Portrait of Julia 2000

Frank Auerbach made this drawing, Portrait of Julia, with crayon or charcoal on paper, and it’s all about the energy of line. I can imagine Auerbach, leaning in close, his gaze intense, trying to capture not just Julia’s likeness, but also something of her spirit, her presence, and her interiority. See how the lines are so restless, constantly searching and correcting, building up a dense web of marks that almost obscures the figure? It’s like he’s mapping out the contours of her face, trying to pin down something elusive, always shifting. The surface looks as though it has been rubbed and reworked, built up over time with a kind of loving intensity. There's an intimacy here, a sense of someone really looking and thinking, feeling their way through the process of seeing. Auerbach, like other figurative painters, is in conversation with artists like Rembrandt and Giacometti, all striving to capture the essence of human experience in a single image. It shows that the process of art making is itself an act of discovery.