AIBU to be shocked at Lucian Freud painting his teenage daughter naked with her legs open?

[NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1]

Well, am I? Am I horribly surburban to have felt utter disgust with one look at that painting?

Surely nobody would get their rocks off to any of these paintings at all?

I don't think Freud was a paedophile or had an incestous relationship to his daughter, but that doesn't mean that there isn't such as thing as ethical boundaries. He was he father, in a position of power in relation to her, and he chose to paint her like that - whether she chose the pose herself or not. He exposed her and made her an object of his art rather than his daughter, and this seems to me ethically fraught.

Yes, I agree.

Did your father ask you to open your legs so he could look at your vulva for hours ms naturist? Because I don't think it's the same at all as people all wondering around with nibclothes on. I also am not sure whether when entering into and going through puberty and the self consciousness and often accompanying discomfort that brings it is fair to expect DC to expose themselves.

I guess native amazonian tribes could be a good anthropological study for that, and they show that the prefer to cover up too, given the chance.

He put the genitals front and centre of the pictures.

I don't get the arguments around porn comparisons, taking away the 'centrepiece' they are nudes, not erotic, rather 'meatily' portrayed.

The issue is the controversy of his DD displaying her vulva for her father's own ends in making a statement through her exploitation. Her vulva is the centrepiece, and really not comparable to male genitalia or arseholes frankly!

It is when you get people asking why he didn't paint male nudes which he obviously did.

Of course my father has never asked me to pose naked, for any reason, or asked to see my genitals etc. However, he hasn't asked this of anyone else either. He isn't famous paint of nudes!

even if she had been all for it in a straightforward way, it doesn’t necessarily mean her father should have allowed it.

Agree - I think that there is a very unpleasant dynamic here.

And tbh I don't like Lucien Freud's art much anyway. It's always struck me as prurient.

She was 17-18. She could have said no.

But could she? She was raised in a completely different domestic atmosphere to most children - and in many abusive families the abused individual often can't see the extent of their abuse -will even deny it - because it is "natural" to them. It is often many years later - sometimes never - that they are able to see how they were taken advantage of.

There is an instinct in every child, I think, to love and protect their parents, frequently justifying bad behaviour, in the same way as battered wives will say "It was my fault for being late with his tea" etc

She says quite clearly in the Times interview that she consented and chose the pose. And she gave that interview as a 60 year old woman some 40 years after the painting was made. We seem to be a society that sees abuse everywhere.

Several of Rose Boyt’s siblings and half-siblings have given interviews about their father, and lots are artists and writers who make autobiographical work — none has ever suggested their environment was abusive. Are we actually refusing to listen to an articulate sixty-year-old woman’s account of her own experience because it doesn’t suit our narrative of the dynamic?

Just funny really how everyone chose the same pose!

I haven’t rtft but I went to see Picasss exhibition last weekend and I didn’t like all the naked pictures at all. There were a lot of naked boy ones and performers.

Something made me uneasy. There was a lot of unnecessary nakedness just for the ‘sake of art’.
Just the poses and way it was presented made me feel uncomfortable and so much so we left

Freuds children were born to several different mistresses, and only a couple were born to his first wife. I can't see how he could have had much involvement in their upbringing, so it's not likely that they were all abused by him.

Smother, if you had to choose a pose in which you were going to pose for four or five hours a day, every day, for maybe a year, a year and a half, wouldn’t you seriously consider a lying down pose in which your weight was fairly evenly distributed?

I’ve always assumed that’s partly why so many of his nudes are lying down in similar positions, just because his paintings took so long.

seriously though?

If it is serious, definitely not that!

I think that's ignoring the glaringly obvious, deliberately?

An artist is very particular to get make the point through their art,to pretend that they all wanted their genitals to dominate his portraits and that wasn't his direction and decision over his art is at best naïve

The world wasn’t so sexualised / pornified when this portrait was painted.

She clearly says the pose she had chosen ‘unwittingly’ exposed more than she realised. She says later she felt angry about it. The interview talks about long sittings through the night and tension.
It is a disturbing and complicated dynamic. There was a lot of disturbing stuff going on in the 1970s. It is difficult to imagine anyone painting their daughter like that now.

Technically, it is far easier to paint the female genitalia than the masculine. To get the proportions correct is crucial. Eric Gill measured the size of his penis regularly: flaccid and tumescent - not while sharpening his masonry chisels, I suspect. All in the interests of sculptural accuracy. Size matters. He could have been aware of the disastrous Richard Westmacott statue of Achilles, dedicated to the Duke of Wellington. This was the tallest naked figure in bronze ever cast at the time. Totally subscribed to uniquely by "the grateful women of England." On the moment of its unveiling, the hundreds of women gathered by its position near Hyde Park Corner - Queen Victoria and Albert were indisposed - rushed forward to view the physical male endowment, only to shrink back in horror: it was too small, so tiny in proportion with the gargantuan size of the figure. To this day a scallop shell encloses the low hanging fruits of the donor's disappointment.

She says quite clearly in the Times interview that she consented and chose the pose. And she gave that interview as a 60 year old woman some 40 years after the painting was made. We seem to be a society that sees abuse everywhere.

I think the opposite to be true, a lot of abuse goes unchallenged and ignored in our society ( Jimmy Saville ), especially if the predator is a artist of some kind. Abuse comes in different forms, it’s not always sexual. Coercion isn’t always sexual. As a society, we should be taking extra care around children, and that includes being mindful and aware of child grooming, which again is a type of coercion that isn’t always sexual. We have boundaries where children are concerned, and we shouldn’t automatically relax those just because someone is an artist. Lucian had a lot of power over his children, if you read what several of them have said about posing for him being a way to spend time and get attention etc etc Of course we must listen to those affected and their words have more weight in this, but if someone has been groomed, that also will contribute to their feelings even as an adult or many years later. Roman Polanski’s victim of child rape has said she’s not interested in pursuing anything and wants it all to end, does that mean everyone else should forget about it too and Polanski should be able to move freely again? Or do we think he should still be held accountable for crimes he’s confessed to? ( My point here is not to say what Lucian did is necessarily a crime by the way, the connection is to make a point about listening to victims or the children who were involved when they say as adults they’re fine with it. )

Good points Oxytocin

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Unnecessary nakedness”. The naked form has been the subject of art for millennia, why on earth would its portrayal make anyone feel uncomfortable? Especially by Picasso of all painters. There really are some seriously repressed people in this world.

There really are some seriously repressed people in this world.

It would help if you actually understood the objections, rather than dismiss them as an issue with ‘nakedness’, which this isn’t. It’s specifically about a father and his teenage daughter with her legs open. Child safeguarding doesn’t make people ‘repressed’.

The person who felt uncomfortable at a Picssso exhibition had an issue with nakedness, nothing else. That’s repression.

I do understand the objections to a father painting his adu daughter in a pose she chose. I’m not calling the people who have those views repressed. I do think they’re identifying abuse when there isn’t any and I disagree with them.

Alsohuman thanks for clarifying, I take your point. I don’t know if he did or did not sexually abuse his children, but I think he is guilty of child grooming/coercion and that isn’t normal or accepted behaviour for a father. His daughter Annie did say he didn’t really think of them or their relationships, as child and father, which upset her. He probably did not think of them as different to any other person he drew, although I’m not aware of him drawing other naked children and teens so he’s clearly used them because he can. The point I’ve been trying to make is that while not likely sexually abusive, it is not healthy to have this kind of relationship with your father, and he has used his position of power and the adulation of his children, to get them to be extremely vulnerable and often, uncomfortable. That is deserving of some scrutiny IMO.