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?

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

“everyone”? Think you’re exaggerating there.

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.

Surely that's just a convention though, we're taught not to sit with our legs open. I sit legs open if I'm alone.

And by alone I mean with DH there too!! Just when I'm comfortable.

Indeed @raspberry88. Men have no issue with sitting with their legs open. I've never really pondered that particular difference before.

Interesting this thread.
Balthus! Well look at the work of Balthus and look at his followers. Look at Bowie for example, who famously interviewed Balthus!
Often artists are put on a pedestal by those around them.
Just because someone paints everyday, doesn’t make their art amazing or important. There were many many female painters working at the same time as Lucien Freud, whose work went unrecognized, unappreciated. Or they were raising the children feckless men like Freud created.
Freud, Hockney, Frances Bacon.... all artists that moved in elite circles of upper class gamblers, auctioneers, society figures. Auerbach even.
All artists that are revered and whose work commands enormous sums of money. The Hockney portrait exhibition was a room full of white men in suits. These are artists that do exactly what they want, all day every day, because of a group of select men in suits that tell us what’s good and what isn’t. There are brilliant female painters working now, and brilliant female painters of the past. Very few of them felt the need paint women spreadeagled.
It’s interesting to look at the issues around oil painting and being a mother simultaneously, toxic chemicals, slow drying paint that can be smudged by little fingers, expensive material, the difficulties in leaving things in one position to be painted for days on end, the long long timescales for producing a single piece of work.
And all those long nights of gambling and shagging and champagne drinking at the ivy. It’s just hard to make time for it as a female painter.
Sadly this is detrimental to professional progression.

Boardercontroller

Yes indeedy to everything you said. Another thing that pisses me off is that male artists always manage to find a woman to be their muse, clean up after them, probably support them financially, hang around telling them they're wonderful all day. What do women artists get? Complaints about the state of the house and no dinner on the table 😂😂😂

I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions about Freuds work from the pieces written about him. Anyone that’s listened to Martin Gayford speak/ read his books would know that he speaks about Freud as some kind of God.... all these 1000’s of hours on painting etc. He’s like Freuds personal sympathiser and fan club.
Why does everyone keep saying Freud was an amazing painter?
They were technically poor from a draughtmanship perspective, and the technical aspects of colour mixing and paint application weren’t the best either? Anyone remember the Queen picture?
The paintings were massive and excessive. They were expensive and indulgent, probably thousands of pounds worth of lead based chremnitz white, a luxury few female painters could employ.

I imagine if he saw this thread Freud would be pretty darn delighted about it and point out that those who are most overtly sexualising the picture are those claiming to be the most outraged by it because of their own inability to separate nudity from sexuality.

As others have said, he was a very unpleasant man. Personally, I do not like his paintings and wouldn’t want one hanging on my wall.

But I think (nasty man that he was) he would haven taken a great deal of glee in a load of middle aged mothers being outraged and accusing him of perversion when actually they’re doing a rather fine job of exposing their own dirty mindedness.

This thread does rather a fine job of exposing how much prudishness is based on the sexualised imaginings of the prude rather than via the image itself.

Yeah Juells it really fucks me off.
It’s so hard to be a female artist, but to be a female painter is even harder. Everyone on here seems to think that we separate artist from their art. This just isn’t so! As a woman not possible.
Frances Bacon’s studio has been preserved in all its glory. I remember seeing the same for Paolozzi.
Yet if my home looked like bacons studio i’d be reported to social services.

Yes because of you separate nudity from sexuality it makes it totally normal for a dad to paint his daughters vulva

As someone else said, it was her choice
His daughter didn't have to sit for him, you know

And there is no way her father could have groomed her into thinking this was acceptable? Therefore, her feeling like she had no choice?

All those saying she did it willingly, if she was raised in a family where posing like this for her father was the "norm" that could mean she was groomed to believe it was acceptable.

A bit like kids who grow up being beaten/sexually assaulted. They know no different. Doesn't make it OK!

