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.
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