Lucian Freud: Portraits

Lucian Freud Catalogue Cover

... self portrait in a mirror ...

I readied myself for a long stay in the exhibit after pre-reading the catalogue.

I packed my heavy purse and coat into a locker and just kept a sweater and some double strength Tylenol in my pocket.

When I would wear out, I would found a room with a large bench in the middle of it, and sit there, playing the audio over and over, since it takes a while to see the details of some of the paintings – and it also takes a while to get enough rest to keep going.

"What's On"  front cover image, a detail from:
The Girl in Bed

In Lucian Freud’s early work, there is already the evidence of genius. In the 60’s and 70’s he was already ahead of his times with the representation of nudes.

A larger studio at the end of the 70’s gave him the ability to draw the surroundings around his figures, and the cityscapes in windows beyond.

You probably know that a painting of Freud’s Sue Tilley sold for £17 million at auction in New York City, the largest sum ever paid for the picture of an artist who is still living.

On display in London are the paintings of her called “Benefits Supervisor Resting”, “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping”, and “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet”. Sue Tilly modeled for Lucien Freud on the advice of Leigh Bowery, a performance artist, and the pictures of him are iin another room by themselves.  I came home to do a Google search on his name as well.

“Do you like the pictures of Sue Tilley”, I heard one fashionable young woman ask her svelte friend.

I could hardly wait for the answer.

“She is famous. She is famous.”

Whether she liked the pictures didn’t seem to matter. It was that the modeling had made Sue famous.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping
Photo Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive

The curator writes that “Sue Tilley (or Big Sue, as she came to be known) lies languidly on the sofa in a bohemian artist’s studio, far removed from her day job as a civil servant working for the Department of Social Security. Freud was initially fascinated by her size, however as time passed her proportions became more ordinary to him. Freud’s portraits of Tilley are a celebration of flesh and as feminine as Manet’s Olympia or the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez, although far less idealized.”

Exhibits like this are more fun to attend with a friend, rather than alone.

Not that I didn’t enjoy the day.

Still, I wish someone of you had been there to go with me and chat along the way – especially when I came to the figure that had two shadows, one shadow going left and one going right. But that would be a post for another day.

Arta