Diana Page at the Irma Stern
by Lizza Littlewort
If you have ever found yourself in a foreign city and wished you had brought your sketchbook along because you wanted to capture something - something about the city you can't quite put your finger on or put into words - then you will have wanted to see this exhibition of recent paintings by Diana Page.
Page has given herself licence to explore the very 'citiness' of cities in these works. Her fascination is kept alive by the freedom she has given herself. She has not forced herself to work to any consistent size, degree of finish or recognisable rendering of any particular city. Works range from the monumental, densely worked Jazz City III, a rumbling evocation of city life to Lexington Avenue, a high speed drawing in paint. Although her works are inspired by many cities, including Cape Town and New York, the focus of her effort is to engage visually with the built fabric of the urban environment. Striking perspectives, buildings dissolving in shadow, lurid colours, squalor, grandeur and decay, are all evoked in colour but not pinned down. In High Rise, for example, one does not know if one is looking at the neon lights of Times Square or a factory in Epping Industria, yet the energy of the work recalls both.
At another level the work provides a comment on images of cities as they have appeared in the history of painting. Built environments have been both the backdrop to and the focus of paintings throughout the development of European art. Images of buildings have been used to praise the achievements of European civilisation, to honour the power of the church, to support industrialisation: in general, to confer a sense of 'rightness' on European values.
Page makes no overt references to a critique of the representation of values through painting, but one is implicit in both her choice of subject matter, and in how she transforms that subject matter. In Walking, The Chrysler we find the glamour of the Chrysler spire becoming something ephemeral and strange. In contrast the paintings, Tuxedo I and II become lavish objects, delicious attention being given to the prosaic appearance of downtown facades and fire escapes.
If her work had been pretty and timid, more obedient, one could have suspected her of rehashing some very tired values, along the lines of re-depicting the pleasant spires of Oxford. But her work is energetic to the point of violence, and the colours are challenging to the point of ugliness. If you have been in a city like New York, the clash of cultures that gives it its loudness, its brashness and its energy are here in the paintings. They are modern, tough, bright and brimming with energy. It feels like a Third World kind of energy, of the kind you will find in both Cape Town and New York, if you have opened your eyes enough to see it.
Opened: August 17
Closed: September 10
UCT Irma Stern Museum
Rosebank, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 685 5686
Lizza Littlewort is a practicing artist based in Cape Town
