David Bomberg: The spirit in the mass

This talk will address Bomberg's concept of "The Spirit in the Mass", a crucial element of his painting and his teaching which is evident not just in his own work but in that of the students he taught at Borough Polytechnic from 1945 to 1953. 

Dismissed at the time by Pop Artists and realists alike, the "Spirit in the Mass" is finally being recognised as an important contribution to British painting in the mid and late twentieth century. Bomberg's idea has been succinctly described (by Jamie Anderson) as aiming "to ignore superfluous detail and capture the pure essence of a subject".

Professor Guy Austin considers examples of this trend in Bomberg's work and also in work by perhaps his most famous student, Frank Auerbach, who explained the intuitive, gestural power of Bomberg's idea as follows: "you begin to imply a sense of mass on the paper or canvas simply because you felt it."

Guy Austin is a Professor of French and film at Newcastle University. His interests include the art of Bomberg and his students, particularly Auerbach.