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<td align="center" width="19%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">1</font></td>
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<td align="center" width="19%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">2</font></td>
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<td align="center" width="19%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">3</font></td>
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<p><font size="1"><b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Frank
Auerbach : Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001<br>
<br>
</font></b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Frank
Auerbach is an artist whose work is almost completely diminished when
it's reproduced in books or magazines (or websites for that matter).</font><b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
</font></b><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
images are as far removed from Auerbach's actual work as a photograph
of someone is from the real person. It's all to do with the complexity
of the surfaces that Aurbach builds up on each canvas, and short of
having 3-D glasses this is all lost in the flatness of a page.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">How to
describe an Auerbach painting then? Well, he paints small to medium
sized paintings of rather ordinary subjects, portraits of people, views
of his studio and landscapes of Camden Town and Primrose Hill, the areas
near his home. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Each painting
is the result of a painstaking process, with Auerbach painting and re-painting
the canvas again and again. The paint on the canvas not only contains
the image of the subject matter but also a a trace of the time Auerbach
has spent painting.</font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">
Each painting slowly becomes a statement of Auerbach's tenacity, to
his commitment to keep going back over old ground until he is satisfied.
</font></p>
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<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">In early
works his technique was to work on top of what was already there, resulting
in the paint being literally inches thick. </font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">
<i>Head of IOW</i> from 1955, constructed over 2 years and 300 sittings,
resembles nothing so much as a skull attached to a canvas, the light
somehow held in the surface as if it were an object rather than a surface
resembling an object. Some of his early landscapes resemble the results
of someone contouring mud.</font><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">From the
60's on, Aeurbach began scraping the paint off the canvas at the beginning
of a session and starting again. This technique means that the depth
of the paint is thicker in some sections than others, resulting in a
more complex image that both moves in and out of the picture space.</font>
</p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">The contrast
between the excessive length of time it takes to produce an Auerbach
painting and the very ordinariness of the subject matter heightens the
intensity of each work. </font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">This
intensity, magnified by the number of paintings on show, left me feeling
claustrophobic and had me heading for the door at one point, after being
in the gallery for less than half an hour. </font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">At
the last minute, perhaps braced by Auerbach's own ability to go back,
I thought better of it and decided to give it another go. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Seriousness
of the kind exhibited by Auerbach is difficult, and lets face it, out
of fashion. His work and work like it, has come to symbolise an attitude
to reality that is out of touch with the shifting parameters of a post-modern
world. </font></p>
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<p align="left"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nowadays
rightly or wrongly, transience, irony and playfulness are valued more
highly than serious pondering after the 'truth'. Auerbach's work has even
been mocked by recent Turner prize nominee Glenn Brown in his flattened
renditions of Auerbach's work, where painterly expression is reproduced
as a glitzy effect.</font> </p>
<p align="left"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Simply
to characterise this work as overblown and overly serious however, is
a mistake. </font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Perhaps
Auerbach's earnest searching is something that contemporary art viewers
can't relate to, but in the context of a generation confronting both personal
and public loss in the Second World War, it could be seen to make painful
sense. </font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">This
exhibition contains over 100 paintings and drawings covering Auerbach's
career from 1954 to the present day.<br>
<br>
<i>Andrew Lockhart</i><br>
<br>
<i><br>
</i>Frank Auerbach at the Royal Academy of Arts<br>
Burlington House<br>
Piccadilly<br>
London W1V 0DS<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/" target="_blank"><b>www.royal
academy.org.uk</b></a></font></p>
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<p align="left"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Images</b><i><br>
</i>1. <i>Head of Catherine Lampert<br>
1996<br>
oil on canvas<br>
Private Collection</i><br>
<br>
2. <i>The Chimney, Mornington Crescent 1987<br>
Oil on canvas<br>
Private Collection</i><br>
<br>
3. <i>Primrose Hill, Autumn Morning <br>
1968<br>
Oil on board<br>
Private Collection</i><br>
<br>
4. <i>Head of Gerda Boehm<br>
1965<br>
Oil on board<br>
Mr David Bowie</i></font></p>
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