Looking Closely

Two contrasting exhibitions caught the eye of our graham Hooper

He shaves with an old school razor, using a paint brush to apply the soap. The photograph, taken of Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund, who did in 2011, accompanies the first information board as you enter the Royal Academy’s exhibition. His longtime assistant David Dawson had access during such intimate moments, and it is a very telling image. He is in his bathroom. Everything is black, white or grey except for his flesh, which in 2006, his latter years, is showing his age (84 at that point). He has that distinctive intensity in his eyes, but looks down and away from the camera, almost melancholy. Oddly, his hair, windswept to the side, is thin and delicate, like an artist’s sable brush, finer than the hog’s hair variety (more about the tools of the trade later). In this photograph the brush hand is blurred, suggesting rapid movement. Noticeably too, his clothing, an over-sized white shirt, held in place with a tight, black belt, suggests a martial artist wielding a samurai sword, in graceful poise. Our view is that of being behind the mirror, and despite having blade in hand, he is not bothered with his own image.

You can’t help looking for clues in Freud’s paintings, for signs of character, personality, hidden depths revealed through a glance in the eyes, a tilt of the head or the curve of a figure. Just as in ordinary life, reading subtle body-language for hints of feeling or thought. But Freud, unlike his famous grandfather, shunned any suggestion that he was aiming to capture the inner workings of the mind or heart. Rather he concerned himself, allegedly, with likeness above all else. His portraits, of himself or anyone else for that matter, are exercises in visual scrutiny above all else, that’s for sure. He observed very well. This exhibition is a celebration and study of the act of close looking.