T. J. Clark's Ravishing Style #8

Frank Auerbach, Primrose Hill (1971)

This is the eighth post in my monthly series “T. J. Clark’s Ravishing Style,” a consideration of what makes Clark’s writing so distinctive and delectable. Each month I choose a favorite passage from his work and analyze its ingredients. Today’s pick is from his brilliant “Frank Auerbach’s London” (London Review of Books, September 10, 2015; included in Frank Auerbach, edited by Catherine Lampert, 2015). It’s a descriptive analysis of Auerbach’s Primrose Hill (1971): 

The wonderful sky in the 1971 Primrose Hill is pictorial, even picturesque. That doesn’t mean I disapprove of it, any more than I do of the pulled purple-brown strokes sealing in and stamping down the picture’s bottom-right corner. But the sky and corner are stratagems, moves in a game. They’re easily recognised as such. Now turn to the red-brown furrows scraped across the picture’s midground, or the two slivers of yellow locking the red-brown in place, or the slab of deep green laid on top of the trees at right like the lid of a coffin ... about these I’m much less certain. The white sky and the purple-brown field are maybe there essentially to release these episodes – so that the painting moves up, where it matters, from the realm of illusion to that of presence. ‘Something’, in the red and yellow, takes hold of the painting process and accelerates it almost to breaking point. Whatever that something is – ‘seeing’, ‘totality’, ‘the thing itself’ – the oil paint is twisted and scarified by it. Space begins to elude us. The ground hardens. The trees are full of camouflaged guns.

Clark is an ingenious interpreter of paint strokes: “the pulled purple-brown strokes sealing in and stamping down the picture’s bottom-right corner”; “the red-brown furrows scraped across the picture’s midground”; the two slivers of yellow locking the red-brown in place”; “the slab of deep green laid on top of the trees at right like the lid of a coffin.” He focuses on the yellow and red: “ ‘Something’, in the red and yellow, takes hold of the painting process and accelerates it almost to breaking point. Whatever that something is – ‘seeing’, ‘totality’, ‘the thing itself’ – the oil paint is twisted and scarified by it.” And then it’s almost as if he enters the painting: “Space begins to elude us. The ground hardens. The trees are full of camouflaged guns.” What? That last line is electrifying. So unexpected – shocking, even. Guns in the trees of Primrose Hill? Can it be true? Yes, look again. I see them now, thanks to Clark’s inspired guidance. This is no peaceful walk in a park. This is an ambush!