‘Scrutinising the Self: Lucian Freud’
- Location: Electric House, 191 Portobello Road, London, W11 2ED
- Date: 21.01.20 | 7pm
- Soho House members only: Please note that unless a guest of Nick, this is a members event
- Book Now: Please email Bianca de Carvalho: bianca.decarvalho@sohohouse.com
More than 50 paintings, prints and drawings of Lucian Freud’s craggy visage will adorn the hallowed walls of London’s Royal Academy between 27 October 2019 and 26 January 2020. This unprecedented array of self-portraits represents nearly 7 decades of painting on his part. Over the course of time, the women and friends in his life changed at a voracious rate, and the studio backdrop also charts his journey from Paddington to Holland Park. Was he a good model? “No, I don’t accept the information that I get when I look at myself, that’s where the trouble starts” Freud famously stated. It is eminently possible that the psychological penetration evident in this series of uncompromising self-studies reflects the clinician’s eye of his late grandfather Sigmund Freud. Certainly, the works as a whole represent a stylistic odyssey, from Surrealism through Realism, into Existentialism. Lucian Freud built up the surface of his canvases with impastoed élan, always claiming that he wanted the paint to work as flesh. As R.F. Johnson put it: “He, more than any other 20th century artist, makes us acutely aware of existing as human beings.”