‘She could make anything part of a story’ – what Paula Rego chose to paint and why
However volatile her subject matter, her art never tells you what to feel, writes the Guardian's art critic - although she could indulge in a kind of knockabout buffoonery
When Paula Rego showed at the Serralves Museum in Porto in 2004, such was her fame in her native Portugal that the museum was kept open all night, and she was frequently accosted on the streets of the city with something like adulation. Fame never really affected her, and while some artists coast through their later careers, Rego continued to surprise and shock right to the end. Her work was both deeply personal and spoke of larger issues.
She told the truth and she made things up: Rego was a storyteller, both in her art and in conversation. All the people in her paintings and pastels come with backstories, alibis and dramas, and although full of clues to these histories - which the artist somehow needed in the invention of her images - her paintings are primarily pictorial dramas. In them, a lot is left unsaid, which makes her images all the more powerful and disturbing. Withholding is part of her game, but she never locked the viewer out. In interview and conversation, she could be alarmingly, refreshingly candid.
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