the most renowned, created when the artist was 63 years old in 1985. Unlike the obvious nudity of his previous portraits, nudity is implied in this (bare from the shoulders up). While some seem ungodly and uncomfortable, the degree of self-possession in the posture is characteristic of Freud’s self-portraits. He places his shoulders and stares out as though he is challenging the audience. The matrix of strokes on the face and the precise balancing of light and shade is a breathtaking mastery of composition. For example, witness how the deep shadow beneath the bark and the black square in the top corner seems to anchor shapes in space.

HM Queen Elizabeth II

2001

During his career, Freud created numerous portraits of notable individuals. The Queen may be his most potent and recognised topic in the world. Although Freud usually painted great, this composition measures about nine and a half to six inches and is one of his smaller works. It portrays the British monarch as an intimidating figure, though. Her face fills the whole composition. A sliver of pearls adorns your neck while a complex jewellery crown sits on your white hair. The symmetrical features of the diamonds and the hair define the limits of the image and act as a psychological border of the work. The crown, which Freud expressly asked for to wear for the portrait, dominates the top edge of the image.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver

• Known for his honest anatomical and psychological observations, Lucian Freud rendered even the beautiful individuals (including Kate Moss) hideous.
• One of the most renowned portraitists of the late 20th Century, Freud exclusively painted people closest to him: friends and family, wives and maids and, last but not least, himself.
• His perceptive self-portraits covered six decades.
• Unusual with such lengthy careers among painters, his style was extremely constant.
• Perhaps inevitable the psychological intensity of his pictures and his famously lengthy sitting periods were linked to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic work. Unapologetically, Freud represented a concept that originated in the Renaissance and which Leonardo da Vinci has been given: “Every artist paints his own.”
• “Every artist paints himself.”
• Freud was far from his work, a report that he made in his work, which referred to the work as “purely autobiographical” and to those individuals whom he painted as simply vehicles of figurative innovation: “I use the people to invent my pictures with, and I can work more freely when they are there.”Freud was a major member of the London School, a group of painters devoted to figurative realism, at the time deemed reactionary, since it avoided the presence of modern trends at the time, such as minimalism, pop and conceptual art.
• Freud is aesthetically traditional compared to David Hockney, or even Francis Bacon, his contemporaries.
• Vincent van Gogh recalls his pronounced and expressive strokes Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, and his slanted view and anthropomorphic representations of chairs, shoes and other inanimate items. Freud was one of the great 20th-century self-portraitists.
• While Rembrandt, Van Gogh or Schiele may be lacking, Freud’s self-portraits constitute one of the artist’s most comprehensive visual autobiographies, offering insight into the artist’s self-absorption and unrelenting drive.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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