Wikio - Top Blogs - Religion and belief

Thursday, 1 December 2022

Artlyst: Lucian Freud And His Circle Surveyed In Two London Exhibitions

My latest exhibition review for Artlyst is of: Lucian Freud: New Perspectives; Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews; and Bruce Bernard: Portraits of Friends.

'The exhibitions explore aspects of the camaraderie and interrelationships of these four painters whilst also highlighting the intimate relationships between artist and sitter, including artist and lover, partner, and offspring.

While figuration, existentialism, and portraiture remain significant strands within their work, the critical debate between them, within their works, seems to have been about distortion versus clarity and fine versus broad brushstrokes. Freud moves from his crisp, clear early style, which shows a debt to Neo-Romanticism, to a much more expressive use of broad brushstrokes, presumably somewhat influenced by Bacon’s distortions, Auerbach’s layers and Andrews’ mix of loose and tight passages of paint.

Bacon distorts his portraits to reveal the underlying existential angst found within, while Auerbach’s layers serve to suggest the subject’s presence more than their features. Both operate primarily in the liminal hinterland between figuration and abstraction. Andrews and Freud, while using abstract passages, remain more fundamentally figurative artists. Andrews’ use of looser and more tightly painted passages within the same painting is a way of indicating focus and creating atmosphere. Freud, who spoke of “wanting the paint to work as flesh does,” increasingly comes to paint flesh and how flesh forms and fails us as human beings.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -
Articles/Reviews -
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael McDermott - Hit Me Back.
Posted by Jonathan Evens at 19:44
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)