Woman Sleeping 1995

This is a drawing by Lucian Freud of a woman sleeping. You can almost feel the artist making it. It’s all about the line here, right? The way Freud uses these insistent marks to build up the figure. Look at the weight of the body, how the darkness of the shading gives it form and presence. I can imagine Freud really scrutinizing his subject. He was interested in the body, not in some idealized way, but in all its glorious, lumpy reality. The pose is interesting, isn’t it? There’s something vulnerable about it, yet also strong. She’s taking up space. She is in her state of relaxation and rest, and has perhaps drifted off mid thought with her hand on her head. Artists are constantly talking to each other, you know? Freud learned from the past, from artists like Rembrandt and Courbet, but he pushed things further, into his own kind of intense, unflinching vision. It makes you wonder, who’s looking at this today, and what will they make next?