Leading British painter Lucian Freud dies aged 88 (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – British figurative painter Lucian Freud, whose uncompromising, fleshy portraits made him one of the world's most revered and coveted artists, has died aged 88.

His long-time New York art dealer William Acquavella said the grandson of Sigmund Freud had died at his home in London on Wednesday night after an unspecified illness.

"My family and I mourn Lucian Freud not only as one of the great painters of the 20th century but also as a very dear friend," the dealer said in a statement.

"As the foremost figurative artist of his generation he imbued both portraiture and landscape with profound insight, drama and energy.

"In company he was exciting, humble, warm and witty. He lived to paint and painted until the day he died, far removed from the noise of the art world."

Whatever he thought of the art world, and the celebrity status that often comes with it, Freud was very much its darling toward the end of his life.

His "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," a 1995 portrait of a obese woman asleep in the nude on a sofa, fetched $33.6 million at Christie's in 2008, an auction record for a living artist.

The buyer was widely reported to be Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Freud tended to paint people he knew -- family, friends and fellow artists, but was also famously commissioned to depict Queen Elizabeth in 2001.

The resulting portrait, an unflattering portrayal of a severe-looking monarch, divided opinion, with Arthur Edwards, photographer for the Sun tabloid, saying: "They should hang it in the kharzi (toilet)."

FLEEING THE NAZIS

Freud was born in Berlin in 1922 to a well-off German family who fled the Nazis for Britain in 1933 and became British citizens in 1939. He went to several schools but is said to have attended few classes.

"I was very solitary. I hardly spoke English. I was considered rather bad tempered, of which I was rather proud," he

once said.

Freud attended a string of art colleges and had a brief spell with the merchant navy before turning to art full time.

Until the 1950s, his paintings were relatively refined, explained by his use of pointed brushes.

But from around 1956, he began to loosen his style and employ stiffer hogshair brushes and thicker paint, resulting in works like "Woman Smiling" in 1959 which Tate Britain gallery in London described as a "landmark work."

Christie's auctioneers said the shift to a fleshier, looser tone was partly down to his friendship with painter Francis Bacon who made a deep impression.

Referring to Bacon's work, Freud was quoted as saying: "(It) impressed me, his personality affected me. He talked a great deal about the paint itself, carrying the form and imbuing the paint with this sort of life."

Freud also said of his own art: "As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does."

Freud's new style initially alienated many critics, some of whom described it as "shocking," "violent" and "affected." The starkly intimate nature of many of his portraits could also make viewers feel like voyeurs.

According to the New York Times, Freud's art remained unfashionable in the United States until 1987, when the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington exhibited his work in a "watershed event."

Art critic Robert Hughes proclaimed him "the greatest living realist painter" and a Freud cult developed.

Freud married twice and had several children, although he was widely believed to have fathered many more than he acknowledged.

(Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson)

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Lucian Freud, pre-eminent British painter, dead at 88 (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – Lucian Freud, who died in London on Wednesday aged 88, was widely recognised as the greatest contemporary British artist in a career spanning seven decades.

The grandson of Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis who helped shape modern views about human behaviour, Lucian Freud also influenced the exploration of the subconscious through his art.

Born to architect Ernst Freud, Sigmund's youngest son, in Berlin in 1922, Lucian moved to England with his family aged 10 to escape Nazism and became a British citizen in 1933.

Freud will be remembered for his signature nudes -- showing off the plentiful body of male model Leigh Bowery for instance -- and self-portraits such as the powerful 1993 painting of Freud as a naked older man waving his brush like a weapon.

"My work is purely autobiographical," Freud said. "It is about myself and my surroundings. It is an attempt at a record."

Freud's subjects ranged from the powerful to the plain, and he has been known to shy away from professional models.

Like many monarchs before her, Queen Elizabeth II turned to a leading artist of her time when she asked Freud to paint her portrait in 2001, agreeing to several hours-long sittings.

The result was a small closeup portrait of the queen under a heavy crown that was dismissed by many of her fans as "ugly" and decried as "a travesty" by The Sun newspaper. The queen herself made no comment.

"I paint people," Freud once said. "Not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

The painter was notorious for subjecting his models to sittings lasting up to a year, and the intense relationship struck up between artist and subject provided the creative force for many of his works.

