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Lot Essay
"This part of London is my world. I've been wandering around these streets for so long that I have become attached to them, and as fond of them as people are of their pets" (Auerbach, quoted in C. Lampert, N. Rosenthal & I. Carlisle (eds.), Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, exh. cat., London 2001, p. 15).
Frank Auerbach loves London, his home since he was bundled out of Nazi Germany as a seven year-old in 1939. He is profoundly attached to the British capital, and this attachment can be perceived in To the Studios II, painted in 1977-78. It can likewise be perceived in his unambiguous statement that, "I hate leaving my studio, I hate leaving [Camden Town], I hate leaving London. I don't think I've spent more than four weeks abroad since I was seven" (Auerbach, quoted in R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 83). To the Studios II, then, is a depiction of the very real and very private world that the artist himself inhabits and loves, a painting of the entrance to his own studio. The title comes from a sign saying TO THE STUDIOS that hangs there near an gate and is visible in one of his other views of a spot around there. The studio in question is one of three in a small cluster by Mornington Crescent, in Camden Town. He took it over from his great friend and fellow artist Leon Kossoff in 1954. While Auerbach did not seek out Camden for this reason, it is nonetheless interesting to note that this was the area inhabited, and also often depicted, by one of the painters he admires the most, Walter Sickert.
This is but one connection with the older artist, who had also been the teacher of David Bomberg, who in turn taught Auerbach during the late 1940s. In To the Studios II, one can perceive the distant influence of both of these artist, not least in terms of the autumnal palette. With Sickert, this influence is perhaps evident in the choice of such private subject matter, a fragment of the artist's own world, a scene from Auerbach's everyday life. While this was not what Sickert painting, he often deliberately focussed on the everyday, finding within it a means of making a painting all the more expressive. Meanwhile, both in terms of the use of impasto and the hints of geometry in the jumbled forms, To the Studios II faintly recalls some of Bomberg's Spanish landscapes from the late 1920s and 1930s.
Both of these aspects make To the Studios II somehow tangible, and indeed Auerbach's works revolve heavily around the sense of touch: "I felt that there was an area of experience - the haptic, the tangible, what you feel when you touch somebody next to you in the dark that hadn't perhaps been recorded in painting before" (Auerbach, quoted in C. Lampert, N. Rosenthal & I. Carlisle (eds.), Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, exh. cat., London 2001, p. 23). It is not as an act of self-indulgence that Auerbach takes the world that is immediately around him-- both friends and landscapes-- as subject-matter, but instead the desire truly to convey a sensation that is beyond the visual. By painting the world with which he is intimately familiar, he is channelling emotional content, making his work all the more expressive and direct. "I'm hoping to make a new thing that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing," he has explained. "The only way I know how... to try and do it, is to start with something I know specifically, so that I have something to cling to beyond aesthetic feelings and my knowledge of other paintings. Ideally one should have more material than one can possibly cope with" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 12).
Until the 1960s, Auerbach's landscapes tackled a number of subjects, though they were all London scenes. Early on, he focussed on building sites, where buildings would be emerging from the bomb craters that still scarred London a decade after the Second World War had ended. Even in To the Studios II, there is a sense of order emerging, albeit slowly, out of chaos in the way that the various geometrical forms and patterns converge to render the scene that recalls the scaffolding of those earlier works showing scenes of reconstruction. At the same time, the forms in To the Studios II do not acquire an overarching logic, but instead retain an element of chaos, of the ramshackle, as is only suited to the ever-changing and inconsistent area that is Camden Town, where walking along only a few streets one can pass elegant townhouses, industrial sites and modern tenement blocks. Auerbach himself expressed this characteristic when he said,
"I haven't painted [Mornington Crescent] to ally myself with some Camden Town Group, but simply because I feel London is this raw thing... This extraordinary, marvellously unpainted city where wherever somebody tries to get something going the stop halfway through, and next to it something incongruous occurs... this higgledy-piggledy mess of a city" (Auerbach, quoted in Lampert et al., op.cit., 2001, p. 100).
Auerbach's landscapes are relatively rare within his oeuvre, largely because he often uses a much larger-scale canvas for pictures in this genre. Because of the nature of the thickly-impastoed surfaces of his paintings, returning to a work that has already been begun necessarily involves scraping off the old and putting on the new, essentially repainting an entire work. Simply by looking at the amount of paint on the surface of To the Studios II, one can guess at the immense effort that months and months of this would involve, and with landscape in particular Auerbach does indeed take months. He himself has stated that painting landscapes involves a
"tremendous physical effort because... the way I work means putting up a whole image, and dismantling it and putting up another whole image, which is... physically extremely strenuous, and I don't think I've ever finished a landscape without a six or seven hour bout of work. Whereas a person or a head is a single form and it can come about in a shorter period of time" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 171).
The genesis of this physical effort comes, though, with drawing, a process that allows Auerbach to focus on the fragmentary elements of geometry that an urban scene allows, unlike the figure of a person. The landscape does not look back at Auerbach, is patient, makes no demands, is there all day, allowing him an extra scrutiny. However, a painting such as To the Studios II is not painted in situ. Working from drawings as inspiration, Auerbach relies upon the extra dimension of his intimate bond with the scene portrayed in order to be able to fully bring it to life:
"One starts a large painting, one has certain arbitrary habits or ambitions, and simply to make a record of... a decayed memory isn't sufficient. There has to be a conflict between what one wants and what actually exists; so one goes out and does a drawing, and it's always easier to do a drawing of a place nearby. Also there is a kind of intimacy and excitement and confidence that comes from inhabiting the painting and knowing exactly where everything is, and a sort of magic in conjuring up a real place, a record that is somewhere between one's feeling... and the appearance. Well, more than appearance. Substance!" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 160).
