None of Freud’s paintings could possibly adorn a chocolate box, which proves he’s a true artist (Mr Renoir, ring your office).
Some of his canvases are calculated to shock, some do so simply because real art always unsettles. So, as I walked towards the National Portrait Gallery to see the Freud exhibition, I didn’t expect my senses to be mollycoddled. I expected a shock.
And one came – even before I went in. Hanging on the fence was an expensively produced poster advertising another exhibition, of Admiral Nelson’s portraits. It was called Nauseous Sailor.
Now in the language of William Shakespeare and Kenneth Clark ‘nauseous’ means ‘disgusting’, ‘vomit-inducing’. Surely that’s putting it too strongly, I thought. Nelson had his failings, a propensity to consort with courtesans for one, but he’s generally regarded as a decent sailor.
In fact, the square next to the Gallery is named after one of Nelson’s exploits. You know, the one in which he established that Britain was a naval power and France wasn’t, a state of affairs that lasted until Dave bought a time share on a French carrier. Could a nation really have thus honoured a ‘disgusting’ sailor?
It didn’t. By erecting Nelson’s Column, the nation honoured its great hero. Unfortunately, the same nation later did to its education what Nelson had done to Villeneuve’s navy. The broadsides were so overpowering that even today’s supposedly literate curators don’t know the difference between ‘nauseous’ and ‘nauseated’. The institution once graced by the directorship of the erudite, elegant writer Kenneth Clark is now led by ignoramuses.
Why not just call the exhibition Sea-Sick Sailor? Not only would the title be accurate, but, thanks to the alliteration, it would also be catchier. Sea sickness is the unambiguous description of Nelson’s affliction – after all, a sailor can be nauseated (or ‘nauseous’ in the ignoramuses’ lingo) for a variety of reasons, such as too much grog, or else constant exposure to pretentious pseuds.
If I expected my newly jaundiced mood to change inside the exhibition, it didn’t. It’s not that I changed my assessment of Freud as one of modernity’s few great craftsmen. In fact, from the first painting to the last, one knows one is in the hands of a master. Freud’s best portraits, like those by Rembrandt or Velázquez, don’t just depict the sitter’s face; they capture his psychology.
Thanks largely to the artist’s grandfather, psychology has in our time tried to fill the space formerly occupied by the spirit or, even earlier, the soul. A futile attempt, if I ever saw one. For, if the spirit reaches outwards and upwards, psychology is inward and solipsistic. Preoccupation with it is a sure sign of a man who uses himself as the starting point of the universe – his is the single-point perspective, making anyone smaller as he moves away from the egotistic centre. A modern man looks inside himself to find the truth. Alas, he only finds himself there.
That’s where Freud’s portraits differ from those by Rembrandt or Velázquez: like them, he offers psychological insights; unlike them, he offers no spiritual ones. Hence his models lose a crucial part of their humanity, becoming merely vessels containing the artist’s own view of the world.
And what an eerie view it is. Freud obviously didn’t celebrate the beauty of life, as all great artists do – regardless of how gloomy their subjects are. Nor did he celebrate the beauty of the human body: his nudes tend to be either worryingly skeletal or grossly obese; most are unattractive. This is understandable in an artist preaching that life is ugly. It’s lamentable in a master held back by his monovision.
Though a true artist may sometimes be gentle, he is never genteel. Freud is neither gentle nor genteel; however, he’s often genital. Many of his paintings feature highly detailed close-ups, which by some may be taken for a manifestation of stark, unflinching realism. I see it as a lapse of taste.
Hard as I try, I can’t imagine Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus with her legs wide-open, or any of Rembrandt’s merchants letting it all hang out. Great artists, no matter how raunchy they are in their life or even art, always retain a certain chastity of expression, an aesthetic purity of vision. They don’t rely on gynaecological images to make a point; they have finer tools at their disposal.
It would be too pat to say that Freud inherited his grandfather’s preoccupation with those particular organs. The real reason probably lay deeper: the artist was challenging traditional notions of taste, morality and aesthetics. Such a challenge is too difficult even for such a superb painter to pull off without plunging into the lower depths at which poor taste resides.
And superb he is. The task Freud set himself was dubious, but he went about it with consummate skill. The technique he used since about 1960 relied on huge brushes and thick paint. This gave flesh a disconcerting quality, and, as Freud tended to clean his brush after each bold stroke, his palette never remained stable. Each touch was chromatically, though not dramatically, different from the next, and at first glance his variations of tone may look almost monochrome, their subtlety at odds with Freud’s audacity of stroke. And his backdrops retained the same flesh tones, seldom trying to provide a contrast.
Freud cleaned his brushes with hotel linen, which he then used as his squalid backdrops. This was essential to his eerie view of life, as were his breath-taking angles and compositions. Freud often looked down on his models, literally as well as figuratively, distorting their bodies and shocking the viewer’s optical preconceptions.
Still dazed, I walked out and went to a small pseudo-Italian café for a cup of coffee and a sandwich, which the pretty girl at the counter called ‘a panini’. My distaste for modernity heightened by the exhibition, I wanted to say ‘it’s a panino, dear,’ but didn’t. There was no fight left in me.