From soft brushes to hard brushes.

Night Interior

Lucian Freud was an artist who focused on realism. One of the shifts in his artistic career was changing his stance while painting and the type of brushes he used. Freud got extremely agitated sitting down and not being able to move freely. Another thing that was agitating him was the brushstrokes he was currently using were not allowing him to paint the image the way he imagined. So when he changed the type of brush from soft sable brushes too hard hog hair ones that he would cut down to the end it allowed him to create more definite streaks in certain places to give the painting more dimension. The event ties together with the image because, during the 80’s and 90’s, Freud was using this new technique which contrasted his earlier paintings and made his paintings more realistic. Without this new technique, the viewers may not have been able to see the curves in her body beyond her extra fluffiness; without this, they may have interpreted the painting completely differently. The 1950s was a period when the pre-avant-garde movements and abstract expressionism were in the air which caused many artists to move due to events that were offered but they were also in unlivable conditions. The 1950s is significant to this event because this could have been another reason why Freud became agitated and felt he needed to change his brush technique. 

 

Works cited:

Kamp, David. “Psychoanalyzing Lucian Freud.” Vanity Fair, 16 January 2012,        https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/02/freud-201202. Accessed 1 April 2024.

Freud, Lucian, and Caroline Blackwood. “Lucian Freud Paintings, Bio, Ideas | TheArtStory.” The Art Story, 7 May 2016, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/freud-lucian/. Accessed 16 March 2024.

Farrell, Jennifer. “Existentialism and Abstraction: Etchings by Lucian Freud and Brice Marden.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18 August 2015, https://www.metmuseum.org/articles/existentialism-and-abstraction. Accessed 16 March 2024.

Calvert, Stella. “Lucian Freud's Work Through the Decades – bridgeman blog.” Bridgeman Images Blog, 22 May 2019, https://blog.bridgemanimages.com/blog/lucian-freuds-work-through-the-dec.... Accessed 16 March 2024.

Associated Place(s)

Event date:

1960

Parent Chronology: