I want the paint to work as flesh does. If you don’t overdirect your models and you focus on their physical presence, interesting things often happen. You find that you capture something about them that neither of you knew.

—Lucian Freud, “Lucian Freud in Conversation with Michael Auping” (May 7, 2009), in Lucian Freud: Portraits (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2012)

In this final blog post of our series highlighting “The School of London’s” most significant exhibitions leading up to the J. Paul Getty Museum’s current retrospective London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, Kitaj, we will examine recent years, when L.A. Louver presented several shows demonstrating the mastery and allure of these renowned artists.

Notable among these exhibitions was 2013’s R.B. Kitaj, a solo retrospective chronicling the artist’s work between 1992 and 2007. Many of the show’s pieces touched upon Kitaj’s passion for art history. For example, highlights included his own version of Vincent van Gogh’s seminal work, “The Potato Eaters” from 1885 and “1906,” an homage to Paul Cezanne. In these later years, Kitaj also began deeply exploring his Jewish heritage and incorporating these themes in his work. In 2008, Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center hosted R. B. Kitaj, Passion and Memory, Jewish Works From His Personal Collection in conjunction with Portrait of a Jewish Artist: R.B. Kitaj in Text and Image at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. Tragically, these exhibitions were presented posthumously after his death in 2007.

That same year, Kitaj’s colleague Leon Kossoff explored his reverence for the Old Masters with his well-received Drawing from Painting exhibition at the National Gallery in London. The show featured several of his famed Spitalfields Christchurch paintings as well as his drawings based on the works of Rembrandt, Cezanne, and Rubens. Four years later, L.A. Louver unveiled Leon Kossoff: Recent Works 1999-2010. This solo retrospective also traveled to Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York and Annely Juda Fine Art. The show’s twenty-five paintings and drawings included lush landscapes and immensely personal portraits of his wife and friends.

In addition to this solo exhibition, L.A. Louver exhibited Figuration: Paintings and Drawings in 2010 featuring longtime gallery collaborator and painter Charles Garabedian, David Hockney, Kitaj, and Kossoff exploring their radically divergent, yet equally enthralling ways of depicting the human figure.  

Ultimately, it is the choice to depict the human form that binds all of these artists together as Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight points out in his recent critique of London Calling. He explains, “These artists probe the tension between the figurative and the abstract.” In a beautifully full circle moment, here we find Knight praising this school just as he did over thirty years earlier with first L.A. Louver show, This Knot of Life in 1979. Following in the grand, rich tradition of figuration popularized by the Old Masters, “The School of London” electrifies the movement, pushing it ever forward.

London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj is now in its final week at J. Paul Getty Museum, and ends om November 13. For more information, please go to www.getty.edu.

IMAGES: (left to right; top to bottom) Leon Kossoff, From Cézanne: The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 2007; Leon Kossoff, Cherry Tree and Young Girl, 2007 - 2008; Leon Kossoff, Nude on a Red Bed, 1969. R.B Kitaj, Self-Portrait, 2007