#62. Jake Auerbach ~ Frank Auerbach’s Son

Frank Auerbach and his son Jake had a complicated but ultimately deeply affectionate relationship. Frank, born in Berlin in 1931, came to Britain as a Jewish refugee as a child, while his parents remained in Germany and were later murdered at Auschwitz; that trauma became an important backdrop to a life devoted to painting people and places again and again, trying to capture their physical presence and permanence. Jake, born in 1958, saw relatively little of his father during childhood, but they reconnected when Jake was 17, and he subsequently became one of Frank’s regular sitters, appearing in portraits over several decades. Jake went on to become a filmmaker, making films about artists and eventually documenting his father, revealing the much more humorous, cultured and sociable man behind the familiar image of the obsessive Camden painter. Their relationship remained close into Frank’s final years, when they would do crosswords together and spend time in London. There is something particularly poignant about the story: Frank had lost his own parents as a child, yet spent his life painting the people closest to him—including his son—while Jake ultimately became one of the people who preserved Frank’s personality and memory for the world. In that sense, their relationship almost mirrors Auerbach’s entire artistic preoccupation: looking at another human being intensely enough to make them remain present, even after they are gone.