E.O.W. Nude, 1953-1954, Frank Auerbach, Oil on canvas
Tate: Purchased 1959. Photo © Tate, London 2016. Artwork © Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art
Transcript
[soft ambient music with a poignant mysterious feel]
Female Narrator Like other School of London artists, Frank Auerbach sought to represent the human body as an intense, living presence.
He made this painting as a student at the Royal College of Art, when he could only afford the most basic pigments: black, white, and ochre, a yellow–brown color. Curator Elena Crippa.
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Elena Crippa There are layers over layers of oil that have been laid to create this very sculptural representation of this figure. There is a sense of a desire to pin down and hold the image of this woman that he loved.
Female Narrator That woman was his companion, Estella Olive West–known as Stella.
Elena Crippa Auerbach felt rather uncomfortable drawing and painting in the live room in the art school. He always felt there was a sense of uneasiness being exposed to these nude bodies of people he didn't have a connection with. And since he began drawing and painting Stella, he very much continued to only work with models who he knew rather closely. And it was this connection that informed his way of representing them.
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Female Narrator He painted this work kneeling on the floor next to Stella, the canvas propped up on a chair.
Elena Crippa There's something very fragile and exposed about the body, which is seen from the back. It is not the position of a classical nude. His paintings are not just representations of the image of an individual, but of their presence, of their being in space.
And the thickness of the painting, the fact the paint accrues, is very much the result of this attempt to hold a sensation of the image, which is not just visual, but it's also tactile.
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