Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Interpretation
The value of an artwork lies not in its imitation of reality but in its own existence.
Lucian Freud suggests that the true essence of art is not how closely it resembles its subject but rather what it conveys on its own. The quote emphasizes that art should not be measured solely by accuracy or fidelity to the original model, but rather by its unique expression and impact.
In practice
In an art critique, to emphasize the importance of expressing personal vision in painting.
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.
I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.
Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
I read every book there was on jazz, about the original players - King Oliver, Buddy Bolden and all those groups. At one time I was fairly well schooled in that... I could tell you who played where and when, historically, way before my time.
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
And its object is Art not power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.
That part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.
He spares no resource in telling of his dead inventions... Bare verbs he rarely tolerates. He splits infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. He presses the passing colloquialism into his service. His vast paragraphis sweat and struggle; the
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