Would it be ridiculous to suggest that Freud lacks nobility or generosity, or even that his pessimism reduces him?
Lucian Freud
The Pursuit of Art, 2019
MoMA’s recognition of modernism’s multiverse, alongside artist-led drives for greater transparency on the part of museums and their boards, brought a twinge of optimism to the close of the year.
Lucian Freud’s Shadow Self
As a displaced refugee, Freud knew he would always be something of a stranger to himself, but how much would he ever wish to know of himself?
A Peek Into Some of the Best Art Books of 2019
Paula Rego, John Ruskin, Donald Judd, Lucian Freud, Hokusai, and, yes, Leonardo da Vinci.
In Praise of Painting’s Ambiguity, Part 3
Jasper Johns breaks down the image of a broken man.
Lucian Freud’s Mountains of Flesh
Freud’s forlorn, isolated figures and grotty interiors resonate appallingly with the steep cultural and social decline fated by Brexit, if it ever takes effect.
Painterly Visions of Being All Too Human
At best, All Too Human shows well known artists at an intriguing new angle and revisits lesser known names, but at worst makes some perplexing curatorial choices which defy its own set of rules, stretching relevance through some optimistic inclusions.
Lucian Freud’s Unseen Self-Portrait and Sketchbooks Go on View
“Truth heads into naked people bodies bodies whole complete living naked women avoid facial expression make bodies expressive of feeling,” scribbled painter Lucian Freud in one of the sketchbooks now on display at London’s National Portrait Gallery.
Lucian Freud’s Silly and Suggestive Teenage Letters Go Up for Sale
Most of us would be embarrassed if private letters we’d written in the notorious naïveté of youth were read by strangers.
Lucian Freud, on His Last Day of Painting
This video allegedly records Lucian Freud’s last day of painting: July 3, 2011, roughly two weeks before he died at age 88.
The Private Language of Painting, Revealed in Artists’ Images of Their Studios
Gagosian has done it again: produced another museum-quality show, this one devoted to images of artists’ studios, as recorded in photographs (on view at its uptown gallery) and in paintings (installed at West 21st Street).
Jasper Johns’s Reinvention of an Old and Familiar Subject
Regrets — the collective title of Jasper Johns’s most recent series of paintings, drawings, and prints — is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (March 15–September 1, 2014). The inspiration for the series was a ripped, crumpled and stained photograph of Lucian Freud perched on the edge of an iron bed, one leg tucked under the other, with his hand clutching his hair as he looks down and away.