Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits Curator’s Talk

Insightful online lecture from ARTscapades on the Lucien Freud and plants exhibition at the Garden Museum.

I went to the exhibition a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it but Giovanni Aloi’s insightful talk added another layer to the show which I hadn’t thought about.

Aloi is from the Art Institute of Chicago and has written “Lucian Freud: Herbarium”. He set out the argument that Freud approached plants and gardens in the same way as his nudes concentrating on the detail and reality of the subject rather than seeking a sense of idealised beauty.

He talked us through a selection of the pictures and I understood more about they. For example I hadn’t realised that the large work “Two Plants” from 1997 was painted over three years. It shows fresh and faded parts of the plant. When it was bought by the Tate Freud said he had been painting small portraits of leaves not the plants as a whole.

He also talked about how Freud’s life often overpowers his art and how he has reached “the level of canonisation” ie like people like Picasso and Van Gogh whose lives are often read without looking at the art. He said “art history is about mythologies” which has given me a lot to think about.

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