John Finneran and Auerbach’s paintings of place

As I write, the fires in Los Angeles continue to rage, leaving behind unimaginable devastation in their wake. The destruction is felt not just in the charred landscapes but within the lives of those affected—their homes, their communities, and their sense of safety. It is a time of loss, uncertainty, and profound grief.

In light of these events, I approach the publication of this edition of Diary of an Art Advisor with a deep sense of caution. The viewing room that I curated at the end of last year, centred around John Finneran’s Fires series, was conceived before the recent fires erupted, and so while the paintings themselves are not direct responses to the current crisis, the resonance of fire as a symbol is now so much more immediate and fraught.

Imagery of fire has long been intertwined with the landscape and identity of Los Angeles, a city often characterised by its volatility—geographically, socially, and culturally. The fires that periodically ravage Southern California have become a symbol of both destruction and rebirth, of the fragility of nature and the resilience of human life.

Artists like Ed Ruscha, who famously captured the imagery of fire in his 1960s work LA County Museum on Fire, have used fire as a conceptual device to interrogate the city’s contradictions—its allure, its danger, and its transient nature. Ruscha’s work distanced itself from emotional engagement, offering a cool, detached view of disaster, almost as an aesthetic exercise. Yet, this detachment itself becomes a statement about the psychological distance that can exist in an urban landscape so often on the brink of crisis.

In contrast, artists like John Finneran approach fire not as an abstract concept, but as something intimately tied to the experience of the city and its people. In his Fires series, the motif becomes a vehicle for both personal and collective expression. Here, fire is not merely an event or a symbol but an experience that resonates with the emotional and physical landscape of Los Angeles. It’s this more visceral engagement with the image of fire that sets Finneran’s work apart, especially in the context of the fires that have tragically gripped the city.

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The original purpose of the viewing room, Excavation, was to look at Finneran’s work in light of the legacy of Frank Auerbach’s paintings of place. I hope I can continue to approach the work with the sensitivity and respect that this moment in time demands.

The following text was written before the current crisis.

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John Finneran and Auerbach’s paintings of place

Frank Auerbach’s paintings, steeped in the dense physicality of Camden, London, are both iconic and enigmatic. His obsessive reworking of his urban surroundings offers a profound study of the relationship between artist and place. The influence of Auerbach’s practice extends across generations and geographies, resonating far and wide - with artists like John Finneran. Finneran’s paintings of New York and Los Angeles grapple with the emotional and conceptual challenges of urban representation, reflecting a deep engagement with Auerbach’s methods and philosophies. I wanted here to delve into the layers of Auerbach’s process, exploring how his work informs Finneran’s evolving depictions of these two cities, and how Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles imagery complicates this legacy.

Auerbach’s artistic practice is inseparable from Camden, his chosen subject for over seven decades. His paintings are more than depictions; they are acts of excavation, both literal and metaphorical. Auerbach applied and scraped away paint repeatedly, allowing the canvas to carry the weight of countless decisions, revisions, and memories. The result is a surface that feels alive, pulsating with the intensity of his engagement.

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This process reflects Auerbach’s philosophy of painting as a dynamic pursuit of truth. His goal was not to replicate Camden’s outward appearance but to capture its essence—its energy, decay, and renewal. The accumulation of paint layers mirrors the layered experiences of the city itself, where time and memory coalesce into something ungraspable yet deeply felt. In works like Mornington Crescent (1965) and Primrose Hill (1971), Auerbach’s thick, sculptural application of paint transforms the landscape into a tactile presence, inviting viewers to engage with Camden as a visceral, almost living entity.

Auerbach’s work often balances revelation and concealment, as though each layer of paint contains a perspective that both clarifies and obscures. This tension resonates profoundly with Finneran’s reflections on his own work:?

????? “Auerbach’s approach feels like the pursuit of an image that both reveals and conceals, as though each layer captures a different perspective or attempt to reach some truth—yet one that continually eludes completion.”

For Finneran, New York represents a place of deep familiarity and longing, a city he knows intimately but has since left. This distance creates a dynamic similar to Auerbach’s relationship with Camden, where memory and physical presence intertwine. Finneran’s street scenes, such as East Fourth Street (2023), echo Auerbach’s ethos of excavation. He describes painting these works as an act of muscle memory, allowing his subconscious to guide his hand toward images embedded in his experience.

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????? “The dense street scenes which I paint as blindly as I can… leave only images of muscle and sense memory.”

This process mirrors Auerbach’s approach to Camden, where each mark is imbued with the residue of countless observations and reimaginings. Both artists treat their cities not as static subjects but as collaborators, engaging in an ongoing dialogue that evolves with time. Finneran’s New York works, while less physically dense than Auerbach’s, carry a similar emotional weight, capturing the city as a space of memory, rhythm, and continuity.

