Somewhere between heaven and hell
One thing you can say about the recently late Lucien Freud is that he ensures that you know that you know that you have seen his show at the National Portrait Gallery. In every sense it is a blockbuster. It busts your block!
I went yesterday and came out shell-shocked. He starts with the exquisite beauty of the Girl with White Dog (1950) – the iconic woman in a bathrobe with one breast exposed the other demurely covered by the sitter’s hand holding the bath robe across it. The Girl with Beret (1951) and the Sleeping Nude (1950) are both full of beauty and textural precision. But by 1958 with Woman Smiling he has begun some downward path in search of the grotesque. Naked Man with a Rat (1977) begins to inflict a kind of visual repetitive strain injury courtesy of the centre stage genitalia.
The famously fat Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1994) dominates the final room. Yet interspersed are beautifully observed portraits of Jacob Rothschild (1989) and David Hockney (2002), both thankfully fully clothed. The most extraordinary aspect of the later years of this show is the fact that Freud’s attention to detail – the pattern on a sweater; the folds in a bed sheet; the texture of a fine leather arm chair; are things of beauty in and around which Freud seems determined to seek out the most grotesque in every sitter.
Photo gallery: The work of Lucien Freud
To ameliorate the shock of the vast final paintings – including the bloated, Brigadier (2003) – I returned to the early paintings and wondered about Freud’s inner journey over all these years. A brilliant painter, for sure, but vastly conflicted, at the very least.
My day ended, not with the news but with a concert at the Albert Hall; a completely uplifting contrast from the pinks, greys, fawns, and naked sexual paraphernalia of Freud’s final decades.
For this was a gathering of every school choir in the London Borough of Camden, together with a jazz band, bongo drummers, a full orchestra, and a seventy strong ukulele band. Some of the 2,100 singers were only six years old – a few were 17. The hugely accomplished soloists ranged from eleven to sixteen. The families of the performers occupied the other 3,500 seats. I had the good fortune to be allowed to be the compere as I have been for most of the last eight concerts they have played in the hall since 1998.
By 8.00pm last night Freud had retreated in the face of extraordinary massed sounds of exceptional quality. Here amid cuts and austerity were 300 instrument players, some recruited merely as a result of the new move to take orchestral instruments into classrooms away from the ghetto of choice. Here was a Borough investing in a celebratory jamboree to underscore the achievement of music in education. The commitment and verve of the conductor/teachers struck a defiant note in the face of claims of falling standards and dwindling commitment. Perhaps Freud should have sung a bit, or attempted the trumpet.
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