Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads

This is another exhibition of drawing in the capital so soon after that of the Impressionists (here), which closed just weeks ago at the Royal Academy of Arts. That show took in a range of drawing techniques which were executed in a variety of media and subjects which ranged from portraits, figure studies and landscapes. This exhibition though focuses on Auerbach's early charcoal portrait drawings with a few of his signature oil paintings in a heavy impasto style added to complement the drawings. The one thing that this show and that of the Impressionists have in common is the idea that drawings can be thought of as complete works of art in and of themselves and not just as preliminary studies for paintings. I published a post on Auerbach's most recent self-portraits (here) last year, and it is interesting to look at the evolution of his style and technique. The drawings at the Courtauld were created against the backdrop of a drab post-war London. They eloquently capture the mood of the time which was starkly atmospheric. There is also a sense of cloying claustrophobia about them. The sitters for the portraits are drawn from a very select group of the artists close friends and for the most part the sitters look out avoiding the gaze of the viewer only Auerbach's gaze confronts us head on. The resulting drawings look as though they were fairly arduous to sit for. This is compounded by Auerbach's technique in which he would completely erase the labours of his work after each sitting and then resume the drawing anew on the same piece of paper at the next session. Auerbach continued in this way until he was content with his work and consider it finished. This must have been incredibly frustrating for the sitters who would have required lots of patience and stamina. As a result of the artists continued erasing and drawing into the paper surface it would become weak and worn through. Auerbach though, would persist in his work and just patch the paper ground with other pieces of paper. The resultant patched collaged surfaces have the disconcerting effect of leaving the subjects looking as though they've had constructive cosmetic facial procedures Frankenstein-style. As powerful as the drawings are here it is one of the few paintings on display that most captivated me. I'd seen the portrait Head of Gerda Boehm, 1964, (here), a couple of years ago at the Barbican's Postwar exhibition which enchanted me then and still does so again here with its rich yellow ochre background and luscious thick impasto brushwork. Perhaps it is as a result of age but Auerbach's more recent works seem less intense, more relaxed in comparison to these drawings. This sense of relaxation has led to looser more abstracted artworks than these intense charcoal drawings. It is a testament to the man and his love of art that he is still producing work at the grand old age of 92. 

Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads

until 27th May

The Courtauld

Somerset House

Strand

London

WC2R

Entangled Pasts 1768 - now: Art, Colonialism & Change

John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) - Head of a Man, 1777-78

Quite a brave show this, in which a major art institution confronts its own colonial past in a show with over 100 artworks spanning a period of over 250 years from 1768 to the present day. This exhibition opens up conversations about empire, enslavement, resistance, abolition and colonialism through art. It contrasts historical art made by white men with art made by contemporary black British and American artists. One of the artists - John Singleton Copley an academician we learn, was actually a slaveholder, whilst other artists of the time were supported by patrons who would have owned plantations. It does at times make for uncomfortable but enlightening viewing. A prelude to the exhibition situated in the courtyard is the huge black and gold painted bronze sculpture by Tavares Strachan, entitled The First Supper (Galaxy Black), it is a reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, but peopled with significant figures from black history such as Haile Selassi who stands in for the Christ figure. It was certainly popular with both visitors to the exhibition and passers by attracted by the large scale of the piece. Contained within the actual exhibition itself is a contrasting painting by Frederick Elwell which interestingly depicts The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee of 1938. The painting, consists of a group of elderly white men in three-piece suits gathered around a table similarly having a meal presumably before choosing the paintings that would make it to an RA exhibition. The painting serves to show how much things have changed since that period and how much more inclusive the RA is now with their membership and selection committee with regard to race. The RA's President from 1924 to 1928 was artist Frank Dicksee who has a painting displayed here of in which two women represent the ideals of Aryan beauty. We are told that Dicksee regarded avant-garde art by Picasso et al inspired by other cultures at the time as racially impure. He is quoted as saying: 'our ideal of beauty must be the white man's'. A very provocative statement which underpins the need for an exhibition like this. The exhibition itself opens with a darkened room full of historical portraits of black men such as writer Ignatius Sancho by the likes of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. There is also a bust by sculptor Francis Harwood - Bust of a Man, 1758, which is more typical of the time, where black sitters and models weren't given any recognition and were reduced in paintings to mere background details. This marginalisation of black subjects within western art of earlier periods is addressed here in a room further into the exhibition by Barbara Walker's Vanishing Point 18 (Titian), where she emphasises the black figure in a Titian painting and reduces the main (white) characters to ghostly embossings only visible to the viewer from certain angles. There are further examples of Walker's work at the National Portrait Gallery's current show The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure (here) in my previous post. The second room of the exhibition contains Hew Locke's flotilla of model boats of all shapes and sizes, suspended from the ceiling, silently sailing down the middle of the gallery past historical and grand manner portrait paintings in a haunting re-enaction of the Middle Passage. Other personal stand-outs in the show are Betye Saar's subtle but searing I'll Bend but I Will Not Break, which features a wooden ironing board branded with that notorious image of the inhuman conditions endured on slave ships to which an iron has been manacled. Behind this tableau hangs a white sheet onto which has been embroidered the letters KKK. The piece draws you in inviting you for a closer look before delivering its killer punch. It is perhaps the most shocking of all the exhibits here. Another interesting little piece was Keith Piper's The Coloureds' Codex, An Overseers’ Guide to Comparative Complexion, a display case and guide featuring pots of pigment which classify the skin tones of all people involved in the slave trade with a eugenics diagram featuring cranial, facial and other physical measurements of the enslaved person's body. There are still echoes of this shadeism today even within the black community, where lighter complexions are judged as being more preferable, attractive and trustworthy than darker ones. One of the most interesting rooms is titled the Aquatic Sublime and features an immersive John Akomfrah three-screen video installation Vertigo Sea. I'm not usually a fan of film installations but this one gave me pause. It is about the sea and the middle passage, but also about man and his impactful interventions on the sea, the landscape and wildlife and also his cruelty to his fellow man. There are three screens projecting the most gorgeous and melancholy visuals. I was content to just sit and let their beauty wash over me for a while. This room also has a couple of Turner seascapes that contrast nicely with the large colourful abstract of Frank Bowling, and the gorgeous mythological paintings by Ellen Gallagher about the Drexciya myth – the tale of a subaqueous community founded by the unborn children of pregnant enslaved women thrown overboard in the Middle Passage between Africa and the Americas. This is quite an important exhibition which could easily be expanded or extended further into another exhibition. The curators have done a great job striking a balance between the wrongs of the past and current reflections on that troubled history. The exhibition appears to be a statement of intent by the RA that they are taking the subject of decolonisation seriously. Leaving the exhibition there was lots for me to take away and mull over. I stopped to look at the monumental Tavares Strachan sculpture in the courtyard again. The abiding memory of the show though was of that Betye Saar piece. It was brutal and nasty, but slavery and colonialism was a brutal, nasty business.

