Article courtesy of Il Giornale dell’Arte
The Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi would have liked to see him exhibiting at the Biennale instead of Bacon (obviously it is not a value judgement, it is just because Freud, unlike Bacon, is still living, and thus has full right to take part to a contemporary art exhibition).
The Italian Minister for Cultural Goods Rocco Bottiglione has instead praised both masters as examples of figurative contemporary art.
Anyway, the exhibition “Lucian Freud” showing at the Correr museum until 30 October is one of the most important exhibitions of this Venetian summer.
The reasons are manifold: the authoritativeness of the artist, one of the most important living artists, and also the fact that it marks the return of Freud to Venice, almost fifty years after he exhibited at the Biennale in 1954, together with Francis Bacon (and comes the comparison again) and Ben Nicholson; at last, because this exhibition represents both a chronological synthesis of his work and at the same time offers a sample of his favourite themes, beyond the main theme of portrait.
And there is one further reason, which is also the most substantial and maybe represents the real difference with Bacon (apart the differences in style): the adhesion of Freud to the German culture since his beginnings, so similar, as to the kind of light, to the standards of the “New Objectivity” (Neu Sachlickelt), the Italian equivalent of the “Magical Realism”, and furthermore with the dramatic bodies’ twistings which make obviously think of Egon Schiele (see “After Breakfast” of 2001).
The works on show are in all 90 (75 paintings and 15 etchings), included the tortuous floral patterns and the scenes of the decaying London outskirts, depicted both outside and inside, like in “Large interior, Paddington” of 1968-69, one of the peaks of his work.
What dominates, anyway, is the human figure, to begin with the “Girl with roses”, that is to say the portrait of his (for a short time) wife Kitty Epstein, which had already been exhibited at the Biennale in 1954.
And then the different versions, since the early 70’s, of the portraits of his sorrowful mother after the death of her husband.
One of his favourite subjects are other artists: Frank Auerbach (1975-76), Francis Bacon (1956- 57) with the face framed by a white cloth and a thoughtful David Hockney of 2002, but there is also a little portrait of Queen Elisabeth (an extraordinary loan, practically never exhibited in public).
Freud keeps on the characters, almost tackling them with his introspective fury, until he reveals their most intimate nature; he does not know what inhibitions are: he does not stop in front of the (boasted) decay of an aged and flabby female body, that he in fact puts in the foreground (see “Evening in the Studio of 1993). Nor does he withdraw in front of the obstentation of feminine but above all masculine genitals, as in “David and Eli” of 2003- 2004. He uses the same ruthlessness also in his self-portraits, like the one in which he represents his nakedness (making exception for the shoes) defiantly waving his palette and paintbrush “Painter Working, Reflection”, of 1993, previously exhibited in 1995 at Palazzo Grassi during the show “Identity and Otherness” cured by Jean Clair.
This is a theme on which he returns also in his most recent work, “The painter is Surprised by a naked admirer” (2004 – 2005), which took him really long to prepare as is typical of his way of working, where the artist, this time dressed, is harpooned to one leg by a naked admirer: the young, beautiful and famous Alexandra Williams- Wynn, daughter of Sir Watkin.
Lidia Panzeri
