Frank Auerbach has never been coy about his self-imposed mission to search for the new. New ways of drawing and new ways of creating a painting, all the time adhering to Ezra Pound’s idiom of innovation laid out in his 1934 collection of essays, “Make It New”, the title itself an extrapolation of ancient Chinese philosophical texts. Just look at an Auerbach painting. Great dollops of crusty impasto smeared across the canvas. This effortful 3D miasma is Auerbach not taking out bits that aren’t working. Auerbach is an artist who leaves mistakes and accidents in place, adding and adding until a satisfactory portrait hoves into view like someone emerging from the rubble after a paint factory explosion. That’s Auerbach—digging in and maximizing to come up with innovative solutions when others would rub out or walk away. Embracing mystery also helps Auerbach make it new. He talks freely about how his mind boggles when he’s taken over by the muse, an artist disarmingly astonished at how, with time and patience, his artworks come together as if he has no personal control over their radical outcomes.

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This neurotic newness has served Frank Auerbach well. Not only is he one of the world’s most innovative post-war artists, last summer his 1969 painting, Mornington Crescent sold for $7 million at a Sotheby’s........

© Observer