Maggi Hambling At The Freud Museum: Artist Speaks Movingly On Film About Her Self-Portrait

Copyright (c) 2011 Nick Breeze

New film portrait of the Artist Maggi Hambling, features her talking about her self portrait currently hanging in 'Objects' exhibition at the Freud Museum, London.

Hambling painted the picture at a time when her life was "in a muddle" and filled the paintings with items from her studio including a reproduction of a Brassai photo in a newspaper supplement.

In the film 'Maggi Hambling: Dead Or Alive' shot at the National Portrait Gallery in January 2010 Hambling said of the painting: "This is the painting of the muddle of my life... a recently departed lover…people ask about the arms, well, arms move around, it seemed quite sensible to me to have one for the glass for a drink when you've had a day of complete frustration, a hand for the brush and, of course, a hand for the cigarette.

The composition happened completely by accident.. the whole thing is full of the muddle of my life.. there's an adder pretending to be dead… there's my cat Onde, who thought it was her chair.. its just one great muddle… things hanging in the space of the canvas is really what it's all about. Apparently children draw it quite a lot when they come here. Goodness knows what they understand from it!"

Hambling was born and raised in Suffolk, graduating from the Slade School of Art in 1969. In 1980, she was invited to become the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery. This led to a meeting with the performer Max Wall and subsequent portraits.

In 1995, she was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting together with Patrick Caulfield. Hambling has achieved great public attention for her public sculptures, including Oscar Wilde, situated between Charing X and the National Portrait Gallery, and Scallop on Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk. More recently she has installed a large heron as a weather vane in Brixton, South London.

The loan is part of an exhibition exploring the value of the objects we surround ourselves with and our relationship with them.

Sigmund Freud's own visit to the National Portrait Gallery in 1908 is brought to life in a display by artist Robert Poulter. The theme of people and their work environments is further explored through Eamonn McCabe's series of photographs, and Artists and their Studios, which includes portraits of 18 artists in their working environments.

A programme of talks, events and a new educational programme accompanies the exhibition and Hambling herself has given a talk in front of the painting to an audience.

The exhibition has been developed in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery and Renaissance London, as part of the National: Regional Loan Scheme (NRLS), which is funded by the Renaissance in the Regions programme.

The exhibition hopes to bring Freud and psychoanalysis into a clearer context for those that are not already familiar with them.


------

Nick Breeze
Maggi Hambling: Dead Or Alive
curator@arts.co.uk