The Art Of Never Being Done: A Tribute To Frank Auerbach

At seven years old Frank Auerbach’s parents, Max and Charlotte, made a choice. They decided to put him on train to a foreign country, alone. They knew, most likely, that they would never see him again. It was a desperate decision, and ultimately the right one.

They remained in Germany and three years later, they were both murdered in Auschwitz.

Had they not in that moment made the darkest call a parent can make, Frank would not have survived, and the world would have lost one of the greatest portrait artists of all time. Frank died on 11 November this year. I felt compelled to write about him. Because for me, he is the creative process in its rawest, darkest, most dedicated form.

And because his paintings were the first I ever loved.

People say it’s hard to start the creative process. The blank page etc. This is true, but it’s much harder to know when you’ve done enough. It’s not something that can or should be judged by the amount of time spent. It shouldn’t be a moment defined by praise or criticism. Knowing when you’re done should be something that comes from within. It’s more like an agreement than an endpoint. A deal that’s acceptable to both parties. Between you and the words on the page. Between you and the sketch on your pad. Between you and the problem that you are trying to solve. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but we can probably all recognise the feeling when we try and fake it. We pretend to ourselves that we’re ‘there’, by adding bluster, decoration and sparkle. We ‘sell it in’ to ourselves and each other. We seek reassurance and tidy things up. But we know it's false. And then, when we feel a little more honest, we return and open it all up again.

Nobody was as loyal to that unspoken agreement between creator and artefact as Frank Auerbach. Paintings so thick and layered they took decades to dry. Paper so worked into that by the end, his drawings were stitched and stapled together. Works of art that are bruised, battered, and relentless. This is dedication to the cause. How often today do we measure our creative output by what is good enough to everyone else but ourselves? How often do we measure it by meeting expectations? Or just by meetings? How rare it is, that the ‘final version’ is a title we bestow based on our integrity. That’s art. That’s power. And you don’t have to be an artist to honour it.

It wasn’t just Frank’s method that was haunted by revisitation. It was his subject matter too. He studied the same faces over and over again, for a lifetime. Obsessively, like an archaeologist, he uncovered deeper layers of being with every sitting. He did this because he grasped the essence of portraiture. That in one single face is a whole life. A world. A history. He sought to know a face deeply. And every time, he found a new and more exposed expression. Why should we always try something different? Why are we pushed to explore pastures new? Auerbach shows us that profound creativity can also lie in pastures old. You can break new ground, with the same subject. Again, and again.

And what of chaos. And nightmares. And storm clouds on fore brows. His was a life that was born into a cacophony of death, and it burns in every hardened mark. He is - he was - the artist that cannot be separated from his art. He showed the beauty in pain. Not because pain is beautiful in and of itself, but because, in his work, it is expressed without artifice or limits. Faces melt like ghosts. Troubled eyes reveal all about themselves, and about the man who held the brush.

Today, we are encouraged to be authentically who we are. But when we create, so many of us feel an instinctive need to tone it down and pull back. We worry that we betray too much of ourselves. But we are not parts of a machine or a process. We are individuals with life pouring out of us. Every experience holding power to make its mark on what we create, and the people we create it with.

Frank died at the age of 93, at home, in London, where he built his life. His legacy remains - his dedication to a truthful resolve, his revisitation of work and subject, and his raw expression. May his memory be a blessing for creativity.

Matt Waksman is the head of strategy, advertising at Ogilvy UK