Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud OM CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impastoed portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time. His works are noted for their psychological penetration and their often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth8 December 1922
CityBerlin, Germany
ducks skins recipes
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
emotional want significance
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
independent emotional want
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
painting seducing convince
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
eye sometimes staring
Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.
portraits
Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.
excitement should function
The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement
giving feelings may
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
giving choices looks
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
erotic matter sides
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter
artist purpose tasks
The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.
miracle looks attention
The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.
drama people creative
I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.
routine timetables
I have a timetable, but no routine.