Introduction
The artwork of Lucian Freud Reflection (Self-portrait,1985) contains not reflections but contrasts. Hard contrasts of a face full of harsh internal conflicts, leaving their hard painted imprint on its palpitating mask and their harsh truth in its eyes.
Sixty-three year old and systematically womanizer and misogynist, systematically bully and victim, systematic gambler and loser, systematically irresponsible to everything but his art and having recognized most of his fourteen children, he painted the Reflection.
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The Artwork
Lucian Freud – Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985. Private Collection, Ireland. Oil on Canvas. Size: 51.2 x 56.2 cm
Lucian Freud – Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985
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The Artwork of Lucian Freud Reflection
Robust composition on solid design and rough touches of light and half-light areas – that is, darkness. With the really strong light coming out of the body-animal. And the mean tones, the deep darkness, coming from the face – mask.
A strange, emphatic, palpitating mask that captures three elements with earthen colors – stubbornness, wonder and fear. And a naughty fourth: to beat the crap out of the one that represents and the one who is representing.
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For the Artists
An artist should appear in his work no more than God in nature. The man is nothing; the work is everything.
Lucian Freud – Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985
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Lucian Freud's Gaze
In this breathtaking painting gaze is enclosed the affected vision. It is the ‘βλέπειν’, to see, by the man who sees, feels, conceives and revolts. And who at the same time knows the futility, but also the necessity of seeing, feeling, conceiving, and revolting.
It’s the gaze of lifeless painting that won’t die.
It’s the corpse of representational art who insists on testifying truths.
It’s the unbowed embody spirit.
It’s the end of the article.
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To See
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
Lucian Freud – Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985
Contents
- Benjamin, A. (2005). Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde: Aspects of a Philosophy of Difference. Routledge.
- Button, V. (2016). Tate British Artists: Lucian Freud. Tate.
- Crippa, E., & Lampert, C. (2016). London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj. Getty Publications.
- Freud, L., Howgate, S., & Hockney, D. (2012). Lucian Freud: Painting People. Yale University Press.
- Hoban, P., & Merlington, L. (2014). Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open.
- Existentialism and Abstraction: Etchings by Lucian Freud and Brice Marden – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Clarification
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