Works on paper. The nudes – or “naked portraitsâ€, as he likes to call them – in this show at Rex Irwin Art Dealer do not set out to shock or revolt. And yet by refusing to abstract or idealise the bodies of those who sit for him, Freud undermines the dominant tradition of the nude in Western art, finding fresh ways to command our attention. These works capture the physical stress and the awkwardness but also the surprisingly beautiful shapes and unexpectedly athletic configurations of the endlessly idiosyncratic human body in states of rest and abandon.
