Frank Auerbach at the Tate Britain, exhibition review: Each painting is a world of its own

Auerbach himself has chosen the works in all but one room and his selection is perfectly judged, says Ben Luke
Liberating: Mornington Crescent (1965) marks a breakthrough in Auerbach’s work
Ben Luke8 October 2015

It’s taken me a long time to love the work of Frank Auerbach. Looking at his paintings — faces, bodies, cityscapes and landscapes distilled into slashes, dabs, blots and zig zags of thick paint — can be uncomfortable and testing.

But so is Auerbach’s experience of making them: they take months if not years of looking and applying and scraping back the paint time and again until finally, the work is right. Across seven decades, he’s been refining his process, often with the same people and places, painting every day in the same Mornington Crescent studio he’s kept since 1954.

Auerbach himself has chosen the works in all but one room and it’s a masterstroke. Not all painters know their best work, but his selection is perfectly judged, with a room for each decade from the Fifties to the 2000s. He knows that these intense paintings need plenty of breathing space, to draw us in, so the hang is spare and beautiful. Only in the final room, chosen by curator Catherine Lampert, does the precision give way to a more discursive conclusion.

The beginnings are all darkness, with figures, faces and an Earl’s Court building site almost consumed in the paint’s thickness, a rippled skin settling on the surface. The first of many paintings of Mornington Crescent, made in 1965, seems like an epiphany, liberating Auerbach — the picture space opens up, the palette becomes awash with richer colour. He began at this time to scrape off the paint and start again, rather than slowly building it up, and his language became more fluid.

The show then builds magnificently. It’s remarkable how Auerbach returns to his subjects and refreshes them — another Mornington Crescent painting from 1991, for instance, sees it ablaze with colour at sunrise.

Each painting is a world of its own, and countless times in this show I found myself lost in them. They insist on the power of paint to transcend mere depiction and conjure physicality, presence, spirit, mood and atmosphere. It’s a remarkable, transcendent substance, and Auerbach is using it as powerfully as any artist working today.

Until March 13 (tate.org.uk, 020 7887 8888)

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in