A friend told me this morning that Lucian Freud (shown above in an early photo by Cecil Beaton) was all over the internet, having died in London late Wednesday night at age 88. Hearing about this event 36 hours after it occurred was a reminder that I never find out about breaking news until it is relayed to me by somebody else. Then I always think I really ought to look at a newspaper for myself occasionally (or its online/broadcast equivalent). Because I never do, I sometimes miss a major story altogether and only find out about it weeks or months later by accident. But since most of the things I miss are things that in a better world I would not have known about at all (because in a better world they wouldn't exist in the first place) it is unlikely that I will mend my ways.
Late last year I talked here about a new and flawed but still fascinating book by an arts journalist who spent several months showing up at Lucian Freud's studio and sitting for a portrait. I suppose that is where I picked up the idea that this particular old man's dedication and vitality would defeat even the laws of mortality that hang over the rest of us.
