Lucian Freud

One of the Leopard's favorite painters who lived in my lifetime is the polarizing British painter Lucian Freud. For me, he is the quintessential artist, whose work developed over time passing through many periods of development until he found his most famous and recognizable style and subjugation - pulpy, thickly painted large oils of nudes in provocative poses, both and male and female.  What makes these works so striking is their startling honesty. The pallid fleshiness of his models denies idealism. This is what a human body of a certain age looks like, and there is much beauty in his depictions but no interest in what passes for conventional beauty, at least of the commercial sense.
Evidence of the inner working of Freud's mind are his landscapes which are just as sensuous but also depicts nature not in idealized light or perfect conditions but also in all its ugly beauty.

By all accounts, the painter, who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was a scoundrel, often sexually dominating his models and was,  by some reports, cruel and arrogant. Yet, the the indelicate master's masculine forcefulness,  seen in his blunt but wonderfully precise paint strokes may, in the end,  be exactly what captivates the viewer: his work captures you in its grip and dares you to look away.

Natural Ass

Living in a wonderful honeycomb of a city like Manhattan, The Leopard can't help but occasionally witness some strange things.

I was standing outside my office chatting with coworkers one warm summer afternoon last week when we all witnessed what is a fairly familiar sight in these parts: a young woman, possibly homeless, possibly schizophrenic, walking past us at a brisk pace down the sidewalk of our building raving aloud and screaming slurred obscenities. This alone wouldn't have necessarily interrupted our socializing, until, out of the corner of our eyes, this young girl of perhaps 25 to 35 began to strip.

Off went her blouse, which revealed a crisp white bra beneath (not what you'd expect a homeless person to own) and then moments later, while still on a determined path, off went her maroon skirt, under which there was no crisp anything.

The effect of this woman's dark brown bottom in full view,
in the unusually bright sun in the middle of the afternoon, was profoundly disconcerting, even dream-like, in contrast to the fully clothed surrounding hordes of business people, taxis, and tourists. People stopped whatever conversations they were having on their cellphones to gawk or report, and the door man in front of a ritzy hotel where she finally paused to continue her rant almost swallowed his taxi whistle. Parents covered the eyes of children, and traffic almost came to a violent halt.

And all over a natural ass.