Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Celia Paul the 53 year old British Indian painter who she was taught by Lucian Freud, becoming his muse and having his child named Frank Paul, who is also an artist.  In an interview with Matilda Battersby for The Independent Paul speaks about the effect their relationship had on her own work. Battersby states “Lucian Freud said it was “like walking into a honey pot” when he first saw Celia Paul’s paintings. What Paul, who met Freud as her tutor at the Slade in 1978, didn’t realise then, but laughs wryly at now, is that the sweet thing he was taken with was her 18-year-old self, as much as her artwork. “I really didn’t know anything about his womanising,” Paul says. “I didn’t realise how predatory he was.” She later discovered that he’d taken the job as visiting tutor at the famous London art school because his relationship at the time was going wrong and “he wanted to find a new girlfriend”. The teenage Paul was caught in Freud’s spell; and a potent one it proved. …”I was really quite disturbed by his predatoriness. It felt quite complicated, because obviously I was compelled by his art, which I admired so much.” But the 55-year-old Freud, whose mesmerising qualities had at that point already earned him 13 acknowledged children, won Paul over. It took several months for them to become lovers, and two years for Freud to paint Paul. But she would become a significant muse for him in the early 1980s.”

Inspired by Matilda Battersby ow.ly/fmFrE image source Cassone ow.ly/fmFk0

Anish Kapoor the 55 year old Indian sculptor who has resided in London since the early 1970’s and is a Royal Academician, CBE and supporter of the British Humanist Association has lashed out at the British conservative government cuts to the arts. Kapoor a Turner prize winning artist has accused the government of neo-rightwing policies in rolling back arts funding to the Thatcher years, warning the damage will take decades to recover. Arts funding in the past has enabled many of today’s high profile British artists to emerge internationally including Lucian Freud, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Francis Bacon. Kapoor is angry that young artists today will not have the same support from public institutions that he received.

Inspired by Coline Milliard ht.ly/4pG6K image source team art in berlin ow.ly/4uckt