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by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

It has been called ugly and to be truthful, it is somewhat shocking at first glance. But what it is, is an artists’ vision and this artist did not want to be just painting pretty pictures. What CNN has called the Overweight nude is a painting by Lucian Freud and was sold for $33.6 million. This makes it making it the most expensive painting ever sold by a living artist, thereby breaking the previous world record.

Whether negatively or positively, everyone reacts to this painting with which the artist admittedly, wanted to “astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.” There has been a charge leveled against art that it is too pretty and perhaps Freud set out to contradict that allegation. This is the sort of art that questions conventional perceptions of what defines art and incites comment. It invites controversy, discussion and debate, as all genuinely creative art should.

The painting which is called Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, was sold by New York auction house Christie’s who described the painting as a “bold and imposing example of the stark power of Lucian Freud’s realism,” depicting “the forceful and undeniable physical presence of people and things.”

The model who is a manager of a government-run job center in London (at the time of painting the picture she was a supervisor), says she was initially chary of posing nude in all her glory, but was later put so much at ease that she actually fell asleep, therefore the name Benefits Supervisor Sleeping!

Described as the greatest realist painter alive today, Freud (grandson of Sigmund Freud) has the ability to both captivate and upset the viewer. At her weight of approximately 280 pounds, Sue Tilley is hardly a conventional choice for a nude painting, but Freud has been reported has having said that he has a “predilection towards people of unusual or strange proportions”. About Big Sue, he said he was “very aware of all kinds of spectacular things to do with her size, like amazing craters and things one’s never seen before”.

A return to Rubeneque times perhaps? What do you think?