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Lot Essay
Painted in 1982, the head of the depicted figure appears to coalesce before us in Head of J.Y.M.. The mesh of mashed paints looks initially chaotic, and yet Auerbach has managed to convey not only the appearance of his sitter, but also some sense of her physical presence. The organic, tactile and sensual picture surface hints at a subtly pulsing life within the art work itself. The viewer expects it to breathe, to be warm to the touch. This painting therefore shows the extent to which Auerbach was concerned with capturing something visceral, something that speaks to more senses than sight alone:
'I felt that there was an area of experience - the haptic, the tangible, what you feel when you touch somebody next to you in the dark that hadn't perhaps been recorded in painting before' (Auerbach, quoted in C. Lampert, N. Rosenthal & I. Carlisle (ed.), Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, exh. cat., London 2001, p. 23).
Head of J.Y.M. shows Julia Yardley Mills, one of Auerbach's most significant muses. For over four decades, J.Y.M. visited Auerbach in his studio to model, having first sat for him professionally in 1956. This marked the beginning of a tremendously fruitful relationship, one which partly relied on the assurance that the professional relationship introduced. For where Auerbach had been constantly aware of the tensions, of the relationship, between himself and the models he had chosen with whom he was involved, J.Y.M. was never going to walk out. Indeed, she herself adored being captured in oils, being recorded for posterity, becoming a character within the history of art. And of course, this itself led to their own special relationship, one that itself began to show through in the paintings of her.
This relationship affected Auerbach's depictions of J.Y.M. both in terms of increasing emotional involvement with the subject and also in terms of the fact that, by the time Head of J.Y.M. was painted, he had been looking at the same person for two and a half decades. For Auerbach, this was a process that allowed him to come closer and closer to a true depiction:
'To paint the same head over and over leads you to its unfamiliarity; eventually you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only blurt out the raw truth in the middle of a family quarrel' (Auerbach, quoted in R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 19).
It is for this reason that Auerbach has so long focussed on painting the familiar, the people and places that surround him. For it is in his deepening understanding of the character of these motifs that he manages to condense their essences into his pictures, and thereby to convey some sense of their existence to the viewer. 'I'm hoping to make a new thing that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing,' he explained. 'The only way I know how... to try and do it, is to start with something I know specifically, so that I have something to cling to beyond aesthetic feelings and my knowledge of other paintings' (Auerbach, quoted in ibid., p. 12).
In Head of J.Y.M., Auerbach's model is made all the more vivid and real through the fleshy paint with which she has been rendered, which itself is brought into relief by some of the thinner areas in the background. Where the traces of the paint's application are clearly evident in the swirling sweep of the brushstrokes and the accumulation of oils in the body and head, a contrasting texture has been created in the background, where there remains evidence of where paint has been scraped away. For Auerbach, the painting process can be a long and exhausting one, and when painting live models, often involves scraping off one day's work and beginning again in a new session. Thus the picture gains a history, a texture. It becomes the result of the relationship, of the artist's own movements and more importantly feelings: 'All my paintings are the end result of hundreds of transmutations' (Auerbach, quoted in Lampert et al, op.cit., 2001, p. 26). And yet, while it is clear that there are layers of accreted history within Head of J.Y.M., the calligraphic armature of dark zigzagging lines with which he has captured her outline and features has a vigorous, lively quality that speaks of the artist's own energy, his vital response to this new sitting and to his confrontation with his model. It is in this way, through each crisis, each dilemma, the partial removal of each painting that does not quite fulfil the artist's own exacting specifications, that a painting such as Head of J.Y.M. evolves.
'I felt that there was an area of experience - the haptic, the tangible, what you feel when you touch somebody next to you in the dark that hadn't perhaps been recorded in painting before' (Auerbach, quoted in C. Lampert, N. Rosenthal & I. Carlisle (ed.), Frank Auerbach Paintings and Drawings 1954-2001, exh. cat., London 2001, p. 23).
Head of J.Y.M. shows Julia Yardley Mills, one of Auerbach's most significant muses. For over four decades, J.Y.M. visited Auerbach in his studio to model, having first sat for him professionally in 1956. This marked the beginning of a tremendously fruitful relationship, one which partly relied on the assurance that the professional relationship introduced. For where Auerbach had been constantly aware of the tensions, of the relationship, between himself and the models he had chosen with whom he was involved, J.Y.M. was never going to walk out. Indeed, she herself adored being captured in oils, being recorded for posterity, becoming a character within the history of art. And of course, this itself led to their own special relationship, one that itself began to show through in the paintings of her.
This relationship affected Auerbach's depictions of J.Y.M. both in terms of increasing emotional involvement with the subject and also in terms of the fact that, by the time Head of J.Y.M. was painted, he had been looking at the same person for two and a half decades. For Auerbach, this was a process that allowed him to come closer and closer to a true depiction:
'To paint the same head over and over leads you to its unfamiliarity; eventually you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only blurt out the raw truth in the middle of a family quarrel' (Auerbach, quoted in R. Hughes, Frank Auerbach, London 1990, p. 19).
It is for this reason that Auerbach has so long focussed on painting the familiar, the people and places that surround him. For it is in his deepening understanding of the character of these motifs that he manages to condense their essences into his pictures, and thereby to convey some sense of their existence to the viewer. 'I'm hoping to make a new thing that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing,' he explained. 'The only way I know how... to try and do it, is to start with something I know specifically, so that I have something to cling to beyond aesthetic feelings and my knowledge of other paintings' (Auerbach, quoted in ibid., p. 12).
In Head of J.Y.M., Auerbach's model is made all the more vivid and real through the fleshy paint with which she has been rendered, which itself is brought into relief by some of the thinner areas in the background. Where the traces of the paint's application are clearly evident in the swirling sweep of the brushstrokes and the accumulation of oils in the body and head, a contrasting texture has been created in the background, where there remains evidence of where paint has been scraped away. For Auerbach, the painting process can be a long and exhausting one, and when painting live models, often involves scraping off one day's work and beginning again in a new session. Thus the picture gains a history, a texture. It becomes the result of the relationship, of the artist's own movements and more importantly feelings: 'All my paintings are the end result of hundreds of transmutations' (Auerbach, quoted in Lampert et al, op.cit., 2001, p. 26). And yet, while it is clear that there are layers of accreted history within Head of J.Y.M., the calligraphic armature of dark zigzagging lines with which he has captured her outline and features has a vigorous, lively quality that speaks of the artist's own energy, his vital response to this new sitting and to his confrontation with his model. It is in this way, through each crisis, each dilemma, the partial removal of each painting that does not quite fulfil the artist's own exacting specifications, that a painting such as Head of J.Y.M. evolves.