“Art is a rather mysterious means of communication,” says Frank Auerbach. He’s contemplating a painting in the National Gallery and admiring the artist’s technique: “Some bits, rather lovingly detailed. Some bits – like the sky – might’ve been done in ten minutes with something that was not a brush.” He’s referring to Turner’s atmospheric oil painting “The Fighting Temeraire” (1839), but could almost be describing his own work when he says: “One of the things I’ve noticed about the good paintings in this room is how unsmooth the surface is; how very much the working is still in the painting, so that as one looks at it more and more, one almost feels the breath of the artist as he‘s wrestling with the picture and, of course, the extraordinary sense of elation when it all comes together.”
