Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / As a young art student, I revered Frank Auerbach. His practice was a battle with inner demons, one of splayed brushstroke and open flesh that plunged deep into his psyche. The stories of him laboring countless hours on the same small portrait, painting and repainting, scraping it all off at day’s end – were they not the perfect embodiment of my own tortured soul? Were we not linked by artistic fury, the desire to express something frustratingly beyond our reach?
His show “Frank & Julia,” which wrapped up just before the holidays at Luhring Augustine Tribeca, included self-portraits and portraits of his lifetime companion Julia, all created in the last ten years and none measuring larger than 30 ¼ by 22 ¼ inches. The loaded brush is still present, a rainbow of mud building reworked impasto surfaces, faces disappearing into shadow and confusion and re-emerging elsewhere, defiant. In Self-Portrait V, the head materializes in an indistinct room. The layers are almost sculpted as light spills across the side of the face and brash black strokes dart about its periphery, recalling spike tape marking up a stage for a performance. These dark, almost calligraphic lines demand attention: they call out HERE! and HERE!, so I look closer. In doing so I see they are cradling the face, more tender than bold, glancing along contours as if to reassure the artist, “I am here.”
The other self-portraits, some crusted to enamel effect, present a face weathered and thinned by time. A bologna pink here, a little phthalo green there, yellow ochre popping atop a head and lapping around the cheeks and chin, pulling my gaze along. The three works on paper (graphite, India ink, acrylic and sometimes white chalk) present the skeletal head turned at classic three-quarters pose, lips slightly parted, a buzz of eraser lines zigzagging in the whiteness.
Then there is Julia. Portraits of her show a reclined head, perhaps in slumber, a flurry of brushstrokes warmly caressing her face, at times all but obliterating her features. In Reclining Head of Julia II and Reclining Head of Julia, the horizontal bundle could be mistaken for a still life; elsewhere it radiates a tenderness that can only be affection. The paint locates her and then collapses, the space around her humming with understanding. When one has lived so close to another for so long, I imagine, the very air she breathes becomes part of how he sees her.
While the gallery is bright and open, the intimate scale of these works beckons us to come close. The sense of fragility is undeniable, but so too is the artist’s determination, and it was my miscalculation years ago to think he fell short of his intentions. Now a nonagenarian, the German-British Auerbach has been painting longer than most of us have been alive. There are many lessons in that, not least that to chase the mystery stirring inside us, one must be willing to face it every day.
“Frank Auerbach: Frank & Julia,” Luhring Augustine Tribeca, 17 White Street, New York, NY. October 27 – December 22, 2023.
About the author: Natasha Sweeten is a NY-based artist.
I too have been captured by frank auerbachs work. Photographs of paintings will never reveal them so if you missed the exhibit go to New Haven and the Yale Center for British Art to see the paintings of Auerbach and his contemporaries and so much more.
Thank you Natasha for the last line in your review
To chase the mystery inside us, one must be willing to face it everyday
All artists when they open the door to the studio
step into the unknown
What a great trail of work playing with the edge between portraiture and abstraction. Frank is one of my current favorite artists.
Seeing this work made me feel like I did looking at John Walker’s recent show. So ephemeral and exact at the same time. Great subject.
Great review.
Frank Auerbach was and is a legend. The way he treats the face with thick abstract brush strokes is absolutely brilliant. My painting professor showed me Auerbach’s works on his phone, and my mind was mesmerized.
Beautifully written piece, made me love Auerbach’s work even more, if that’s possible.