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.
It is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation from him at all.
People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.
I'm not a politician. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world. But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions.
Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimate relation. There is the mistake of Homer, of Shakespeare — which is perhaps, for both, the fact of not existing. Every art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, every work is the implementation of this original fault, from which come to us a new light and a risky conception of plenitude.
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