Unfinished business

Lucian Freud, 152 Portrait of the Hound, 2011

Ninety Freud paintings at the Modern FW devoured me. But I live to tell the tale.

And yes, I was very inappropriate at the museum.

“He’s such a virtuoso with the texture here,” I pointed out to a young man. It was kinda uncomfortable because we were discussing a penis juxtaposed with a rat’s tail.  And I was using nice museumy language to soften the image of rat tail and penis laid together, side by side, central to the painting. The young man winced as a woman walked up to him. I laughed (inappropriate).

“You brought your mother to the Freud exhibit?”  (Very inappropriate) They walked away.

I didn’t mind, we all skulked around, eviscerated, swallowed in a flesh sea.  Stunned looks and furtive eye contact, what the hell is this? Too big heads, too little heads, too big hands, too big eyes. Contortions and legs, naked, bare. A flesh-eating exhibition pulling no punches. Clashing angles pushed hard against each other and bodies truncated, not fit in their painted rooms. As they did not fit into my head.

I approached the teenage docent, “So are you shell-shocked?”

“It was hard the first week,” he admitted. “They started to rotate us, so I’m ok now.”

My favorite  – the last painting of the show. The unfinished one of Freud’s assistant David.

“Disturbing,” murmured a passing Dallasite.

Damn right and it should be. Why be subjected to these horrors of flesh? Because I extrovert beauty and introvert truth. It’s too bright, too hard, too loud, too flesh. I admire Freud for drawing me in with beautiful paint strokes, daring emotion and pushing me away with awful contortions and rooms that defy balance. It’s the pushpull between loveliness and grimy street truth. It’s unfinished business for me.