How can vitality be achieved in figure painting?
URGENT SUBTLE CONCISE ROBUST The above words are scrawled on the wall of Lucian Freud’s London studio as a constant reminder of how he should paint. With these words he creates exquisitely strong paintings that have an inner strength that is on the verge of bursting the flesh of the figure. There is an incredible complexity to his figure paintings post 1960. He had abandoned the Ingres-like flatness in favour of a stronger of a brusquer mark made by driving the paint across the surface of the canvas with a hog-hair brush. Suddenly his paintings were filled with vitality akin to that of Michelangelo’s work. The accentuated muscular forms, the fluid texture of the paint and the tension held in every bodily tissue brought his work to life. ‘The silent intensity of a grenade in the millisecond before it goes off’ sums up the power trapped in Freud’s paintings. However, how can such vitality be achieved? ‘Physical or mental vigour’ is the dictionary definition and all the great figure paint
