HEAVY-WEIGHT CHAMP LUCIAN
FREUD R.I.P.
Last year I caught his exhibition
at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and wrote about it on
July
26th . I wasn't a big fan but I
pay homage to his life-long dedication, his
single-minded focus and his prodigious skill.
There was something athletic, something of the spirit
of the weight-lifter and body-builder in his work: those
huge muscles developed through sheer will-power and obsessive
exercise. Maybe I'm stretching the metaphor
too far but it sums up the impressions of Lucian Freud's
painting I gathered over the years. Freud and
Francis
Bacon were close friends and both of them, in
their work, were deeply concerned with flesh. But in
my view, Bacon was the greater painter because he dared
to look beyond or behind matter and those glimpses, though
terrifying, allowed his paintings to break
through the density, the weight of matter, in startling
ways. This is just my opinion of course and it may be
completely skewed.
Next post, I'm going to write about
abstract art. Stay tuned for further skewed opinions.
The weather in London today.
