“Only the true looks new, otherwise it looks like a picture”, believed Frank Auerbach, the celebrated German-British artist who died at his home on 11 November at the age of 93. Nothing could be more painterly than his work; his pigments stand proud of the canvas like a sea at the beginning of a storm, with paint cresting and falling messily. Few artists made such physical work, so tactile, gloopy and hefty with paint so thick it is three-dimensional. But his images rarely look like a picture.
Auerbach was uninterested in the picturesque, in prettiness, indeed for someone so defined by surfaces he was unconcerned with exteriors because they were unreliable – or not always true. He defined his intention by way of analogy: “If you are in bed with somebody, you are aware of their substance in some way in terms of weight; I actually think that is the difference between good paintings and less good ones in whatever idiom.” He wanted to paint weight, both physical and psychological.
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