Tavares Strachan - The First Supper (Black Galaxy)

Francis Harwood - Bust of a Man, 1758

Kerry James Marshall - Scipio Moorhead, Portrait of Himself, 1776

Unknown Artist - Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit, 1740-80

Thomas Gainsborough - Ignatius Sancho, 1768

Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of a Man probably Francis Barber, c. 1770

Hew Locke - Armada, 2017-19

Kehinde Wiley - Portrait of Kujuan Buggie, 2024

Benjamin West - American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain, 1783-1819

John Singleton Copeley - Watson and the Shark, 1778

John Singleton Copeley - Mary and Elizabeth Royall, c.1758

Portrait of George Prince of Wales, later King George IV, c.1787

Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, 1779

Shahzia Sikand - Encapsulated Confrontation, 2011

Shahzia Sikand - Promiscuous Intimacies, 2020

Thomas Banks - The Hindu Deity Camadeva with his mistress on a crocodile, c. 1794

Robert Houle - Lost Tribes, 1990-91

The Singh Twins - Indiennes: The Extended Triangle from the Slaves of Fashion series, 2018

Johann Zoffany - Colonel with his Family and an Indian Ayah, 1786

Yinka Shonibare - Woman Moving Up, 2023

Mohini Chandra - Imaginary Edens/Photos of my Father, 2005-15

Karen McLean - Primitive Matters: Huts, 2010

Kara Walker - Tate Fountain with Venus, 2019

Barbara Walker - Vanishing Point 18 (Titian), 2020

Thomas Rowlandson - Richard Cosway, Maria Cosway and Ottobah Cugoano, 1784

Margaret Burroughs - Black Venus, 1957

William Grainger - The Voyage of the Sable Venus From Angola to the West Indies 

Kara Walker - no world, from An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters

Kara Walker - Freedom, A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times 

Isaac Julien - Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow

Isaac Julien - Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow

Royal Academy Schools and Ivory Lecture Tickets

William Mulready - The Toy-seller

Thomas Stuart Smith - A Fellah of Kinneh

Thomas Stuart Smith - The Pipe of Freedom

Albert Joseph Moore - The Mother of Sisera

Keith Piper - The Coloureds' Codex, An Overseers’ Guide to Comparative Complexion

Frank Dicksee - Startled, 1892

Betye Saar - I'll Bend But I Will Not Break

Frederick William Elwell - The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee 1938

Frank Bowling - Middle Passage

El Anatsui - Akua's Surviving Children

Ellen Gallagher - Surviving Spheres

J.M.W. Turner - Whalers

J.M.W. Turner - Seascape with Buoy

Lubaina Himid - Naming the Money

Yinka Shonibare - Justice For All

Olu Ogunnaike - I'd Rather Stand

Entangled Pasts, 1768-now: Art, Colonialism and Change

until 28th April

Royal Academy of Arts

Burlington house

Piccadilly

London 

W1