[evocative piano music]
Female Narrator This is Primrose Hill in North London–a favorite subject for the artist Frank Auerbach and not far from his home. Director of the Getty, Timothy Potts.
Timothy Potts The work can seem very abstract at first and in fact, I'm sure some people will look at it and think, Is this a landscape? How can I know that? It is a more conceptual landscape than it is a literal one.
Female Narrator Those bold lines of blue suggest the reflections of a puddle. [music ends] And the black zigzag breaking across the upper half of the painting might be lightning, or the branches of a tree swaying in the wind. Rather than reproducing the landscape exactly, Auerbach focused on the relationships created by the paint itself.
Timothy Potts The paint is very thick, it's very literal, you first see it as paint, and perhaps only secondly, as an image of a subject.
Female Narrator Auerbach's process was one of constant revision.
[evocative piano music]
Timothy Potts He worked on this painting for about a year, and did some 50 sketches in preparation. And came back to the actual painting almost daily, but was perennially dissatisfied with the state it was in, so would scrape it back to the canvas, and start again each day. It's an unusual way to work.
Auerbach [is] in a way, an obsessive artist. If it isn't absolutely right, you start from scratch.
[music ends]
