Quote

A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.

Lucian Freud

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lucian Freud
Age: 88 †
Born: 1922
Born: December 8
Died: 2011
Died: July 20
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Printmaker
Berlin
Germany
Lucian Michael Freud
Lucien Freud
Lusyan Froid
Grow
Grows
Asks
Obsesses
Artist
Suitable
Art
Tastes
Must
Obsession
Never
Painter
Life
Taste

More quotes by Lucian Freud

Image
A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.
Lucian Freud
Image
The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.
Lucian Freud
Image
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
Lucian Freud
Image
I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case.
Lucian Freud
Image
A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
Lucian Freud
Image
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian Freud
Image
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
Lucian Freud
Image
My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.
Lucian Freud
Image
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
Lucian Freud
Image
Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.
Lucian Freud
Image
I work from the people that interest me, and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures, and I can work more freely when they are there.
Lucian Freud
Image
Were it not for this [dissatisfaction], the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the painter could retire. It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than it is in the picture. The process is in fact habit-forming.
Lucian Freud
Image
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
Lucian Freud
Image
The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter
Lucian Freud
Image
The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.
Lucian Freud
Image
As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does
Lucian Freud
Image
Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.
Lucian Freud
Image
I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.
Lucian Freud
Image
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian Freud
Image
The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.
Lucian Freud