Adam Gopnik, in his absorbing “The Human Clay,” in this week’s issue, seems preoccupied with Lucian Freud’s “fat” paintings. He calls Freud “the British painter of fat people who own their fat—who maintain an ungrumbling harmony with their own imperfection so complete that it becomes a kind of perfection.” I’m not a fan of Freud’s “fat” paintings; I find them repulsive. But I love his Two Japanese Wrestlers by a Sink (1983/87). For me, that’s the work that best represents his extraordinary realist art. Why? How long have you got? Because, one, almost everything that exists deserves reverence and can be the subject of art, and this crazy-good painting of a sink, faucets, and running water proves it. Two, if you test an image by its reality, as I do, this one by Freud easily passes; you can almost hear that water as it flows from the brass taps down into the sink, into the silver drain. Three, my eyes devour the rich, gorgeous, luscious painterliness of it, each tile a miniature abstract masterpiece, the sink a blend of whites – ivory, cream, bone, porcelain – with subtle hints of beige, blue, gray, and mauve; the brass taps the essence of brassiness; the water like a braid of liquid crystal. A most original and striking picture.
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| Lucian Freud, Two Japanese Wrestlers by a Sink (1983/87) |
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