I think the best portraitist in the last 80 years was Lucian Freud. And I think he is so important to the Art world that he outshines his grandfather, Sigmund.
He had a very interesting live. Born in '23 in Berlin and moved to UK in '32 just as the hell inflicted on his co-religionists by the Nazis was about to start.
The first major art exhibition was just before the end of the WW2 and he never really looked back.
I encountered his work quite some time ago, and it was at the time he was being vilified for presenting what was called fat ugly women. But I felt that his work showed the real, in those people, not just the plastic visage they awarded to the public. There is a bluntness to these works, but without coarseness. To give an idea. Today I saw an eye formed with three strokes of a brush, and another with four. Three strokes and three different colours, side by side, and one eye formed. None of your shading, and forming. None of the straight clean line. Nope, just the brush and the paint.
With the symposium I was hoping for something else. It was titled The Artist and the State. But I took it more to mean the Irish State but it really meant the relationship with how Palestinian, and Aboriginal in Australia, reacted to the Israeli and Federal Oz state and how it reacted to them. Some of it quite quite scary truth be told.
All in all there was about 120 people at the event. More or less filling the great chamber of the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham (IMMA).
This was in front of the reception area. I don't know what or who it is, but I really find it amusing. You see it could be a play on Irish mythology's connection to the Hare, or it could had a Beatrix Potter Brer Rabbit (Brother), or even a Star Wars connection with a I cannot remember who it is but there's a clan of them in there someplace.
He had a very interesting live. Born in '23 in Berlin and moved to UK in '32 just as the hell inflicted on his co-religionists by the Nazis was about to start.
The first major art exhibition was just before the end of the WW2 and he never really looked back.
I encountered his work quite some time ago, and it was at the time he was being vilified for presenting what was called fat ugly women. But I felt that his work showed the real, in those people, not just the plastic visage they awarded to the public. There is a bluntness to these works, but without coarseness. To give an idea. Today I saw an eye formed with three strokes of a brush, and another with four. Three strokes and three different colours, side by side, and one eye formed. None of your shading, and forming. None of the straight clean line. Nope, just the brush and the paint.
With the symposium I was hoping for something else. It was titled The Artist and the State. But I took it more to mean the Irish State but it really meant the relationship with how Palestinian, and Aboriginal in Australia, reacted to the Israeli and Federal Oz state and how it reacted to them. Some of it quite quite scary truth be told.
All in all there was about 120 people at the event. More or less filling the great chamber of the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham (IMMA).
This was in front of the reception area. I don't know what or who it is, but I really find it amusing. You see it could be a play on Irish mythology's connection to the Hare, or it could had a Beatrix Potter Brer Rabbit (Brother), or even a Star Wars connection with a I cannot remember who it is but there's a clan of them in there someplace.
Let's not speak of Jar Jar Binx!
ReplyDeleteI love Lucian Freud's work as well.
Lol, yeppers that the fellow.
DeleteArt talks like that are quite interesting. I always leave knowing something I had no idea was even a thing. :) Did they have any of Freud's pieces on display, are some housed in the museum regularly?
ReplyDeleteI am not a huge fan of portraiture for some reason, but I can appreciate his work. It is always fascinating to me when you zoom in on a canvas and can see those strokes you mentioned. How is it they were able to create something like that with these strokes that seem meaningless on their own? Put together, though, they create these masterpieces. It's just as fun to get up close and really look at the creating of the piece as it is to se the finished product.
Sounds like an interesting day...something different! :)
Yes, 50 of them. And housed in the military commandant's house, rather than the main quad. It meant you saw just one author in all the rooms.
DeleteAnd there was quite a few in the building too. Even though the numbers were restricted. I got in on a complimentary ticket as a member of IMMA and the Visual Artist Union, not that I'd have issue paying the €8, but nice all the same.
I'm more into portraiture now that I was. But I get you.
It was a fairly dangerous one too. I drove up to Dublin on a really nasty fog. And it was way worse as I neared home that evening. 20MPH tops, and on dipped lamps for a section of about 10 miles.
I'm not that familiar with 20th century artists, portraitists in particular, so I had to look up his work. I know it's all a matter of personal taste, but I still prefer the work of those in earlier centuries. What I did like was how often he included dogs in his portraits.
ReplyDeleteHorrible driving in fog. We had it this morning as did my son, way to the north of me in MN, and my daughter to the south in LA.
I'm not that familiar with him, but I love the "hare." Currently, at the Telfair Museum in Savannah is an exhibit of modern landscape photography. I attended the opening lecture--I think you might enjoy it.
ReplyDelete