Victor Burgin's meaningful cityscape and the legacy of socially-responsive narrative view painting

Abstract

Victor Burgin's search for meaning within the modern cityscape reflects the attempt to build depth into a genre that, by definition, is superficial in nature. Capturing both the city and its inhabitants in a symbiotic manner, where one's significance reflects the other, Burgin's visual essays represent the successful development of a form of narrative view painting.

For generations cityscapes that focused on both the physical areas of the city and those individuals who daily-occupied those areas, fell into the no-man's land between landscape and genre; neither entirely view painting nor that depicting everyday life. While certain works within this genre suggested pure attempts at topographical documentation, recording what is actually seen and focusing on the permanent, others seemed more like discursive social exercises. This latter type, embracing the local populace and expressing something of the experience of the individual within their environment, rested along the periphery of the classical cityscape. By developing both a convincing feel for the surface, as well as the potential for narrative which naturally exists within any outdoor, peopled scene, Burgin's oeuvre presents a convincing representation of the city.

Our ability to appreciate Burgin's contribution to this genre, to discern between works of genre and cityscape and furthermore, to assess the fluidity between the documentation of fact and the exploration of experience, is greatly assisted by the enlistment of a theory developed to explore the same phenomenon within the field of literature. This essay will apply a theory on descriptive and narrative approaches in nineteenth century literature developed by literary historian Georg Lukács (1885–1971) to Burgin's oeuvre. Lukács' distinct separation of the role of the observer from that of the participant, with its concomitant effect on the nature of any realistic work, effectively enhances our comprehension of the deep and insightful portraits of the modern city provided within Burgin's narrative cityscapes.

Keywords:

• Burgin
• Cityscape
• Narrative
• Lukács
• Paris