With This Freud, What You See Is What You Get ; Artist Lucian Freud, Grandson of Sigmund, Rejects Symbolism in Favor of Hyperrealistic Portraits

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Lucian Freud is considered Britain's greatest living figurative painter and a consummate portraitist, primarily of nudes. But he has also been criticized, as Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight points out, for his merciless depiction of the frailty of the human condition.

Whatever you may make of the excruciating detail with which the German-born painter has executed his subjects over his nearly 60- year career, the very fact that he has had that long to develop his technique and vision makes this 110 painting retrospective fascinating.

As curator William Feaver says, "Very few artists get that sort of time to develop." He points to some of history's …