British Vogue - 12.2019

MASTER STROKES

The first exhibition of Lucian

Freud’s numerous self-

portraits, recently opened at

London’s Royal Academy of

Arts, contrasts playful early

sketchbook drawings with

the thick impasto brushwork

of distinguished later works.

DELAYED EXPOSURE

Taking its cue from previously unseen family

snapshots, Lucian Freud: A Life (Phaidon, £150),

published this autumn, illustrates the artist’s

biography with private photographs, and intimate

portraits by his peers, including Francis Bacon.

FEAVER PITCH

Art critic William

Feaver draws on

40 years of near-

daily calls with

the artist in a

sensational new

biography, The

Lives of Lucian

Freud (Bloomsbury,

£30). The weighty,

newly released first

volume is rich with

gossip and stories.

FREUD REANALYSED

Into the

spotlight

Two celebrated artistic

muses take their rightful

places centre stage.

By Timothy Harrison

T

he English painter Celia Paul

and the French surrealist Dora

Maar lived worlds and eras apart,

yet they share a certain renown:

they are better known for the art they

inspired in their celebrated male lovers

than for their own. Brilliantly, two London

exhibitions are finally casting these famous

muses as the main event.

Britain’s first major retrospective of Maar

(left), at Tate Modern, spotlights her

photomontages, abstract paintings and

photography (she was among the first

women ever to shoot a nude female model),

much of which preceded her eight-year

relationship with Pablo Picasso.“To get to

know anything about her at all, we have to

look at her work and listen to her own

words,” says Tate curator Emma Lewis of

the exhibition, which opens on 20 November.

Meanwhile, Celia Paul, with a show at

Victoria Miro from 13 November, will be

the unmissable name on the contemporary

art scene. In the exhibition of new work,

Paul, the fiercely private artist who paints in

her studio near the British Museum, adds

land- and seascapes

to her signature

portraits of her

mother and sisters.

In Paul’s

engrossing new

memoir, Self-

Portrait (Jonathan

Cape, £20), also

out in November, the artist describes

how her relationship with Lucian Freud

• who was 16 years her senior when the
  pair met in 1978, while she was a student
  at the Slade – shaped her development
  as a young artist. (Paul and Freud had
  a child in 1984.) “I was emotionally
  dependent on him to begin with,” she
  observes. “But I became more independent
  as I became surer of my own talents and
  direction.” In a self-portrait painted after
  Freud’s death, in 2011, titled Painter and
  Model, Paul depicts herself as both artist
  and subject: “By looking at myself I don’t
  need to stage a drama about power. I am
  empowered by the very fact that I am
  representing myself as I am: a painter.” Q

Clockwise from left:

Room and Tower

(2019), Shoreline

(2015-16), and Lucian

and Me (2019), all by

Celia Paul, pictured

below. Bottom, from

left: Self-portrait,

Reflection (2002),

and Self-portrait

(circa 1956), both

by Lucian Freud

This season, the great artist is

painted in fresh light...

126

GAUTIER DEBLONDE/VICTORIA MIRO LONDON/VENICE; LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; CELIA PAUL/VICTORIA MIRO LONDON/VENICE; ADAGP PARIS/DACS LONDON 2019; CENTRE POMPIDOU MNAM-CCI; DIST RMN-GRAND PALAIS/JACQUES FAUJOUR

ARTS & CULTURE

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