This weeks illustration Friday is 'Layer'. I have decided to create a sandwhich combining layers of bread, cheese, ham, onions and tomatoes.
Sunday 27 February 2011
An analytical Review of the work of Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud is an artist well known for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, and is known as ‘Greatest Figurative Painter Of Modern Times’. He was born in Berlin on December 8th 1922 and was the grandson of Sigmund Freud the founder of Psychoanalysis. His family moved to England when Hitler came to power because they were Jews. He became a British Citizen in 1939 and attended Dartington Hall School in Totnes, Devon and later Bryanston School. Freud studied at the Central School of Art in London and then at Cedric Morris East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. He also attended Goldsmiths College University of London from 1942-1943.
By 1939 he had several of his drawings published in a magazine called ‘Horizon’. He illustrated a book of poems by Nicholas Moore entitled ‘The Glass Tower’. In 1946 he travelled to Paris and then lived in Greece for Several months. Then he lived and worked in London. When he was 17 he started to socialise with homosexual groups like Stephen Spender and Cyril Connolly. Another influence was his grandfather (the psychologist Sigmund Freud). He brought prints by Brueghel for him when he was a child. Other influences were Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, John Minton and Leigh Bowery who were other painters and he painted them.
In 1940 he was interested in drawing the face as in ‘Naval Gunner’. Freud’s early paintings were associated with surrealism and were of people, plants and animals side by side. His technique was using thin paint. He painted ‘The Painters Room’. ‘The Painters Room’ was displayed in his first solo exhibition in 1944 at the Lefeure gallery. From the 1950’s he began to paint portraits and they were usually nudes. His technique changed to a thicker impasto. This was a thick application of oil paint that looked rough texture. He cleaned his brush after every stroke to stop the colours from running. He begins by drawing in charcoal on canvas. Then applies paint to a small area and gradually works outward to form thick layers. He painted naked straight women and gay men. He was noted for his slowness of painting.
He began nude female portraits in 1966 and nude males in 1977. These were painted sitting or lying. His favourite subject was Leigh Bowery. He painted in style of surrealism, realism and expressionism. . Successes include After Cezanne, ‘The Painters Room’ and ‘Girl With A White Dog’.
The Painters Room 1943
This featured an arrangement of objects including a stuffed zebra’s head, battered chaise lounge and a house plant and they all appeared separately in future paintings.
Girl With A White Dog 1952
This was a portrait of Freud’s first wife – Kitty. He liked to paint “pet and owner”. This is his most famous painting. It captures the moment. He uses bold gestures. In this picture the gown slips down her right shoulder exposing a breast and Freud captures the emotions on her face at that moment which include confidence, maturity and apprehension.
After Cezanne 1999.
This was an unusual shape because the top left section has been joined onto the main section. You can see where the two sections join when you look closely. It was sold for 7.4 million dollars to the National Gallery of Austrailia.
Man with Rat 1977
Freud liked to paint “pet and owner”. The use of animals and people side by side. He was interested in homosexuality and painted the reality of the male form.
Freuds paintings show the truth and the individuality of the models. Freud’s subjects were people in his life like family, friends, fellow painters, lovers and children. He said ‘The subject matter is autobiographical, it’s all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really’. He used the same people for different paintings to develop a bond. He used friends instead of professionals because he wanted natural and real thoughts and feels of the person. He painted showing all the faults and ugliness and was well known for “capturing the moment”. Some people thought that his paintings showed humiliation and that he considered himself and his views to be always right. I think he was right to paint the truth because not everybody is beautiful.
Webliography
· “Lucian Freud Works On Paper-Great Britain South Bank Board
Sunday 13 February 2011
Essay - Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville
I am writing this as an analysis of the work of Jenny Saville which I feel is controversial. Jenny Saville was born in England in 1970. She is an artist well known for her paintings of big fleshy nudes of women. She studied at Glasgow in 1998 and then went to Cincinnati University for 6 months. She is a feminist and is fascinated with the human body. She spent a lot of time in the malls in America where big women walked around in shorts and t-shirts. She was influenced by feminist texts, photography by Cindy Sherman, fleshy women in the malls and Gustave Courbet’s paintings. These influenced her painting ‘Propped’ and her degree show in Glasgow. All her paintings sold out at her degree show. Charles Saatchi, a gallery owner spotted her work in 1993 at London’s cooling gallery and he bought all the paintings. Jenny Saville spent a lot of time observing plastic surgery in New York which also influenced her. Her work includes ‘Plan’, ‘Hyphen’, ‘Hem’, ‘Fulcrum’, ‘Brace’, ‘Torso’, ‘Passage’, ‘Propped’.
Passage
This is a painting of a transvestite. Jenny Saville wanted to paint a body that was between genders. The transvestite has silicon breasts and the name of the painting ‘Passage’ means a visual passage through gender, from the penis across the stomach to the breasts and then to the head. It is a gender landscape because Jenny Saville said that thirty years ago this sort of body wouldn’t exist.
Hyphen
This is a painting of Jenny Saville and her sister. It looks like a two headed woman. You can see raw canvas splattered with red that looks like blood or mucus membrane. Looks like
She uses pinks, reds and brown to define shapes of huge naked bodies. It is a painting of 3 sleeping huge women. She used strips of tape, painted over them and then tore them off.
Her techniques are oil figure painting. She paints in layers and uses patches of oil colour. She concentrates on disfigurement and graphic detail of the skin. She sometimes uses photography. She used a sheet of glass to distort her body by squashing it and taking photographs from underneath the glass.
Jenny Saville has also painted transsexuals and transvestites. She multiplies the bodies on her paintings so they fill the whole painting. Her paintings are usually larger than life size. She paints the reverse of other figure painters. They paint beautiful so to some people, Jenny Savilles paintings could appear offensive and ugly. Women in our society are obsessed with their appearance. Jenny Saville paints our worst anxieties and shows the bad points instead of beauty. She shows reality and what people can really look like. She concentrates on obesity and paints a lot of detail on the skin pigmentation to show flaws, disfigurement, and the bodies fill the whole paintings.
My conclusion is that her paintings are Frank and show real women and how they think about their bodies. She shows reality because not everybody can have a beautiful body but she thinks big is beautiful. Some bodies are scarred by plastic surgery and she paints these because they are a reality. She has created a place in our society for over weight women. She is the most daring painter of our time. There is feminism in her pictures because men are shut out. She shows human vulnerability. The media presents women as having a perfect body and she does the opposite.
Webliography
Eyestorm.com
guardian.co.uk
artbank.com
Illustration Friday - Reverse
Improvements:
-Add shading
-Make it look more realistic
-Change my name
Sunday 6 February 2011
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