Leigh under the Skylight, 1994, Lucian Freud, Oil on canvas
Private Collection. Image: Bridgeman Images. © Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Copyright Service
Transcript
[sweeping piano music evoking a reflective mood]
Julian Brooks Leigh Bowery was Australian and moved to England in about 1980 in search of glamour. He was this extraordinary figure, a maverick gay performer, fashion designer, a constant on the London night club scene in the early '90s, ... somebody that, if your party or your club was going to succeed, then you had to have Leigh Bowery there, behaving outrageously, and often, offensively.
Female Narrator Getty Curator Julian Brooks.
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Julian Brooks The paintings that Freud made of Bowery are some of the physically largest that he painted. He makes Bowery a monument – he’s standing on a pedestal, like a sort of classical statue. And even though Bowery was noted for his extraordinary costumes and the 'looks' that he created, Freud strips that all away and he's just interested in the naked form the humanity of this man.
In the history of art there's a long lineage of drawing and painting the nude model. But Freud, basically, takes it to the next level.
Female Narrator He makes the paint register as flesh and blood, laying down thick strokes in a varied range of shades and tones. Yet what he captures is more than skin–deep. The painter comprehended Bowery both physically and psychologically.
[sweeping piano music evoking a reflective mood]
Bowery once said working with Freud–who often painted the same subjects for months–was like undergoing psychoanalysis. It's a reference to Freud being the grandson of Sigmund Freud.
Julian Brooks Freud said of Bowery, "I found him perfectly beautiful."
Female Narrator Freud completed this portrait in 1994, the year Bowery died of AIDS.
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