- 88
Edward Burra
Description
- Edward Burra
- Excavation
- watercolour on paper
- 60 by 76cm.; 22 by 30in.
- Executed in 1952-4.
Provenance
Exhibited
Chichester, Pallant House Gallery, Edward Burra, 22nd October 2011 - 19th February 2012, un-numbered exhibition; with tour to Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre, University of Nottingham.
Literature
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Excavation, as a landscape, is unusual for Burra’s output of the time. Primarily a figure painter until the last years of his life, this work is striking in its sparse architectural composition. Referencing Eighteenth-century Capriccios by artists such as Giovanni Paolo Panini, its form is rooted deep in Artistic tradition. Comprising a landscape of ruins, populated by a cast of unknown vagrants and passers-by, part fantasy, part reality, the transition from ancient Rome to war ravaged London is made through an inherited vocabulary.
Burra, an increasingly sickly man, unable to travel or serve observed the Second World War from his family’s home in Rye, on the South Coast. A frustrating standpoint in many respects, it did however offer a front row seat for the Battle of Britain and all subsequent bombing offensives launched against London from France. In constant communication with his close friend Billy Chappell, Burra documented his war experience through his letters. Writing on October 15th 1940 he put down his experience of getting caught up in a raid. ‘The lorry drivers fled like autumn leaves (falling early this year) & were all in hedges and ditches letting out a stream of fuck sod etc. it’s a sort of British Ave Maria, each sod a pearl, each fuck a prayer to twist a bugger by absence wrung.’ Burra was a great observer. His unique gift of seeing as others could not, in environments where others cannot progress beyond the rawest emotion, made clear in his letters, is too embodied by Excavation.
A picture defined by menace and foreboding, Excavation embodies a widespread post-war mood. More subtle in theme than much of his contemporary work it radiates exhaustion, people, structures, even the sky appear drained, without vigour. The buildings clearly reference the bombed out terraces of London’s East end, the chimneys in this context left open to the possibility a more sinister interpretation. The title leads us to presume that this is a scene of redevelopment and the wooden boarding of the like used around construction sites would seem to reaffirm this, but actual labour is conspicuous by its absence. The buildings unattended, the background figures passive, the divide between within and without the site becomes increasingly apparent. The foreground figures are bolder, in both colour and form; they appear more active, assured in their movement and stance. Indeed the exterior area enjoys a far more diverse use of colour; pungent reds, yellows and blues contrast abruptly with the muted greys and browns of the rear ground.
The beaked figure, a motif used repeatedly by Burra in his wartime pictures to depict soldiers, is intriguing. Cloaked and hooded he appears no longer as a combatant but retains a strength that the other figures lack. The shadowy figures of the rear ground stand awkwardly, too large for their surroundings, too weak to make any real impression on the scene. Once more it is impossible to ignore the obvious division.
Excavation represents an important transition in Burra’s artistic output; no longer a painter of bold, playful figure scenes, not yet a landscape artist seeking to capture and defend the spirit of the English countryside. Barra’s wartime pictures are among his most significant and Excavation is a uniquely captivating example.