Building Site Ontologies: Post-war London in the Paintings of Auerbach and Kossoff

Abstract

This paper develops an account of post-war London from the building site paintings of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. It approaches these paintings as a visceral and embodied source of data regarding the post-World War Two landscape of bomb damaged London. It contrasts this form of knowledge with the narratives of memorialization, and order and control, which I argue characterize post-war reconstruction. In this context the paintings are read as an ontological statement about the complexity and ambiguity of the urban landscape, one which contrasts with historical and contemporary narratives of the urban built environment. The paper posits that knowledges which preserve the complexities and materialities of urban space have the potential to provide political interventions into both historical and contemporary narratives of the city.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Material Cultures of Reconstruction in post-war London

“…In my 16 own paper in this issue I discuss the paintings of building sites made by Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff as London was reconstructed. I argue that these paintings, with their attentive approach to the muddy and messy qualities of building sites, capture something of the underlying mess and complexity of the landscape that underpins the built environment.…”