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?

Indeed Juells it’s strange how no one wants to comment on the daughter’s actual feelings about this.

Victim blamers, the lot of them.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde.. " To paint one of ones children naked is unfortunate.. to paint two begins to look like..."

I'll admit my initial reaction to this was OMG, horrible, what kind of father would want to see his daughter naked let alone paint her and show her nakedness to the world.

Then I read the daughter's account, and read about the artist himself.

Whilst it's not something I would ever envisage doing - after reading about him what I've come to conclude is he was absolute fantastic artistic who liked to shock and who who liked to push boundaries. But I really don't think there was anything incestuous about it and I do feel he absolutely viewed nakeness the same as looking at an inanimate object like a 'tree'.

I kind of compare it to a gynaecologist not viewing his patients in a sexual way or a breast surgeon not viewing breasts in a sexual way.

I think he wanted to shock people and push boundaries and he certainly doesn't have my respect seeing as he treat his multiple children and wives so appalling - that doesn't make him a paedophile.

It's a bit gynaecological for my tastes, TBH

I can't find it now (pre-"everything also published online" days) but years and years ago I read an article about glamour models and their fathers. Illustrated with a series of photos of middle aged men sat (fully clothed) on a chair with their (half naked) daughter posing next to them. I did all sorts of things to my head - the fact I can still remember it now is testament to the impact it had. Perhaps because my father left the room when I needed to breastfeed, never mind him being in the same room as me wholly or partially naked!

I don't find the painting disturbing in itself, it is the sitters own descriptions of it being painted that make me uneasy. It doesn't sound a healthy dynamic.

Complete nakedness is the sum of a person's body revealing essential beauty in both genders: this is what the artist seeks to capture and convey. Direct focusing on sexual parts is for the anatomists and gynaecologists. The prurient, the curious and sexual pleasure seekers can find what they desire in works by the likes of Balthus, Beller or Cussins for example. They are artists who concentrated on the sexual aspects of the body: the penis and the vagina specifically. They rejected classical representation of nakedness and often their distorted images of the female form suggest an abhorrence of the female/feminine to a level of perceived misogyny. Judgement on art should be strictly about the art , not the character nor the sexual predilections of the artist themselves. Many of the comments on LF here border on slander and libel of him and his family.

@LizzieSiddal

Those saying “she gave permisssion”, “he didn’t force her”, have you actually read what she has said?!

Yes I read it early yesterday before the OP posted.

With respect, I don't think your own comprehension of what you have posted - the extract- is very good. You don't 'get it'.

The daughter is saying she was unaware of how much her father could see, and she was the one who had chosen to pose in that way.

I think I understand now he wanted my permission to use what he could see, to shift the responsibility on to me and take advantage of my generosity.

Everything you quoted shows quite clearly that she was the one in control and he was the one shifting the onus onto her (re the pose.)

I'm amazed you read it any other way. she is at pains in the interview to say he was not demanding she posed that way!

The prurient, the curious and sexual pleasure seekers can find what they desire in works by the likes of Balthus, Beller or Cussins for example.

Don’t try and push the perviness of Balthus onto the viewer with pretentious twaddle. He liked painting upskirts of children. The sexual predilictions displayed in the paintings themselves is the issue, not what he got up to in private.

pretentious twaddle

This whole thread is full of pretentious twaddle, people who're intent on proving to the rest of us that we're prurient, or don't understand what artists see, they could be looking at a chair, blahdee blahdee blah. Those explaining to the rest of us that we're simply not educated, not emotionally savvy, don't understand what we're seeing... they know nothing about our education or background or knowledge of art history.

Lucien Freud was a terrible father of a few children. He was also an artist of merit for whom the work came first. If that's what you have to do to gain a parent's attention it's very sad indeed.

Not sure why he would paint such a picture, but ridiculous comments about men on here in general. Some men have done vile things, some women have done vile things. Some men are depraved, some women are depraved. To use this as a chance to bash men makes for a predominately female forum no different to a predominately male forum that takes any chance they can get at bashing women! Be the change you want to see!

YANBU. It's fucking disgusting.

'She gave consent' 'she was 18'

What a load of pish. At what point in the life of a regular teenager is laying with your legs sort so your father can paint a picture normal? Oh wait, it's NOT.

There is some level of grooming, control and abuse to get to the point where any 18 year old would pose like that in front of their father.

People saying 'she was an adult' as if that somehow normalises it

To use this as a chance to bash men makes for a predominately female forum no different to a predominately male forum that takes any chance they can get at bashing women! Be the change you want to see!

Where's the man-bashing? Just because I don't buy the shit that "Oh yes, an artist may be looking at her vulva but he's an artist, he's interested purely in how the light plays over the different textures. You ignoramuses don't understand artists like what I do because I'm educated." ???

I have no background at all in art history. I just look at paintings a lot. There’s no doubt that LF was a monstrously selfish individual who was an appalling husband/partner and father. This has no relationship in my mind to the fact that he’s an astonishingly gifted painter.

The question is — what do we do about the issue of dubious/coerced consent (if that’s what she says in the interview, which I haven’t read?) and an underage girl in this portrait? No crime has been committed. LF is long dead. I don’t think people are suggesting the painting should be suppressed or destroyed, so what are people suggesting, then? That we shouldn’t think it’s beautiful? That the circumstances of its painting, and the relationship between model and painter should be the main thing we think about?

It reminds me of the thread where posters were waxing lyrical about how marvellous nabakov was. That was full of pretentious twaddle as well.

@Juells I have no knowledge of art generally. But, unless you take the line that all male gynaecologists are getting their thrills during examinations and medical procedures, it's logical to think that for men in some professions, seeing a vulva is not necessarily sexual.

But thinking Nabokov is marvellous is hardly a niche view.

Yeah, well 'artist' isn't one of those professions.

Says who?

Its strange that people immediately associate nudity wih sex. I used to always see my mum naked. Thats how we really look. Rather than understanding painting an 18 yer old unsexually, with consent as artists have for thousands of years people would rather associate nudity, the way we are born with, sex.

Jingle

*With respect, I don't think your own comprehension of what you have posted - the extract- is very good. You don't 'get it’”

You and others on this thread, certainly don’t “get it”. And if I were you I’d be quite concerned about that.

Why does everyone keep pretending she was 14 in the painting we're discussing?

Like you get a non-perve pass if you’re a gynaecologist but not a painter?

Martin Gayford’s book about what it was like to sit for him talks a lot about how long LF took to do a painting — a nude he finished in 2007 apparently took sixteen months, with the model posing on all but four evenings over that time, for an average of five hours an evening — around 2,400 hours. If you average that up over all his full-length nudes, that’s hundreds of thousands of hours staring at genitals, and armpits, elbows, knuckles, ears etc etc.

I dabble a bit; does this mean I can ask my Dad (70) to pose for me with his cock out?

Rather than understanding painting an 18 yer old unsexually, with consent as artists have for thousands of years people would rather associate nudity, the way we are born with, sex.

I don't associate nudity with sex, I taught life-drawing for over ten years. Very few of the female life models posed with their legs open, it's not something women naturally do, dressed or undressed, as it feels vulnerable. It's a statement, when nude.