Lucien Freud has always been one of my favorite artists and I talk about one of his portraits in my tour at the YCBA, but “Lucien Freud: Portraits” revealed a very different side of his character. I once read a quote by him that said, ““know that the main point about painting is paint: that it is all about paint,” so I had this idea in my head that he was a very unsentimental and emotionless man that only wanted to paint what was in front of him and disregard the rest, but watching interviews with his family and each specific sitter was a really interesting insight to his life and technique and his intensive attempt at capturing each person the exact way he saw them through paint. By interviewing the subjects of his work we are able to learn about the very intimate process of an artist painting his model and the specific relationships he had with each sitter, which is really apparent when you look back at the paintings. There was a lot of conflicting thoughts about him in the movie, whether he was the charismatic guy everyone said he was that would cook you lunch while you were modeling, or a neglectful father who only interacted with his children when they were asked to come over for a sitting. Despite the overarching feelings towards the artist, learning about his long, laborious painting sessions was fascinating and helped me understand and appreciate his work more.