For many people, writes R. R. Reno in The Bohemian Mystique,  the English painter Lucian Freud’s

youthful adventures with criminals and other maladjusted misfits give his artistic vision a special authenticity. His experiences “on the margins” create a “transgressive imagination.” Or so we can easily imagine a contemporary professor—or a noted critic or a major journalist—saying.

That idea began with Rousseau and now infects nearly all of us, he goes on to write in today’s “On the Square” article, with consequences he describes.