When talking about the paintings of Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011), many critics use one word: disturbing. Freud painted portraits of himself and was mostly nude. Celebrities and ordinary people alike, the models sit or lie in the studio, on the old high-backed sofa, naked from the painter.
The scene resembles a replica of his grandfather, Sigmund Freud's psychotherapy room: the patient lies on the couch and the elder Freud sits in a chair behind him, listening to what he has to say.
Freud began to paint portraits in the 50s, and the models used friends, family, lovers and children, as well as himself. He prefers the odd and unusual ordinary people, using the brush to "listen" to the sensitive, fragile and even ugly inside.
After the 60s of the last century, painting nudes began to occupy a major place in his creation, so he became the Freud he is today.
The Sleeping Relief Administrator
The painting "The Sleeping Administrator" was painted in 1995 and sold for $33 million at auction in New York 13 years later. From then on, Freud became "the most expensive living painter".
The obese woman in the painting is named Hugh Tilley. Freud was very slow to paint, often starting two or three works at the same time, and a painting took two or three years to complete, because as soon as the model was out of his sight, he no longer put his pen on the canvas.
Hugh Tilley's portrait was painted for two years, and Freud asked her to come to the studio for hours every weekend, lying on the couch, revealing her fat and letting him paint.
In Hugh Tilley's eyes, "It's fun to be around this eccentric guy and watch him work." Lucian had his own opinion on everything, and he was interested in my ordinary life. It's my favorite work, and if I had the money, I would definitely buy it."
Freud also painted celebrities, but not many, and both the Pope and Princess Diana were rejected by him. In 2002 he painted this nude potbelly portrait of supermodel Kate Moss, which sold for £3.9 million at auction in 2010. He said that he admired this smart woman who has always ignored the rules.
As his model, there are exceptions that can not be taken off. He painted a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen, a lover and collector of Freud's paintings, invited a painter to paint her portraits in 2001, ahead of the 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne.
Freud pondered it for months, and the Guardian reported that he finally agreed as a way to thank the country that had taken in his family in the shadow of the Nazis in the '30s.
Despite the portrait of the Queen, Freud was unabashedly demanding truth and heart, demanding that the Queen must come to his studio to model at least 72 times. A year and a half later, on his final finished portrait, the queen was wrinkled and looked old and gloomy.
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin, Germany in 1922. He was born at a time when his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, was at the height of his fame in psychoanalytic circles. In contrast, his father, who was an architect, is not often mentioned in family sources.
In fact, little Lucian didn't spend much time with his grandfather. Therefore, the claim that his loneliness in adulthood, which tore apart the true nature of human nature, was influenced by a master of psychoanalysis, is doubtful. Between grandparents and grandchildren, the limited and not fully confirmed details of life were taken by his grandfather in the living room to see Pieter Bruegel's paintings.
In 1933, Freud's father immigrated to England with his wife and children to escape Nazi persecution of Jews. Five years later, Sigmund Freud and his family left Vienna for England via Paris, where they died in London in 1939.
The year his grandfather died, 17-year-old Lucian Floyd was granted British citizenship. He attended the Saints' Union School of Painting in England and then Goldsmiths, University of London, where he studied under Cedric Morris.
But none of these experiences had a decisive impact on Freud's life: shortly after the end of World War II, he met his British fellow painter Francis Bacon, and the two had been close for more than 20 years, even modeling each other in the studio.
Freud later recalled that he admired Bacon's way of painting and the solitude and wildness of his life. In Freud's view, Bacon was in a sense the rebirth of the form of painting, and his influence on his work has remained indestructive.
"The mysterious subject is often the human body, and everything else in the painting (chairs, shoes, blinds, light switches, newspapers) is just illustrations. "What I want to do is to distort the appearance of things, but to show the true appearance of things under the distortion. ”...... It seems that Bacon's elaboration of his own painting can be transferred to Freud's later works.
He turned to interior portraiture and, like Bacon, began to focus on the human body, which remained unchanged for 50 years from the '60s until his death. This is his painting worldview, just like in life, he believes that human nature is born depraved.
Spacious Interior, Notting Hill
In 1998, Sigmund Freud painted "Spacious Interior, Notting Hill", which was like a self-portrait of his private life. In his paintings, he borrowed from the Venetian master Giorgioni for the composition of the classic work "The Storm".
The room is simple, with Freud in pajamas in the front of the frame, reading a book, and a nude woman with a blurred face sitting on a chair in the back, holding a baby in her arms. In Freud's life, women and children were never missing, but they were always only the background.
The Girl and the Rose
At the end of the 40s, he painted a series of works for his first wife, Kitty Garman, "Girl and Rose", "Girl and Kitten", "Girl and a White Dog", etc., at that time he had not completely abandoned surrealism, and the pale blue girl Kitty with a pair of inexplicable surprise eyes is the representative of his early portraits.
Freud never remarried after ending his extremely brief second marriage in 1954, but he had numerous girlfriends, a dozen children by name and surname, and rumored to be countless illegitimate children.
Freud saw depravity in his nature and never took responsibility for raising them, and the only way he could get along with them was to occasionally bring them to the studio and paint them on canvas.
If looking at these works unssures you, then this is Lucian Freud.
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