ART TIMELINE: 1950
Lucian Freud, Girl with a White Dog, 1950-51
Mark Rothko, White Centre, 1950
Georgia O’Keeffe, Poppies, 1950
Painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and general art history related finds. Feel free to message me any questions, comments or suggestions.
ART TIMELINE: 2000
Blood by Anish Kapoor, 2000
Queen Elizabeth II by Lucian Freud, 2000-01
Valentine Rose by Jack Vettriano, 2000
Girl with a White Dog by Lucian Freud, 1950
From the Tate: This picture shows the artist’s first wife when she was pregnant. The style of the painting has roots in the smooth and linear portraiture of the great nineteenth-century French neoclassical painter, Ingres. This, together with the particular psychological atmosphere of Freud’s early work, led the critic Herbert Read to make his celebrated remark that Freud was ‘the Ingres of Existentialism’.
The sense that Freud gives of human existence as essentially lonely, and spiritually if not physically painful, is something shared by his great contemporaries, Francis Bacon and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.
Mid-Year Resolution …
… try really hard not to miss exhibitions, especially due to pure laziness (I still haven’t gotten over missing Hockney at the Royal Academy and Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery.) Hence why tomorrow I’ll be booking Edvard Munch at the Tate Modern and the RA’s annual Summer Exhibition with my course friend. And with the Olympics looming over London like a fast-approaching storm, further pressure is added to get as many exhibitions out of the way as early as possible before the underground becomes utterly futile!
Queen Elizabeth II by Lucian Freud, 2000-01. I love everything about this painting, from the unflattering light to its amusing critical reaction: don’t ask Lucian Freud to paint a portrait of an elderly monarch if you don’t want it to look like this!
1 year ago - 
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The Painter’s Mother by Lucian Freud, 1984. I find this image quite strange to analyse. Freud has clearly painted his elderly mother in a peaceful state with her head resting against a pillow, (though there is something very hospital-like about her attire.) But what I want to know is the meaning of the bamboo plants in the background and whether they are simply a welcoming and reassuring presence for Freud’s mother during the end stage of her life.
1 year ago - 9
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