Barcelona
Lucian Freud
CaixaForum Barcelona
Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8
October 13, 2002–January 12, 2003
Tate Britain
Millbank
June 20–September 22, 2002
New Museum
235 Bowery
February 9–May 25, 2003
Curated by William Feaver
If ever there was an occasion to learn to stop worrying and love expressive figuration, this is it. Lucian Freud’s most comprehensive retrospective to date presents six decades of yummy, icky bodies rendered in yummy, icky paint, with subjects ranging from provincial lads and lasses to performance artist Leigh Bowery to the painter’s own fabulous family. Freud biographer William Feaver does the curatorial honors and is joined in the catalogue by painter Frank Auerbach and Tate Britain curator Lizzie Carey Thomas. On the way from angry young man to grand old master, Freud never softened the work’s alienation, sexuality, or aggression; he’s not getting older, he’s getting better.