Lucian Freud, the English “portrait artist” died yesterday at 88. I began paying attention to Lucian Freud’s reputation sometime in the late ‘80’s, early 90’s—somewhere between his Hirshhorn Museum and NY shows. I didn’t see the shows, of course, but I read about them.  No doubt an image of one of his paintings caught my attention. I didn’t like contemporary “fine art” in those days. Too much trouble. Seemed an incestuous academic endeavor. I was making a living in graphic design. When the latest issue of CA or other design magazines were delivered to the office, I would pour over them, searching out the articles on illustration, reveling in the works of artists who were “painterly” and “figurative”; artists who could take the world I saw and show it to me fresh through their eyes. (Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy abstract and conceptual art. This, in essence, is what good graphic design is also about. But I just flat-out love to see things and get most excited seeing the craft involved in depicting what is seen.) I didn’t like the images of Mr. Freud’s paintings that I saw. They were not “pretty”. They were not the things I enjoyed seeing. But they fascinated me.  He was a figurative and painterly artist. And he was a fine artist. And he had been a figurative, painterly fine artist right through the second half of the 20^th century in spite of all other trends.

I liked him.

I went to his show at the L.A. Contemporary Museum in 2003 (billed as the biggest collection of his work outside of London). It surprised me. I expected to be negatively titillated, repulsed and somewhat debauched yet edified as if seeing a high-class exhibition of ancient pornography. Not so. If anything, his splayed, ugly nudes were cool and matter-of-fact. And since I was and am the owner/operator of a decidedly deficient, often malfunctioning body, I found his renditions uncomfortably familiar. This is just the way we are, he seemed to say.

But what really caught my eye was the way he handled paint—something you can’t see in a magazine image. It was lush and thick and applied with vigor, even aggression. That the subject was his naked daughter or a particularly unattractive friend with no cloths on didn’t seem to matter to him. In fact I found the series of paintings of his kitchen sink to be equally fascinating. He applied the same detached verve rendering a rusty sink as he did a beloved friend. From the viewer’s point of view, when I look at his nudes or portraits, I can see piles of unattractive flesh under harsh studio lighting. The painter revels in shmooshing around piles of paint, trying to capture the changes in tone and hue he observes on the subject. From the painter’s point of view, a naked body provides a more interesting set of visual challenges than a sink. So, Lucian Freud mostly painted nudes. And, of course, portraits. And the occasional dog. Bottom line: Mr. Freud loved what he was doing! He loved the act of painting.

I can see that.