.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
In soft wisps and smudges of charcoal and pastel, Lucian Freud’s Young Magpie, 1993 is a daring and enigmatic depiction of animal life, a subject that was undeniably close to the artist’s heart and prominent throughout his oeuvre. Animated and bristling with life, the magpie, with its black beady eyes and twitching beak, is captured in four iterations upon an expansive white paper surface. Using a soft charcoal, Freud establishes a rich textural surface of quick, dynamic strokes, creating a work with almost painterly depth. Monochromatic flashes emulate the unmistakable, shining black and white plumage of the magpie. The four poses appear on the page like a collection of glimpses and fragments. Conjuring superstitious counting and the nursery rhyme ‘One for Sorrow’, Freud’s Young Magpie also conveys an immediate and live recording of his subject. ‘I am never inhibited by working from life’, Freud reflected, ‘On the contrary, I feel more free; and I can take liberties which the tyranny of memory would not allow’ (L. Freud, quoted in Lucian Freud: Works on paper, London 1988, p. 16). Here, treating his study of the young bird with the same observational rigour as a portrait, Freud’s examination is deft and reactive.
The magpie pictured here, named Gussie, belonged to Polly and Barney Bramham, the two children of Freud’s friend Christopher Bramham, whom he met a decade prior in 1983. Sitting for Freud on a couple of occasions during the 90s, Polly and Barney often brought their pets to the studio, as seen in the momentous Bramham Children and Ducks (1995). In Young Magpie, in half-rendered profile, Polly can be seen holding Gussie’s beak between her lips in a pose that is both disquieting and intimate. The bird’s twittering was apparently incessant, and could only be quietened by gently taking its head or beak in one’s mouth. Attesting to the complex relations between human and animal that so transfixed Freud, the pose also calls to mind tender iconographies of the kiss, or the mother and child. In a surrealist twist, the daring meeting of sharp beak with mouth evokes billing—the sharing of food between the mother bird and its young (E. Schmidt (ed.) Lucian Freud und das Tier = Lucian Freud and the Animal, Cologne 2015, p. 11). Imbuing the work with suspense and a mysterious charm, Polly comes strangely close to her bird with an innocent and free-spirited trust.
In his home and in his canvases, Freud exhibited a vibrant menagerie of exotic and domestic animals: monkeys, taxidermy zebras, chickens, crustaceans, herons, horses, dogs, cats, bats, a rat. This zoological enthusiasm often centred around birds. In the 1940s, the artist owned several birds of prey and indeed, the depiction of animals constitutes some of his earliest artistic endeavours. At the age of just eight, Freud took crayon to paper to sketch five colourful birds roosting upon the branches of a tree. His accomplished works Chicken in a Bucket (1944) and Dead Heron (1945) attest to the artist’s abiding curiosity for these feathered creatures. Executed in 1993, during a period of thrilling international acclaim and rapid artistic production, Freud’s Young Magpie is charged with optimism and animation; the bird flutters with life.
Distinguished for its sharp eye and sharp intelligence, the bird is reputed for its mischievous proclivity for thieving silver and gold objects. It is the magpie’s distinct chatter, however, which has been the subject of much contemplation by ancient and medieval writers. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History describes the birds as deeply mimetic, capable of hearing and imitating human speech with uncanny precision and intonation. It is unsurprising that Freud would have been charmed by this conspiratorial bird. Succinctly expressed by Eva Schmidt: ‘Freud likes to compare. He sees the human in animals and the bestial in human beings’ (ibid).
The magpie pictured here, named Gussie, belonged to Polly and Barney Bramham, the two children of Freud’s friend Christopher Bramham, whom he met a decade prior in 1983. Sitting for Freud on a couple of occasions during the 90s, Polly and Barney often brought their pets to the studio, as seen in the momentous Bramham Children and Ducks (1995). In Young Magpie, in half-rendered profile, Polly can be seen holding Gussie’s beak between her lips in a pose that is both disquieting and intimate. The bird’s twittering was apparently incessant, and could only be quietened by gently taking its head or beak in one’s mouth. Attesting to the complex relations between human and animal that so transfixed Freud, the pose also calls to mind tender iconographies of the kiss, or the mother and child. In a surrealist twist, the daring meeting of sharp beak with mouth evokes billing—the sharing of food between the mother bird and its young (E. Schmidt (ed.) Lucian Freud und das Tier = Lucian Freud and the Animal, Cologne 2015, p. 11). Imbuing the work with suspense and a mysterious charm, Polly comes strangely close to her bird with an innocent and free-spirited trust.
In his home and in his canvases, Freud exhibited a vibrant menagerie of exotic and domestic animals: monkeys, taxidermy zebras, chickens, crustaceans, herons, horses, dogs, cats, bats, a rat. This zoological enthusiasm often centred around birds. In the 1940s, the artist owned several birds of prey and indeed, the depiction of animals constitutes some of his earliest artistic endeavours. At the age of just eight, Freud took crayon to paper to sketch five colourful birds roosting upon the branches of a tree. His accomplished works Chicken in a Bucket (1944) and Dead Heron (1945) attest to the artist’s abiding curiosity for these feathered creatures. Executed in 1993, during a period of thrilling international acclaim and rapid artistic production, Freud’s Young Magpie is charged with optimism and animation; the bird flutters with life.
Distinguished for its sharp eye and sharp intelligence, the bird is reputed for its mischievous proclivity for thieving silver and gold objects. It is the magpie’s distinct chatter, however, which has been the subject of much contemplation by ancient and medieval writers. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History describes the birds as deeply mimetic, capable of hearing and imitating human speech with uncanny precision and intonation. It is unsurprising that Freud would have been charmed by this conspiratorial bird. Succinctly expressed by Eva Schmidt: ‘Freud likes to compare. He sees the human in animals and the bestial in human beings’ (ibid).