Frank Auerbach is a serious painter. His retrospective at the Royal Academy, which has given over its main rooms to a show spanning nearly fifty years of his work, is a serious exhibition.[1] The pictures themselves signal it with heavy colour: first, black, grey, brown, mud and rust, and, in later pictures strong reds and yellows (when he could afford it - earth colours are cheap). Thick paint - in early pictures so thick that it seems to parody all its Expressionist precursors - and wide strokes add weight to the message. The loaded brushmarks make some of the landscapes and portraits look like maniacally energetic variations on other, directly painted (sometimes merely decorative) work - a Constable landscape study, say, or even a Sargent portrait sketch. More obviously, the physicality of the pictures makes an emphatic claim on a central tradition of oil painting (think of it as a director seeking broader gestures from actors to renew old speeches): it is as though a Rembrandt-like stickiness of paint or a Hals-like dash has been multiplied by some large factor.

LRB 4 October 2001 | PDF Download