VIDEO: WSJ review of "Lucian Freud Portraits" + BBC2 programme

This is the Wall Street Journal's video overview of the new "Lucian Freud Portraits" exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.  It's the best video I've seen to date in terms of coverage of the paintings in the exhibition.

There's a programme - Lucian Freud: Painted Life - on BBC2 on Saturday 18th February

Painted Life explores the life and work of Lucian Freud, undoubtedly one of Britain's greatest artists. Freud gave his full backing to the documentary shortly before his death. Uniquely, he was filmed painting his last work, a portrait of his assistant David Dawson.

Lucian Freud: Painted Life also includes frank testimony from those who knew and loved this extraordinary personality. Members of his large family (he had at least fourteen children by a number of different women), close friends including David Hockney and Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, his dealers, his sitters and his former lovers recall for the first time a complex man who dedicated his life to his art and who always sought to transmute paint into a vibrant living representation of humanity.

The film shows how Freud never swam with the flow and only achieved celebrity in older age. He rejected the artistic fashions of his time, sticking to figurative art and exploring portraiture, especially with regards to nude portraiture, which he explored with a depth of scrutiny that produced some of the greatest works of our time.

This documentary is both a definitive biography and a revelatory exploration of the creative process.