It's not easy to find, but hidden in the bowels of the National Gallery is an espresso bar, on the walls of which is a set of Frank Auerbach drawings of Old Masters from the Gallery collection. These are not new. They were originally completed for an exhibition back in 1995. Why they are now on the walls of the espresso bar is unclear, but I'm not complaining. They're exceptional.
Auerbach has taken works by a broad range of painters, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Caravaggio, Degas, Constable and Turner among them, and reinterpreted them in a vigorous celebration of expressive penmanship. Each painting is given two or three interpretations, for the most part using felt-tip either on its own, or over a watercolour wash, or counter-pointed with pencil or crayon. Some of the drawings are reduced to near abstraction, some verge on caricature, others are more considered, but always pulsing with an energy that sucks you in, and smacks you around the head a bit. That's great art for you. It does that.
My guess is if Rembrandt were to saunter in, order an espresso and peruse this exhibition, he would recognise a kindred spirit. The dramatic juxtapositions of darkness and light, the stabs of thick black line over scrapings of colour: this is high drama, relentless and positively Jacobean in its insistence on violent catharsis. Art with a capital 'A', in other words. Cursory in some ways, and not always successful. But dynamic and fearless and reckless in a way that is all to rare in the cold and calculating world of contemporary art.
And you don't even have to buy an espresso if you don't want to.
And you don't even have to buy an espresso if you don't want to.
Ciao for now, artsters!
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