Frank Auerbach - Self-Portrait, 2023
"I didn’t find actual formal components of my head all that interesting when I was younger, smoother and less frazzled. Now that I’ve got bags under my eyes, things are sagging and so on, there’s more material to work with." - Frank Auerbach.
There are several exhibitions currently across the capital staged to coincide with the re-opening after three years of the National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition involved a visit to Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert in St James's to see a compelling exhibition of self-portraits by nonagenarian Frank Auerbach. Self-portraits are a rare aspect of Auerbach's work although he is known for his paintings of portraits of a small group of sitters. Some of these portraits of his regular sitters were seen in a joint exhibition - Frank Auerbach/Tony Bevan: What Is A Head? posted previously on this blog two years ago (here). He had produced only three self-portraits between 1958 and 1965. Auerbach began a self-portrait in 2001 but did not complete this until 2021. "I'm rather glad I didn't do self-portraits before (...) in the last few years I've been working from myself, and in fact I find it endlessly interesting. It's different every time you do it", he states. This is the first ever exhibition dedicated to Auerbach's self-portraiture in which his face becomes the subject of his own self-scrutiny. There is a certain rawness and sincerity in these portraits. I couldn't help but draw comparisons here between Auerbach and the honesty in which Rembrandt portrayed himself in his own great self-portraits, and that late Lucian Freud self-portrait in which he depicted himself nude wielding a paintbrush. Auerbach portrays himself through a range of expressions in this series of portraits. He is at turns haughty, sad, solemn, and appears even mystified in one piece, all expressed in his signature abstracted style of loose brushstrokes and close colour harmonies. I found his stylistic shorthand of the thick series of brushstrokes a little too heavy handed in the application at times perhaps, but they were necessary to define certain facial features. The drawings here were a beautiful, sparse and ghostly, sequences of wiry electric lines in which the portraits seemed to fizz with energy. At 90 years of age it's a wonder that Auerbach still finds the drive and passion to paint at all, and how wonderful in a society that appears to values youth and the young over age and experience that he has found fresh inspiration in his own aged and lined face.
Self-Portrait VII, 2022
Self-Portrait, 2022-23
Self-Portrait V, 2021
Self-Portrait V, 2022
Self-Portrait II, 2022-23
Self-Portrait IV, 2021
Self-Portrait III, 2022
Self-Portrait XI, 2020
Self-Portrait VI, 2022
Self-Portrait IV, 2022
Self-Portrait VIII, 2020
Self-Portrait, 2022
Self-Portrait IV, 2022
Self-Portrait II, 2022
Self-Portrait II, 2020-21
Self-Portrait IV, 2021
Self-Portrait, 2023
Self-Portrait, 2017-18
Self-Portrait II, 2022
Self-Portrait IX, 2020
Frank Auerbach: Twenty Self-Portraits
until 12th July
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert
37-38 Bury Street
St James's
London
SW1
