Dates: 10 Mar 10 - 19 Jun 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 19, rue du Renard Paris 75191
Tel: +33 (0)1 44 78 12 33 Website

About 50 large-format paintings, most of them from private collections, as well as prints, drawings and photographs make up this show by the 87-year-old British artist, his first exhibition in France since his 1987 travelling retrospective at the same venue.

The show focuses on studio works, an arena that is, for Freud, characterised by a sparse yet distinctive array of features in which his subjects are set: bare boards, pot plants, battered sofas, iron bedsteads and paint-splattered walls. A handful of landscapes show gardens, rubbish tips and back yards visible from the windows of the succession of London studios in which he has in Paddington, Holland Park and Notting Hill.
The critics were “not so good” to the 1987 retrospective, says curator Cécile Debray, “but I thought it would be interesting to show his paintings through the subject of the studio.

It is a more French or European way of looking at his paintings...Since the 80s his paintings have become more narrative and there is more freedom in the composition. I am trying to show in this exhibition how he enlarged his painting with a dialogue with old masters and new models such as Leigh Bowery.”
The first part of the four-section show, “Interior/Exterior” is devoted to interiors and works of views from the studio window, such as Wasteground with Houses, Paddington, 1970-72, and Factory in North London, 1972.

This is followed by “Reflections”, a section devoted to his major self-portraiture, an exercise he has repeatedly returned to through his career.

Other sections are “Re-readings”, which focuses on paintings arising from works by other painters, such as Cézanne’s L’Après-midi à Naples, 1875, and Chardin’s La Maîtresse d’école, 1735, and “As Flesh”, works since 1990 of key models including performance artist Bowery and benefits supervisor “Big Sue” Tilley.

The show closes with photographs of Freud in his studio and two films about the artist by Tim Meara and his assistant David Dawson.
“Freud has a singular position, the way he is so attached to realism,” says Debray. “He has built a very particular way of painting, and his faithfulness to his aesthetic is very rare.

He is like that old idea of a master in a studio with his concentration.

This singularity is something that will remain.”
A 304-page catalogue, with essays by Jean Clair, Philippe Comar, Laurence des Cars, Eric Darragon, Richard Shiff and Debray, is published by Éditions du Centre Pompidou. .

James Hobbs

Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait), 1965

Supplied by The Art Newspaper