Frank Auerbach: 'Painting is the most marvellous activity humans have invented'

The octogenarian artist on 60 years as a workaholic, Soho life with Bacon and Freud and how the art-price bubble will burstFrank Auerbach’s London: the extraordinary life and loves – in picturesWhen Frank Auerbach looks back over his nearly 70-year career as an artist he declares himself “lucky” that it was a process that moved slowly. “You’re at school and you like some reproductions in books: Van Gogh, Gauguin. Then you do a bit of painting and you think it’s fairly easy. When yo