Freud, once described by art critic Robert Hughes as the greatest living realist painter, studied at London's Central School of Art and Goldsmiths College, but his career was interrupted when he served as a merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy in 1941.

After an early flirtation with surrealism, Freud turned to portrait painting, particularly nudes, in the 1950s.

Freud achieved global fame as a sought-after artist in the 1990s when his 1995 Portrait "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" fetched 33.6 million dollars at a Christie's auction in New York.

His portrait of a pregnant Kate Moss sold for 10 million dollars in 2004 but a 1978 self-portrait of Freud nursing a black eye fetched a disappointing 3.2 million euros at a London auction held just last month.

Little is known about Lucian's relationship with his grandfather, and some experts have suggested that the artist managed to escape growing up in the shadow of psychoanalysis.

"He does talk about his grandfather, he is very fond of him," said Freud's assistant of 19 years, David Dawson. "His teenage years were spent with his grandfather."

After mostly ignoring his work for decades, Paris earlier this year gave Freud top billing in a show at the Pompidou Centre.

"Lucian Freud - The Studio" featured 47 paintings, the first showing of his work in Paris since 1987, with many pieces coming out of private collections for the fist time in years.

Freud, who became increasingly reclusive in his later years, was rumoured to have fathered dozens of children.

Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate gallery, paid tribute on Thursday.

"The vitality of (Freud's) nudes, the intensity of the still life paintings and the presence of his portraits of family and friends guarantee Lucian Freud a unique place in the pantheon of late 20th Century art," he said.

"His early paintings redefined British art and his later works stand comparison with the great figurative painters of any period."

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American painter Cy Twombly dies aged 83 (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – American painter Cy Twombly, renowned for his large-scale scribbled canvases, died in Rome on Tuesday. He was 83.

Gagosian Gallery, which represented the artist, did not give the cause of his death, although media reports said that he had suffered from cancer.

Italy's Ansa news agency said he had been hospitalized in Rome for a few days and had wanted to be buried in the city.

"The art world has lost a true genius and a completely original talent, and for those fortunate enough to have known him, a great human being," Larry Gagosian said in a statement.

"We will not soon see a talent of such amazing scope and intensity. Even though Cy might have been regarded as reclusive, he didn't retreat to an ivory tower. He was happy to remain connected and live in the present."

Gagosian added that Twombly, who divided critics throughout his life and often refused to fit in with the trends of the day, never lost his sense of humor and always remained humble.

He settled permanently in Italy in the late 1950s, even as the art world was heading in the opposite direction -- from Europe to New York -- a move the New York Times called "the most symbolic of his idiosyncrasies."

Twombly never had an easy ride with art experts, who questioned whether his calligraphic style and use of words and graffiti in paintings were worthy of a place at the high table of 20th century abstract art.

But the figure who shunned publicity was a star of the contemporary art world by the time of his death. Less than two months ago a Twombly work from 1967, "Untitled," sold for $15.2 million at Christie's in New York.

Only last year he was invited to paint the ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes at the Louvre in Paris, only the third contemporary artist to be given such an honor.

The resulting work was an abstract composition on a blue background complementing Georges Braque's ceiling in the adjoining gallery.

On it appeared the names of the most celebrated classical Greek sculptors of the fourth century, underlining Twombly's fascination for classical art and history.

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1928. He studied in a number of U.S. art colleges before traveling extensively in Europe. He served as a cryptologist in the U.S. military in the early 1950s.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi in Milan, Editing by Louise Ireland)

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American painter Cy Twombly dies aged 83: gallery (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – American painter Cy Twombly, renowned for his large-scale scribbled canvases, died in Rome on Tuesday. He was 83.

Gagosian Gallery, which represented the artist, did not give the cause of his death, although media reports said that he had suffered from cancer.

Italy's Ansa news agency said he had been hospitalized in Rome for a few days and had wanted to be buried in the city.

"The art world has lost a true genius and a completely original talent, and for those fortunate enough to have known him, a great human being," Larry Gagosian said in a statement.

"We will not soon see a talent of such amazing scope and intensity. Even though Cy might have been regarded as reclusive, he didn't retreat to an ivory tower. He was happy to remain connected and live in the present."

