Laura Cumming on Lucian Freud

'UNIDEALISED' DEPICTION: Laura Cumming on Lucian Freud. "In his paintings the head would become another limb, rather than the sphere of thought; the surface of the body would be mottled, varicose, bulked up, roughed over. Even when painting the young or slender (himself included), bodies would acquire more ballast, matter and blood, until you couldn't separate the person from the paint. Freud's colours – bruise blue, livid orange, morbid green, the irradiated red of chafed thighs, the silver of stretchmarks – gave substance to the body, but also to the life of the painting."

POEM OF THE DAY: Lucian Freud, by John Updike (via TDD).

Yes, the body is a hideous thing,
the feet and genitals especially,
the human face not far behind. Blue veins
make snakes on the backs of hands, and mar
the marbled glassy massiveness of thighs.
Such clotted weight’s worth seeing after centuries
(Pygmalion to Canova) of the nude
as spirit’s outer form, a white flame: Psyche.