Finneran also identifies with Auerbach’s use of place as a conduit for emotional expression. In both artists’ works, the cityscape becomes a vehicle for exploring broader themes of identity, impermanence, and the passage of time.

Finneran’s Fires series (2023) introduces another layer of complexity to his practice. These works are rooted in Los Angeles but carry echoes of Auerbach’s Camden in their exploration of uncertainty and transformation. The thin, red fields in the Fires paintings suggest both literal and metaphorical fires, evoking the wildfires that define the Los Angeles landscape as well as the emotional intensity of life in the city.

????? “The Fires paintings are… a strange conceptualization of the empty field of thin red paint as a reflective surface, reflecting the environment.”

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This conceptual approach contrasts with the physicality of Auerbach’s technique but aligns with his pursuit of ambiguity. Auerbach’s Camden paintings often suggest more than they reveal, leaving viewers to navigate the tension between what is seen and what is felt. Similarly, Finneran’s Fires works invite contemplation, their simplicity belied by the depth of their emotional resonance.

Finneran sees this tension as central to his practice:

????? “I see a clash within the work that I’d like to present—between the directness of a work like Fires and work like East Fourth Street. Both of these perspectives feel true to me… the desire to have an answer, and the really melancholy feeling that there aren’t any answers.”

This duality reflects the influence of Auerbach, whose paintings embody the unresolvable tension between certainty and doubt.

In Los Angeles, Finneran encounters a new set of challenges. The sprawling, horizontal cityscape of LA contrasts sharply with New York’s vertical density, requiring a different visual language. Here, the influence of Ed Ruscha becomes significant, particularly in works like LA County Museum on Fire (1965-68). Ruscha’s conceptual detachment and minimalist aesthetic offer a counterpoint to Auerbach’s emotional intensity.

????? “I’ve always been a little standoffish about Ruscha’s work… the emotional remove. But the LA County Museum on Fire is an undeniable influence on the fire paintings.”

Finneran’s engagement with Ruscha’s imagery—objects on fire, stark compositions—adds a layer of conceptual sharpness to his Los Angeles works. However, he acknowledges a fundamental difference in approach: where Ruscha’s paintings often feel cool and distant, Finneran’s carry the emotional immediacy of personal experience.

????? “I think I perceived a reference to this ‘authentic’ language of Auerbach’s. So it became something I had to explore and to meet its standard I had to dig back to something I maybe, might know as well as Auerbach knew his city.”?

Auerbach’s influence on Finneran is enriched by other sources, particularly René Magritte. Magritte’s exploration of image and language provides Finneran with a framework for navigating the torrent of visual information that defines contemporary life. This is particularly evident in works like Mirror in Fire, where layers of symbolism and emotional resonance intersect.

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????? “The ability to name any image, falsely, ironically, romantically, minimalistically… is both a valuable tool and a reflection of what I think we’re all up against in the torrent of images we receive.”

?This interplay of naming and meaning connects Finneran’s practice to both Auerbach and Ruscha. Auerbach’s paintings, while rooted in the physicality of Camden, often carry an enigmatic quality, their titles offering clues without dictating interpretation. Ruscha’s conceptual titles, meanwhile, add layers of irony and detachment. Finneran navigates these influences, creating works that balance emotional intensity with conceptual precision.

Finneran’s artistic journey is one of negotiation—between past and present, memory and observation, New York and Los Angeles. Like Auerbach, who adopted London as his own, Finneran grapples with the challenge of representing a place from both inside and outside.

????? “Auerbach’s cityscapes are their own obfuscation—pointed determinedly away from their source’s actual look and into his feeling… into what he wanted to say about his adopted home.”

This dynamic is particularly evident in Finneran’s California works, which feel simultaneously distant and deeply personal. While New York is a space of instinct and memory, Los Angeles is a place of deliberate exploration, its fires and landscapes rendered with a sense of awe and detachment.

Frank Auerbach’s legacy endures in the works of artists like John Finneran, who use painting as a means of excavating the complexities of urban life. Auerbach’s tactile, layered approach to Camden finds echoes in Finneran’s dense New York scenes, while Ruscha’s conceptual precision informs his smoother, more detached Los Angeles works.

Ultimately, Finneran’s paintings embody a tension central to both Auerbach and Ruscha: the desire to capture the essence of a place while acknowledging its elusiveness. Through this interplay, Finneran creates a language uniquely his own—a testament to the enduring power of cities to inspire and transform. In his hands, New York and Los Angeles become not just locations but repositories of memory, emotion, and mystery, bridging the gap between past and present, certainty and doubt.

See further details on Blackbird Rook’s Instagram.