Frank Auerbach loves London, his home since he was bundled out of Nazi Germany as a seven year-old in 1939. He is profoundly attached to the British capital, and this attachment can be perceived in To the Studios II, painted in 1977-78. It can likewise be perceived in his unambiguous statement that, "I hate leaving my studio, I hate leaving [Camden Town], I hate leaving London. I don't think I've spent more than four weeks abroad since I was seven" (Auerbach, quoted in R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 83). To the Studios II, then, is a depiction of the very real and very private world that the artist himself inhabits and loves, a painting of the entrance to his own studio. The title comes from a sign saying TO THE STUDIOS that hangs there near an gate and is visible in one of his other views of a spot around there. The studio in question is one of three in a small cluster by Mornington Crescent, in Camden Town. He took it over from his great friend and fellow artist Leon Kossoff in 1954. While Auerbach did not seek out Camden for this reason, it is nonetheless interesting to note that this was the area inhabited, and also often depicted, by one of the painters he admires the most, Walter Sickert.
This is but one connection with the older artist, who had also been the teacher of David Bomberg, who in turn taught Auerbach during the late 1940s. In To the Studios II, one can perceive the distant influence of both of these artist, not least in terms of the autumnal palette. With Sickert, this influence is perhaps evident in the choice of such private subject matter, a fragment of the artist's own world, a scene from Auerbach's everyday life. While this was not what Sickert painting, he often deliberately focussed on the everyday, finding within it a means of making a painting all the more expressive. Meanwhile, both in terms of the use of impasto and the hints of geometry in the jumbled forms, To the Studios II faintly recalls some of Bomberg's Spanish landscapes from the late 1920s and 1930s.
Both of these aspects make To the Studios II somehow tangible, and indeed Auerbach's works revolve heavily around the sense of touch: "I felt that there was an area of experience - the haptic, the tangible, what you feel when you touch somebody next to you in the dark that hadn't perhaps been recorded in painting before" (Auerbach, quoted in C. Lampert, N. Rosenthal & I. Carlisle (eds.), Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, exh. cat., London 2001, p. 23). It is not as an act of self-indulgence that Auerbach takes the world that is immediately around him-- both friends and landscapes-- as subject-matter, but instead the desire truly to convey a sensation that is beyond the visual. By painting the world with which he is intimately familiar, he is channelling emotional content, making his work all the more expressive and direct. "I'm hoping to make a new thing that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing," he has explained. "The only way I know how... to try and do it, is to start with something I know specifically, so that I have something to cling to beyond aesthetic feelings and my knowledge of other paintings. Ideally one should have more material than one can possibly cope with" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 12).
Until the 1960s, Auerbach's landscapes tackled a number of subjects, though they were all London scenes. Early on, he focussed on building sites, where buildings would be emerging from the bomb craters that still scarred London a decade after the Second World War had ended. Even in To the Studios II, there is a sense of order emerging, albeit slowly, out of chaos in the way that the various geometrical forms and patterns converge to render the scene that recalls the scaffolding of those earlier works showing scenes of reconstruction. At the same time, the forms in To the Studios II do not acquire an overarching logic, but instead retain an element of chaos, of the ramshackle, as is only suited to the ever-changing and inconsistent area that is Camden Town, where walking along only a few streets one can pass elegant townhouses, industrial sites and modern tenement blocks. Auerbach himself expressed this characteristic when he said,
"I haven't painted [Mornington Crescent] to ally myself with some Camden Town Group, but simply because I feel London is this raw thing... This extraordinary, marvellously unpainted city where wherever somebody tries to get something going the stop halfway through, and next to it something incongruous occurs... this higgledy-piggledy mess of a city" (Auerbach, quoted in Lampert et al., op.cit., 2001, p. 100).
Auerbach's landscapes are relatively rare within his oeuvre, largely because he often uses a much larger-scale canvas for pictures in this genre. Because of the nature of the thickly-impastoed surfaces of his paintings, returning to a work that has already been begun necessarily involves scraping off the old and putting on the new, essentially repainting an entire work. Simply by looking at the amount of paint on the surface of To the Studios II, one can guess at the immense effort that months and months of this would involve, and with landscape in particular Auerbach does indeed take months. He himself has stated that painting landscapes involves a
"tremendous physical effort because... the way I work means putting up a whole image, and dismantling it and putting up another whole image, which is... physically extremely strenuous, and I don't think I've ever finished a landscape without a six or seven hour bout of work. Whereas a person or a head is a single form and it can come about in a shorter period of time" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 171).
The genesis of this physical effort comes, though, with drawing, a process that allows Auerbach to focus on the fragmentary elements of geometry that an urban scene allows, unlike the figure of a person. The landscape does not look back at Auerbach, is patient, makes no demands, is there all day, allowing him an extra scrutiny. However, a painting such as To the Studios II is not painted in situ. Working from drawings as inspiration, Auerbach relies upon the extra dimension of his intimate bond with the scene portrayed in order to be able to fully bring it to life:
"One starts a large painting, one has certain arbitrary habits or ambitions, and simply to make a record of... a decayed memory isn't sufficient. There has to be a conflict between what one wants and what actually exists; so one goes out and does a drawing, and it's always easier to do a drawing of a place nearby. Also there is a kind of intimacy and excitement and confidence that comes from inhabiting the painting and knowing exactly where everything is, and a sort of magic in conjuring up a real place, a record that is somewhere between one's feeling... and the appearance. Well, more than appearance. Substance!" (Auerbach, quoted in Hughes, op.cit., 1990, p. 160).