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| Stanley Spencer . . . 'In painting after painting he made a paradise of Cookham, which in reality is no such thing.' Photograph: John Pratt |
My hero:
Stanley Spencer
by Howard Jacobson
Saturday 16 October 2010
I
loved Stanley Spencer's work from the moment I saw two nude studies of himself and his second wife, Patricia Preece, on show next to a number of more familiar Lucian Freuds. Freud had obviously learnt from Spencer, but he is too aloof and knowing ever to make you feel you are seeing a woman's body with the blazing eyes of a lover, as Spencer does. Spencer stares at the woman's flesh – "like an ant crawling over her body", in his own words – as flesh has never been stared at before.
