Is The Fort Worth Modern Art Museums's Lucian Freud Portraits Exhibit Making Other Art Museums Green With Envy?

That is England's Queen Elizabeth you are looking at in a beautiful portrait by Sigmund Freud's grandson, Lucian.

I can't imagine why this flattering portrait of England's current queen is controversial, but, apparently it is.

I also do not know if this flattering likeness of the Queen of England is currently visiting Fort Worth, along with a lot of other Lucian Freud portraits which are currently visiting Fort Worth, temporarily housed in Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum.

The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum's Lucian Freud: Portraits exhibit runs til October 28. To see it will cost you $10 unless you are a student, then it's $4. It's free for kids 12 and under. Free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month and half price on Wednesdays.

I don't know if kids 12 and under should be seeing this exhibit. Lucian Freud painted a lot of very realistic portraits of people sans clothing. Some of which might cause kids to have nightmares.

I think I have mentioned, previously, that I used to be appalled by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when that newspaper would use verbiage of the Green with Envy sort to describe something totally lame in Fort Worth to be somehow causing spasms of envy in other towns in America. Or the world.

Now, I really don't think anything about any town causes another town to become Green with Envy. That's just a goofy concept.

However, if the Green with Envy concept was ever legitimately applicable I can see how one might claim that Fort Worth had some sort of bragging rights with the Lucian Freud exhibit causing art aficionados in other towns in America to be Green with Envy because little ol' Fort Worth snagged this exhibit.

Apparently the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum's chief curator, Michael Auping, flew to London multiple times to meet with the reclusive Lucian Freud, prior to Freud's death in 2011. Auping's goal was to get Freud's permission to exhibit Freud's portraits in Fort Worth. Freud had a fascination with Texas and cowboys and was soon sold on the idea of having his portraits displayed in Fort Worth.

The collective value of the Freud exhibit in Fort Worth is worth more than the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium cost. As in more than a billion dollars.

Usually an artist's art gets valuable after the artist has died. Freud's art was breaking records at art auction houses even before he died.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping

In 2008 a Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, paid $33.6 million for a portrait titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, portraying an extremely fat, naked woman, asleep on a couch.

I do not know if the Russian loaned his expensive portrait to the Lucian Freud: Portraits exhibit, or not.

I do know I would not want that particular portrait hanging on any of my walls. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather buy with $33.6 million.