“Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings”

Lord Goodman in His Yellow Pyjamas

Photograph: Courtesy Acquavella Galleries, Inc. ©2007 Lucian Freud

The critic Clement Greenberg once wrote of Jackson Pollock that he was “not afraid to look ugly.” He was referring to the artist’s work, and the same could be said of Lucian Freud who, at 85, could hardly be accused of ever having painted a pretty picture in his 60-odd-year career.

Indeed, a useful adjective to describe Freud’s brushy, impastoed renderings of assorted models, friends and family members—lit harshly and often depicted in the buff—is pitiless, though it may be fairer to say that, like Pollock, Freud employs an awkward and sometimes overwrought painting style to psychologically excavate his subject. (In Pollock’s case, of course, the spotlight was exclusively on himself.) Ironically, as a more or less conventional realist, Freud saw his efforts eclipsed by those very same postwar avant-gardes—Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism—ignited by Pollock’s drips. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1980s—when young figurative artists became all the rage—that Freud’s work actually began to be taken seriously by the art world. It was also during this same decade that he began to earnestly embrace the medium that is the focus of MoMA’s exhibition, “Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings.”

No doubt this was a consequence of Freud’s work finally becoming marketable—prints are a way of making one’s oeuvre available at a lower price point. But it’s also true that his etchings often serve as studies for his paintings and vice-versa. And the starkness of intaglio is well suited to the images: In black and white they somehow appear even more naked and stripped to their emotional marrow than they do as paintings. (Plus, there is something about the literal bite of the etched line that adds a certain subliminal edge.) Driving all of these points home, the show’s organizers have included some of Freud’s paintings, hanging them near or next to prints featuring similar imagery. Thus, Freud’s etched Self-Portrait: Reflection from 1996 appears even more brooding and unsparing than the painted version of the same title created six years later—which, given its thick accretion of paint erupting like acne across the artist’s face, certainly isn’t flattering. While this compare-and-contrast approach might seem ham-handed or redundant for any other artist, here it functions as a form of poetic justice, allowing viewers to fix Freud with the same brutal stare he’d reserve for us.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that the artist is the grandson of Sigmund Freud; his family emigrated to England from Berlin when Lucian was 11, and one could be easily forgiven for surmising that some of the baggage the boy took with him found its way into the work as a man. It can be argued that Freud basically stayed in the family business, with heaps of sinew or fat, gnarled and clotted, substituting for grandpa’s monsters from the id. But the etchings, which tend to skew toward Expressionism, also make it easier to appreciate the artist’s relationship to the interwar art of his native Germany, especially the Neue Sachlichkeit of Otto Dix and George Grosz.

Yet, his work remains thoroughly British to the core, insofar as it evinces a peculiar strain in that country’s art dating back to William Hogarth at least. It might have something to do with Shakespeare, whose footprint within British culture is, shall we say, large, but it seems that Brit artists are often more interested in the corruptibility of human nature than they are in our species’ aspirations to achieving sublimity. Perhaps it’s some idea that the corrupt is the road to the sublime.

In Freud’s work, anyway, too, too solid flesh doesn’t melt—or won’t—as he revels in every flap, fold and bulge of skin. This is most apparent when he turns his attention to his favorite unclothed muse, Leigh Bowery, the late clubland legend who swanned through London’s ’80s scene. His ample bulk gives Freud’s brush or engraving tool plenty of terrain on which to roam. So does the equally corpulent and naked female in Benefits Supervisor Resting (1994). The two are a reminder that Freud painted men as well as women in the nude, pinning the former with the same gaze historically reserved for the latter.

“The Painter’s Etchings” is by no means a comprehensive survey, but Freud’s work looks at home here, suggesting that he is—in his own way—as modern an artist as Jackson Pollock. Hopefully, one day, MoMA will deign to give him the full retrospective treatment.