Talking flesh

I saw a picture of Lucien Freud. In the photograph, he is entering his studio wearing a kind of white apron, one sleeve of the shirt rolled up to elbow. I thought he looked both like a surgeon and like a butcher and his studio was like a crime scene. He wielded brushes like knives. It seems to describe his relationship with the subject to be painted, an intimacy that passes through anatomy, the need to dissect in order to understand, to violate in order to restore true dignity. An intellectual elaboration but only in the second instance, in first place muscular strength prevails. This leads me to reflect on the role of the artist's body in the creative process. Creativity requires so much a precise and personal attitude of the body, to the point that one could go so far as to say that the work of art is actually an expression of the body, that body that speaks without being questioned.

Giulia Mouse, Bathing

2019