Books |
Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud
Martin Gayford
By
Published: Jul 27, 2011
Category:
Art and Photography
Guest Butler Jane Chafin is director of the Offramp Gallery in Pasadena, California. A former painter, she has worked as a registrar at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and written for the Los Angeles Times.
After years of writing, talking and thinking about art,” Martin Gayford recalls, “I was attracted by the prospect of watching a painting grow; being on the inside of the process. Even so, when I made that modest proposal, I didn’t really expect Lucian Freud to accept. Probably, I thought he would say something politely noncommittal along the lines of, ‘That’s a nice idea, perhaps one day.’ Instead, he responded by saying, ‘Could you manage an evening next week?’"
“Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud” gives unprecedented access into the otherwise private realm of Freud’s studio, and a look at the slow, deliberate process of painting. From November 2003 through July 2004, art critic Martin Gayford sat for his portrait. He spent those 49 sessions — at least 150 hours — in the same position, with his right leg crossed over his left, wearing the same clothes, bathed in the same pool of light in the darkened studio, sometimes in silence, sometimes in dialogue with the 83 year-old Freud. He kept a diary as they went along, recording bits of conversation, thoughts and observations. It is from this diary that he has crafted this charming and revelatory book. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.]
What struck me most about the book was the insight into Freud’s process — specifically, how slowly and intentionally he paints and how that would seem to contradict his broad, spontaneous-looking brushstrokes. The portrait in this case starts with a quick charcoal sketch on canvas, over which Freud begins applying paint to the area between the sitter’s eyes, working slowly out in all directions, leaving parts of the white canvas unpainted almost until the very end. Intense concentration and looking precede each brush stroke, and often the stroke is "practiced" by tracing it in the air with his arm. Once on the canvas, if the stroke isn’t exactly right, it is wiped off and the process begins again.
The progress is sometimes so slow it is difficult for Gayford to perceive: "I want the picture to move on, I want it to be finished. My hope is that he will begin a new area — the chin, the scarf, the jacket. . . . LF [as Gayford refers to Freud throughout the book] doesn’t seem remotely concerned about hurrying."
Freud’s working method is "inextricably bound up with emotional honesty and truthfulness." Freud slowly builds a relationship with his sitter, searching with each layer of paint for a deeper understanding and more real representation of his subject — not just the fleshy corporeal outer shell that he depicts so masterfully, but also the complex underlying substrata and depth.
“Man with a Blue Scarf” is illustrated with more than 50 mostly color illustrations of paintings from all periods of Freud’s career, photos of Freud at work in his studio, as well as reproductions of the work of other artists who influenced him. The book is sprinkled with Freud’s insights and opinions of artists, mostly the old masters, as well as anecdotes about those he has known personally over the course of his long career.
The portrait of the author is on the cover. Did he like it? “Lucian was a truly great painter,” Gayford said after Freud’s death, “and the most remarkable man I ever met.”
