Truly Senseless and Preposterous

T.J. Clark · Frank Auerbach’s London: Frank Auerbach

This episode has stuck in my mind because it’s as close as I’ve ever come to what is supposed to be the primal scene of modern art: the experience of making (or if you’re a viewer, seeing) something that is truly senseless and preposterous as it comes into being, unknown and unidentifiable, and therefore, if you’re lucky, a glimpse of freedom, a unique particular, a way to slip off the mind-forg’d manacles.