It’s as simple as this.
Freud was totally loaded, with a little army of followers privy to coming over to his home, drinking fine wine, Freud would cook something delicious , then paint. He was a reasonably good looking man with a penchant for nice cashmere and good living. Well read, well educated.
Women were fighting to be his friend, shag him, and be immortalized in paint. So they’d lower themselves to any level to do so.
If everyone’s telling you someone is amazing and wonderful and a genius it’s really damn hard to stand up and call them a cunt, particularly when getting on side means you might get impregnated by this feckless man and be rich forever.
Bohemian genius. Read: does what the hell HE likes.

*All those saying she did it willingly, if she was raised in a family where posing like this for her father was the "norm" that could mean she was groomed to believe it was acceptable.

A bit like kids who grow up being beaten/sexually assaulted. They know no different. Doesn't make it OK!*

But she's not being beaten or sexually assaulted. If a families 'norm' is being comfortable with nudity then what is fundamentally wrong with that?

It’s worth knowing that painting/ being painted can be quite an erotic exchange... for artist and model. There is a certain power that a painter has over his subject. Especially in Freuds case.

Boarder, no one with a functioning brain cell would disagree about women being criminally underrepresented in the art canon, and in most major collections, or that male artistic achievement has historically rested on female labour, but that doesn’t affect whether Freud is a great painter or not.

It totally does. Freud really wasn’t a great painter.
He had a poor technique, terrible draughtmanship...poor colour mixing, made everyone look like ugly monsters.
He painted celebrities, society figures, and of course, vulvas in order to elevate his work to superstardom, but still his technique was really underdeveloped and unrefined.
In the flesh, in galleries, they are actually shocking. The paint is crumbling and deteriorating.

Yes because of you separate nudity from sexuality it makes it totally normal for a dad to paint his daughters vulva hmm

Well, yes, that’s exactly the point. For whatever reason for Freud and his daughter it was not a sexualised sitting and neither of them regarded it as a sexual portrait.

Yet those who claim to be morally superior are the ones who are sexualising it, not the people they are accusing of morally transgressing. It’s an interesting juxtaposition and I suspect it is probably a trap Freud deliberately laid, aware that people would unthinkingly walk right into it.

It is very unlikely that a woman with Freuds painting technique/ ability/style could have enjoyed such a status. She’d be laughed out of the door by the art elite for poor technique.
People would have just told her to give up, she can’t paint.

There will be sixth formers up and down the country at any time able to paint to the same level. If they could just get their arses down to Mayfair to shag a few influential folk then they could be onto something. Never have kids though.and make your work BIG . Sleep with everyone. Paint people in shocking positions, full fanny etc.
Impregnate everyone. Behave terribly. Quote fine literature. Drink good wine. Pull all nighters.dress like a dandy. Name drop.

inability to separate nudity from sexuality.

Yeah posters keep saying that, and other posters keep pointing out that that isn't so.

His daughters consented. But they also clearly believe that posing for their father was also a rare chance to spend time with himand be valued by him. I question whether they would have wanted to do it if he was a more ‘normal’ father. I don’t think it was sexual but I think they were unconsciously coerced into doing it and he was still very much in charge. So I’m not keen on the pictures regardless of the quality of the art.

Come on people!
Go to a life drawing class.
Tell the model you need her to sit with her legs spread.or ask her to hang on to your leg like a mad rabied dog.
She’d tell you to fuck right off.
Or she might have her own price .would she do it for a house in Kensington and everything paid for forever? Hmmmmm
Cos this is what we were dealing with with Freud. An obscenely rich man. Friends in high places. Huge privilege.
With huge privilege comes the ability to exploit vulnerable people.

Yes because of you separate nudity from sexuality it makes it totally normal for a dad to paint his daughters vulva hmm

Well, yes, that’s exactly the point. For whatever reason for Freud and his daughter it was not a sexualised sitting and neither of them regarded it as a sexual portrait.

My point was, sexualise or not, it is not fucking normal.

Boardercontroller

Who made you the art police? Seriously though, I'm uncomfortable with labelling art as good or bad...think that opens up a whole kettle of fish. You don't have to like it to understand that others might.