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On the 21st of October IMMA opened its doors to the Freud Project, a five-year initiative. The collection showcases fifty Freud works, including paintings, etchings and one early drawing. This is the first time that IMMA has entrusted a series of galleries to a particular project for an extended period of time.Throughout the five-year period there will be a programme consisting of related exhibitions, commissions, research partnerships, and learning programmes. The aim of the project is to create a new space for reflecting on Freud’s work and what it means in the contemporary context. In this first year, all fifty works are on display in the Freud Centre in IMMAs Garden Galleries. In the following four years, the exhibition will include new commissions by contemporary artists in response to Freud.
Lucian Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922. In 1933, Freud and his family fled to London with the spread of the Nazi regime. He studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts London and Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham. Freud is considered one of the greatest realist painters of the 20th century. His works have been shown in Tate Britain (2002), IMMA (2007) MOMA (2008), Centre Pompidou (2010) and the National Portrait Gallery (2010). Freud explores many themes in his works, which include still-lifes, landscapes, as well as portraiture and self-portraiture. He is renowned for his focus on the human form.
Famously, Freud only worked from life, his studio being a very intimate setting. Often he asked his subjects to sit for hundreds of hours in order to capture more than just appearances. This intense process was central to Freud’s work as he was committed to capturing the psychological states and personalities of his subjects. He had close relationships with most of the people he included in his work, his subject matter often comprising of his family, lovers, friends, and himself. One sitter of Freud’s, Donegal business man, Pat Doherty, stated that “I realised that what he was trying to do was get inside your head… what Freud does is paint you from the inside out, tries to get into your character.” Doherty is seen in Freud’s works “Donegal Man” (2006) and “Profile Donegal Man” (2007), both part of the IMMA collection. He sat for around 100 hours for each of those portraits.
Stepping into the Freud Centre, one is presented with portraits of Freud’s mother, Lucie Brasch (whom he was named after). Complicated ideas about family can be traced through the works on display. Freud began painting his mother in 1972, after his father’s death, when she had fallen into a depression. One of my favourite paintings in the exhibition, for its honesty and intimacy, is “Painter’s Mother Resting” (1976). It depicts a broken woman lying on her bed with her hands up, the thickly applied brush strokes showing the wrinkles and crevices in her face.
His daughters Bella and Esther were two of his most frequent sitters. “Bella and Esther” (1988) pictures the two women lying on a sofa, their poses somewhat awkward. Esther spoke in Jake Auberbach’s TV film, Lucian Freud: Portraits (2004) and stated “the painting I love most and feel is more me, is the picture of me and my sister Bella. There’s something humorous about it and I feel he captured both our characters in the way that we’re positioned… I feel really affectionate towards that painting.”
Perhaps some of Freud’s most famous works include his self-portraits. The collection includes an early work, “Self Portrait” (1949), as well as “Reflection” (1985). Reflection and mirroring can be seen in both these paintings. Again, the thickly applied brush strokes give a distinct presence and emotional output to these self-portraits.
Freud was also renowned for his ‘naked portraits’ of those closest to him. Subjects are usually depicted in a meditative mood, looking down or to one side, away from the viewer. A muted and earthy palette is used in most of these works. Freud said “as far as I’m concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does”. His thick strokes translate into flesh, skin, and hair.
The exhibition is well worth seeing, and because it will last for five years it will be interesting to see where the project will take us. It gives us time to consider the stories it tells, and it will be interesting to see other artists’ responses to Freud, and exactly what the realist artist and work means to us in the contemporary world we find ourselves in.
Wednesday-Sunday €8/5 | Tuesday Free | Students, under 18, IMMA Members Free
