Exhibition On Screen: Lucian Freud – A Self Portrait

Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, January 21

For those who believe the only true way to consume the arts is to be there on the spot and right in its face, the Exhibition On Screen project may well be akin to sacrilege.

For those who live far from the apparent centre of the universe, cultural or otherwise (aka London), the chance to witness some top-drawer art is a delight. Besides, if you’ve queued for hours in the Louvre to finally jostle with dozens of other people many yards away from the surprisingly tiny Mona Lisa, you might think that seeing a painting bold, proud and up close on a big screen is actually a more satisfying experience.

Exhibition On Screen has been running since 2011 (two years after National Theatre Live launched to give drama fans the opportunity to enjoy some of the best stage work in the land without having to fork out on travel and accommodation as well as the often hefty price of a West End ticket) and has released films on a number of major exhibitions in more than 50 countries across the world. Among the exhibitions shown to date are Renoir: Revered And Reviled, Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way Of Seeing and David Hockney At The Royal Academy Of Arts.

For now, EOS is keeping the iconoclastic work of Lucian Freud firmly in the public eye with the film of The Self Portraits, a joint venture from London’s Royal Academy Of Arts and Boston’s Museum Of Fine Arts.

More than 50 paintings, prints and drawings are featured in this show which spans eight decades from the earliest work in 1939 to the final piece in 2003 (Freud died in 2011 at the age of 88).

Among them are Man With A Feather (1943), Interior With Plant, Reflection Listening (1967) and Reflection (1985), with the range of these pieces indicating how Freud’s work evolved from the finehaired brush work of the early period to the thick coarse weapons he used later such as palette knives or heavy brushes made with hogs’ hair.

Of course, it’s sometimes difficult to divide the work from the person, so the film takes us through his upbringing as part of a legendary clan (he was Sigmund’s grandson, Clement’s brother, uncle of broadcaster Emma and PR guru Matthew, and father of author Esther and designer Bella), his education, the early development as a creator, and the vibrant social life he wielded as passionately as his paintbrush.

In the late 1980s, the esteemed art critic Robert Hughes declared Lucian Freud to be the greatest living realist painter, while in the early 1990s a tabloid asked of him: Is this man the greatest lover in Britain? These are but two sides of a multi-faceted human and hyper-talented artist.

Picture: Shutterstock. A staff member at the Royal Academy of Arts in London views Reflection (Self-Portrait), 1985 by Lucian Freud.