Too much information? Lucien Freud's Allegory of the Depilatory Cream is one of the museum's most controversial works. It shows a man who has developed a nasty skin rash after trying to remove the hair from his back with industrial strength depilatory ointment.
Was it really worth the effort, the artist asks: Just because ultra-tanned European men with zero body hair parade around the pool in black Speedos with towels on their shoulders doesn't mean you have to be like them.
Just be your flabby, hirsute self, Freud's portrait advises. Surely it's better to relax on a lounger looking like a Yeti on vacation, his uncompromising brushwork suggests, than not be able to go outside at all because your flesh is on fire.
Which is a bit rich coming from the grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, but still.
