- Artist
- Lucian Freud 1922–2011
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 510 × 409 mm
frame: 624 × 524 × 75 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented anonymously 1994
- Reference
- T06834
Summary
This is a small portrait of the maverick gay performer and nightclub personality Leigh Bowery (1961-94). It portrays Bowery’s head and naked upper torso framed against dark red upholstery. His bald head rests against his raised left shoulder, his eyes are closed and his cheeks and mouth hang loosely as though he is asleep. Freud’s manner of painting emphasises the fleshiness of Bowery’s face. This is achieved through the application of paint in different textures – in some areas relatively smooth, in others thickly but delicately built up. Apparently unconscious of the artist’s gaze, Bowery has a vulnerable appearance which belies the bulk of his physical form.
Freud was introduced to Bowery by their mutual friend, the artist Cerith Wyn Evans (born 1958), in 1988. He had recently seen Bowery’s performance at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London. In his first public appearance in a fine art context, Bowery posed behind a one way mirror in the gallery for two hours a day over the period of a week. He was dressed in the flamboyant outfits he usually wore in the London nightclubs where he had become a leading figure in the underground scene, known for his outrageous and frequently offensive performances. Born and bred in Australia, he had come to London in 1980 in search of glamour. The extraordinary costumes he created for himself played on fashion, fetishism and carnival aesthetics and transformed his sixteen stones of flesh into an androgynous spectacle. Bowery used his body to construct an identity through which he could express aspects of his personality. This involved moulding and taping his torso, often quite masochistically, as though it were his sculptural material and masking his face or covering it with outlandish makeup. Holes in his cheeks, visible in Freud’s portrait, were pierced for the insertion of large safety-pins which would attach fake smiling lips to his face. Freud said of Bowery ‘I found him perfectly beautiful’ (quoted in Bernard, p.19). He also commented ‘the way he edits his body is amazingly aware and amazingly abandoned’ (quoted in Feaver, p.43). Bowery said of Freud: ‘I love the psychological aspect of his work – in fact I sometimes felt as if I had been undergoing psychoanalysis with him ... His work is full of tension. Like me he is interested in the underbelly of things.’ (Quoted in Sue Tilley, Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon, London 1997, p.220.)
Bowery posed regularly for Freud over a four year period. Freud’s first painting of him was Leigh Bowery (Seated) 1990 (private collection). To accommodate and emphasise Bowery’s enormous scale, it was one of the largest paintings Freud had ever made (2437 x 1830mm). In an even larger painting of Bowery, Leigh Under the Skylight 1994 (2972 x 1207mm, collection unknown), the model stands on a draped table towering over the artist and viewer as though he is a monumental sculpture. This contrasts markedly with the majority of Freud’s portraits and nudes which are almost exclusively painted looking down at his subject. A notable exception is his self-portrait of 1965, Reflection with Two Children (Self Portrait) (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), in which the artist is represented towering equally over the children in the painting and the viewer in front of it. Freud continued to paint Bowery up until his sudden death of AIDS at the end of 1994. The folds of fat on his torso are rendered with uncompromising honesty. Freud’s last portrait of him, Small Head of Leigh Bowery 1995 (collection unknown), completed posthumously, portrays the performer slumped against a pillow, his eyes closed in sleep. In contrast to the earlier portrait, Leigh Bowery, his face is thinner and set in loose folds of flesh, although the bulk of his body is still apparent in the section of his shoulders included within the picture plane.
Freud frames his subjects in the manner of a photographer; they are often viewed close-up and cropped dramatically. His treatment of bodies emphasises the tactile attributes of flesh almost to the point of viscerality. From his earliest paintings, his treatment of nudes was unorthodox and frequently viewed as shocking at the time of their making. At the age of fourteen he had painted a bearded, naked male figure Old Man Running 1936 (collection unknown), an irreverent representation of the patriarch whose nakedness is considered taboo in Western cultures. Man with Rat 1977 (Art Gallery of Western Australia) depicts a red-haired man lounging naked, legs splayed on a sofa and genitals almost painfully exposed, holding a black rat, the tail of which is draped sensuously over his thigh. Freud considers his paintings of nudes to be as much portraits as they refer to the traditional genre of the nude and it is significant that he chose to paint Bowery naked rather than in the costumes through which Bowery expressed his public identity. Rather than glorifying the body, Freud’s ‘realistic’ representation presents it in all the vulnerability of nakedness, emphasising his subject’s humanity.
An etched version of Bowery’s head and shoulders, Large Head 1993 (Tate P20141), portrays him with his head held erect.
Further reading:
David Alan Mellor, Interpreting Lucian Freud, London 2002, pp.34-45
Bruce Bernard, Derek Birdsall, Lucian Freud, London 1996, pp.18-19, reproduced p.204 pl.260 in colour
William Feaver, Lucian Freud, exhibition catalogue, Tate London 2002, pp.42-3
Elizabeth Manchester
March 2003
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Technique and condition
The painting was executed on a single piece of medium weight linen canvas, attached to a stretcher with (original) copper tacks. The canvas was a commercially prepared one, with a white oil-based primer probably applied over an initial layer of animal glue size. Once the fabric was attached to the stretcher, the artist applied an additional (and thicker) white priming layer to the stretched face of the canvas, which would have slightly reduced the texture of the canvas weave at its surface.
The oil paint was applied entirely by brush, apart from a small area at the intersection of the two colours in the background to the right of the sitter's head, which is more characteristic of a palette knife. The paint has a buttery texture, and was probably used unmodified straight from the tube. The paint is mostly opaque and predominantly matt, with much use made of a wet-in-wet technique. In many areas the paint has been built up with several layers resulting in a considerable total thickness. The resulting surface is heavily brushmarked and there is a complete absence of any canvas weave texture.
There is no evidence of a varnish layer. The frame is gilded, but heavily toned down with dark brown paints, and is original to the work; a label on the back of the frame reads, Tom Learnerframed and glazed according to the artist's wishes
. The painting is in excellent condition. The canvas is taut and continues to provide good support to the paint layers above. The paint layers themselves are not exhibiting any cracks or other signs of damage. The presence of glazing on the frame and a backboard at the rear has given good protection to the painting, and it should now remain in this state for a considerable period of time.
September 1997
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