Quote

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

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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
Something
Facts
Strikes
True
Merely
Revelation
Truth
Elements
Suit
Doe
Choice
Strike
Body
Painting
Revelations
Look
Gives
Element
Looks
Choices
Distinction
Giving
Fact
Suits

More quotes by Lucian Freud

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I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
Lucian Freud
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The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
Lucian Freud
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Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.
Lucian Freud
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Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
Lucian Freud
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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
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The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.
Lucian Freud
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The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter
Lucian Freud
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A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
Lucian Freud
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Sometimes, when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference of my own eye.
Lucian Freud
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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
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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
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Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
Lucian Freud
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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
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The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
Lucian Freud
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If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice.
Lucian Freud
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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
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The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught.
Lucian Freud
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The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.
Lucian Freud
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I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.
Lucian Freud
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The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement
Lucian Freud