f The viscosity of duration: Painterly surface and the phenomenology of time in the London paintings of Frank Auerbach

This article aims to examine our perceptions of temporality in painterly surface and investigate the relationship between subjective perceptions of temporality and emotional ‘affect’ in encounters with painting. Frank Auerbach’s London paintings are taken as examples of ‘painterly’ surface with which to consider the elastic temporality of painting. At the centre of this investigation are the engaged and embodied artist and the engaged spectator, encountering the ‘strangeness’ of painterly surface as an intense experience, offering an enhanced sense of lived temporality: both caught in a circuit defined by Merleau-Ponty: ‘For painters, the world will always be yet to be painted...’.