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

Victor Burgin’s search for meaning within the modern cityscape reflects more than a century of determining how to build depth into a genre which, by definition, describes the surface. 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 this genre. For generations cityscapes that focused on both the physical areas of the city (its streets, buildings and green areas) 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.