Page 109 - PROTAGONIST 119

Page 105: Lucian Shaving, 2006.
Photo: David Dawson, Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

On the one hand, there is his work, indisputable, consecrated by dozens

of exhibitions all over the world . . . On the other, there is the biography of
the painter, who forced both public and friends to come to terms with him:

solitary, inflexible, distant from all.

Lucian Freud at Work on Eli, 2010. Photo: David Dawson/Bridgeman Images

Eight years have passed since the death of Lucian Freud, one who shared in the representation of man’s surrender, and also
of the last great painters in history. A painter of life, of truth. of power. This was a lesson Freud made totally his own, which
Grandson of the neurologist Sigmund, Lucian was born in Berlin allowed him to approach any subject, stripping it completely:
in 1922. After reaching England at the age of ten, he pursued his the “extreme” bodies of famous models, like the scandalous
talent for drawing with total dedication. Today he is considered performer Leigh Bowery with his imposing, hairless bulk, the
one of the absolute geniuses of painting, though for a long time model and icon Kate Moss whose androgynous body set the im-
he was criticized as a great painter stuck in the past, without any aginary of “heroin chic” of the 1990s like no other, painted by
interest in innovation, totally absorbed within the boundaries of Freud when she was pregnant, all the way to the small but pow-
his own world. While in the 1940s European artists of his gener - erful canvas on which the painter portrayed Queen Elizabeth in
ation were constantly chasing after the spirit of experimentation 2001, crowned with pearls and diamonds but also opening dis-
urged by the avant-gardes, Freud—also throughout his life—de- playing her human condition. Paintings we can now admire in
liberately ignored the dogma of the modern, even in periods in the world’s most important museums, and the elegant homes of
which it was very hard to step back from the seduction of the the most sophisticated collectors.
“contemporary” that captivated so many of his colleagues. On the one hand, there is his work, indisputable, consecrat-
As in every phase of his career, even when the models were ed by dozens of exhibitions all over the world, and in publications
those of the German Neue Sachlichkeit, in his first young mas- like the recent monumental volume issued by Phaidon—Lucian Private Collection/© The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images
terpieces Freud interpreted the human condition and the crisis Freud (2018). On the other, there is the biography of the painter,
of humankind that had been expressed in literature through who forced both public and friends to come to terms with him:
authors like Proust or Balzac, whose writings Freud read and solitary, inflexible, distant from all. Though actually, depending Lucian Freud, Double Portrait, 1988–1990,
re-read throughout his life. An existential state Freud had also on the vantage point, his story is also that of an affable viveur who
carefully studied in the artists who just prior to him had indi- never stopped embodying that Bohemian style of which he was
cated a way of thinking about art which he then followed and probably the last true exponent. “The picture, in order to move
perfected: giants like Alberto Giacometti, his mentor and friend us, must never merely remind us of life, but acquire a life of its
Francis Bacon, as well as less famous painters like Varlin, artists own,” Freud said.

106 Art Protagonist Protagonist Art 107