Sleeping Nude 

Lucian Freud captured this sleeping nude with oil on canvas, using traditional techniques that have deep roots in the history of art. What’s remarkable here is the tension between that established medium and Freud’s very physical approach. Look at the brushwork: it models the figure with great attention to texture, weight, and the fall of light, almost as though it were sculpted out of clay. You get a real sense of the model’s body occupying space, made palpable by the artist’s labor. The painting acknowledges the tradition of the nude, yet presents a very real, unidealized human form. It’s a far cry from the slick surfaces of advertising, where bodies are endlessly reproduced for mass consumption. Instead, Freud’s painting offers us a human body marked by time and experience, thoroughly handmade. And that’s precisely what gives it its power.