Gagosian added that Twombly, who divided critics throughout his life and often refused to fit in with the trends of the day, never lost his sense of humor and always remained humble.

He settled permanently in Italy in the late 1950s, even as the art world was heading in the opposite direction -- from Europe to New York -- a move the New York Times called "the most symbolic of his idiosyncrasies."

Twombly never had an easy ride with art experts, who questioned whether his calligraphic style and use of words and graffiti in paintings were worthy of a place at the high table of 20th century abstract art.

But the figure who shunned publicity was a star of the contemporary art world by the time of his death. Less than two months ago a Twombly work from 1967, "Untitled," sold for $15.2 million at Christie's in New York.

Only last year he was invited to paint the ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes at the Louvre in Paris, only the third contemporary artist to be given such an honor.

The resulting work was an abstract composition on a blue background complementing Georges Braque's ceiling in the adjoining gallery.

On it appeared the names of the most celebrated classical Greek sculptors of the fourth century, underlining Twombly's fascination for classical art and history.

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1928. He studied in a number of U.S. art colleges before traveling extensively in Europe. He served as a cryptologist in the U.S. military in the early 1950s.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi in Milan, Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Painter directs short film starring Lindsay Lohan (Reuters)

VENICE (Hollywood Reporter) – For Commercial Break, one of the most anticipated exhibitions running concurrent to the 54th Venice Biennial, artist Richard Phillips - primarily a painter - tried his hand at filmmaking, creating two short ethereal movies, one starring Lindsay Lohan and former porn star-turned-actress Sasha Grey.

Grey's film is a subdued night scene that follows her walking as if in a daydream through John Lautner's famous Chemosphere house, owned by art book publisher Benedikt Taschen; while Lohan's film shows the starlet plunging out of the crystal blue waters of an infinity pool.

Phillips, who makes bold pop paintings of celebrities usually rendered from imagery culled from magazines and the Internet, tried his first foray into collaboration with these two stars. The result has been two of the most talked about works among the show's 150 artists, all of whom were asked to make 90 second films.

Realizing that with so many people in the exhibition he wouldn't get much airplay, Phillips released the films virally first, to maximize exposure. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the artist in Venice at the lavish Bauer Hotel to discuss his latest body of work.

The Hollywood Reporter: Had you been thinking about film for a while?

Phillips: I had not a single thought to make a film. I had decided that I wanted to take photographs of two actors, and I had been in communication with both for different projects. When this came up, I said well, if we can go to the trouble of setting up a shoot, why not bring video and try to get some motion footage of that.

Realizing I had no experience, I contacted my friend Taylor Steele, who is a legendary surf filmmaker. We set up our offices in Los Angeles to begin an incredible week of filming. We had the Chemosphere House so we were shooting in a work of art. We had one day each with the talent and we had a day before to practice out of Santa Monica.

THR: Were you actually making those directorial calls when it came time to shoot?

Phillips: Yeah. I made these storyboards that were based on my experiences watching Bergman's "Persona" and Goddard's "Contempt." Those films really matched in a lot of ways the ideas of these young actors in a transformative moment, making a decision to live their lives in art and the consequences that ultimately befall that. With Lindsay, it's very easy to work with her because she is an extraordinarily beautiful woman. She would always get it on the first take. With Sasha, she had a huge career in adult performance and a new career in cinema and television. The melancholy that happens in her film is something that you never see in her former career. In the work she did on "Entourage" and with Steven Soderbergh ("The Girlfriend Experience"), you're still seeing her being positioned in relationship to her past and I wanted to let her be above that.

THR: Do you think both of these women gravitated toward an art related project because they are both trying to shift the idea that people have about their past?

Phillips: I think that could be assumed but the fact really is that the way I initially got in contact with them is about painting. So if you think about it in a film way you could say yes, it was on our mind to present them independently in this state of mind as they are today, as people and not as these media characters.

THR: Was it a challenge to edit down the footage to 90 seconds?

Phillips: I worked with Haines Hall of Spot Welders who had worked with Sofia Coppola on "The Virgin Suicides" and Doug Aitken's big project at MoMa. He was extremely experienced in crushing huge amounts of footage into highly communicative short bursts. We started with Lindsay and the amounts of gorgeous footage we had gave me chills.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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