"I've always been interested in extremes, but I'm not interested in doing freaks. I want to paint ordinary people with the attention freaks might get if they appeared in public. I don't want to use the fact that someone may be made differently as a point of interest."
Bold, brilliant and brutal, there are many ways to describe the paintings by Lucian Freud, but all descriptions come down to the fact that he portrayed his subjects with a clear, incisive directness rarely seen in painting today. He studied humanity's flaws with a kind of avaricious hunger, peeling back the layers to reveal the insecurities lying hidden beneath. For the viewer, his portraits were like a light being switched on, a startling clarity that pierced through an anodyne world of airbrushing and makeovers.
He eschewed fashion and art movements and paid little attention to the continual re-appraisal of his work. For him it was blatantly simple; it was all about the painting. Over the years he has painted everyone from the denizens of Soho to benefit supervisors to nobility. Yet each subject received the same unflinching report whether they were the performance artist Leigh Bowery or model Jerry Hall. It is difficult to imagine a painter who will ever have the courage and sincerity to do the same again.
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH, was born in Berlin on December 8, 1922 and passed away at his London home on July 20, 2011.
Text by Jessica Lack
