Sad news. Lucian Freud , one of the greats of British post-war painting, has died, at the age of 88. I had the pleasure to see him several times as he dined at his table at The Wolseley. Yesterday, according to The Guardian , that table was draped in a black cloth with a single candle on it. Freud, whose paintings sold for tens of millions, was famously linked to Sigmund Freud , his grand-father. I recall studying his work in art history class back at college in Montreal; we were all taken aback by and impressed with his attention to genitals, and to the gross realities of human fleshiness. Later, in London, I looked into his late self-portrait and recognized in its slashes of dark colours genius, and dark self-reflection. Genius can be complicated, strange, ugly, and attractive, all at once, in a compelling way; the best art usually is. I am not sure Freud was a person you'd want to meet unless you were a beautiful woman, or someone t...
POETRY, POLITICS, PROVOCATION AND POPULAR CULTURE SINCE 2005 - 20 YEARS AND over 10 million visits - British Library-archived