Lucian Freud Quotes

Quotes about:

• Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

  Lucian Freud

  Portraits

  Sebastian Smee, Lucian Freud (2007). “Lucian Freud”, Taschen America Llc

  32 Copy quote

• What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

  Lucian Freud

  Painting, Seducing, Convince

  National Gallery (Great Britain), Lucian Freud (1987). “The artist's eye: Lucian Freud : an exhibition of National Gallery Paintings selected by the artist 17 June - 16 August 1987”

  38 Copy quote

• The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, Tasks, Purpose

  Sebastian Smee, Lucian Freud (2007). “Lucian Freud”, Taschen America Llc

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Real, Views

  79 Copy quote

• The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

  45 Copy quote

• The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.

  Lucian Freud

  Air, Smell, Space

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  Drama, People, Creative

  27 Copy quote

• I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

  Lucian Freud

  People, Paint, Spite

  25 Copy quote

• Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

  Lucian Freud

  Emotional, Want, Significance

  32 Copy quote

• I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.

  Lucian Freud

  People, Portraits, Doe

  15 Copy quote

• It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.

  Lucian Freud

  Morning, Giving Up, Ambitious

  28 Copy quote

• The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, Flesh, Auras

  Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Spring, Promise

  7 Copy quote

• My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, Surroundings

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Ducks, Skins, Recipes

  55 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Giving, Feelings

  Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

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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

  Art, Giving, Trying

  24 Copy quote

• I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, People, Wish

  "The naked and the living" by Peter Conrad, www.theguardian.com. June 8, 2002.

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Would Be, Mere

  Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

  6 Copy quote

• As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does

  Lucian Freud

  Artist, Doe, Flesh

  Lucian Freud, Richard Calvocoressi, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1997). “Lucian Freud: early works : Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art”

  11 Copy quote

• I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

  Lucian Freud

  Thinking, Half, Painting

  Interview with Martin Gayford, Independent on Sunday, May 26, 2002.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Independent, Emotional, Want

  25 Copy quote

• A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.

  Lucian Freud

  Thinking, Use, Being There

  Lucian Freud, Rolf Lauter, Jean Christophe Ammann, Craig Hartley, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (2001). “Lucian Freud: naked portraits : Werke der 40er bis 90er Jahre”, Hatje Cantz Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Character, Thinking

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Perfect, Might, Facts

  21 Copy quote

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