Visitors walking into this posthumous solo show of German-born British artist Frank Auerbach were immediately confronted with the vehement Study after Deposition by Rembrandt II, 1961. This brooding oil, with heavily whipped black and whitish textures, standing on an easel opposite the main entrance, was the earliest work in a show featuring thirty-five others, mostly paintings but also an occasional drawing, made between then and 2023. In Rembrandt’s original, the wooden cross anchors the poignant drama. Auerbach strips the composition down to its bare architectural scaffolding: His X sign in the middle is like a cross yet also a more literal crossing out; what remains of the wooden cross is rather the angled beigey line in the upper left. There is no body, flesh, or illumination, only a dirtied gray-white mass of heaving, frothy paint in the painting’s lower edge. Transcendence never looked so glum, voided of any promise.
