We look like this after things fall apart;
The painting is the autopsy report
From an inquest where war took the part
Of coroner…

    from ‘Modern Painters’

We Look Like This anatomizes how history, violence, power, lust and mortality work on us. Burt's formal, muscular language evokes a world of war, want, cruelty and hope, as well as childhood among ‘tough Jews’ in Philadelphia, dominated by his father Joe, son of Ukrainian immigrants, butcher, boxer and, late in life, coastal fisherman. Joe's last world, Barnegat inlet and the sea off the New Jersey coast, are counterpoint to and salvation from hard streets for father and son.

Cover painting Frank Auerbach, Head of Gerda Boehm, 1978–9 (detail). Oil on board, 56.5 x 71.1 cm (22 1/4 x 28 in). Private collection. Copyright © Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art. Photograph courtesy of Yvonne Burt.

Who He Was 1–5
Death Mask
Slowly Sounds the Bell

Certain Windows

Circumcision
Indices
Inquisition
Rosebud
Ishmael

Accounting
Death Rattle
Blind Date
Texaco Saturday Afternoon Opera
Cabaletta
All the Dark Years
For John Crook
Homage for a Waterman
Facsimile Folio
John Winthrop’s Ghost

Pastiche
Poetry Reading
After Lunch
Little Black Dress
Kept
Pas de Deux
Winter Mornings
Yester-year
Revenant
Sie Kommt
The Faithful
End of the Affair

Decorating the Nursery
Wine Circle
Dodge-Ball
Blue Rinse Matrons
Momentum
Three Sonnets on the Coup de Grâce
Uphill to the Right
Manqué

Compounds
Modern Painters
A Brewing Tale
The Lesson
Rigoletto
Summa
Motes
Un Coup de Dés
Identity
Beside a Cove
The Institute
Trade


Notes