FINE ART: Ian Tromp
PAINTINGS by Walter Meyer, on view at the Newtown Galleries, freeze moments in Eastman Color eternities, like slightly faded catalogues for holiday destinations called “Home”.
Seen from afar, Meyer’s scenes are photo- realist in the rendering of their subject, bordering on coolness in their apparent dispassion. Step nearer, and – as with Gainsborough – the canvases reveal the movement of the artist’s brush and the intensity of his glance. Given the historical circumstances of the England in which he lived, Gainsborough should not have been able to paint with the passion he did; likewise, Meyer’s best paintings trace a passionate attachment to small-town South Africa which is entirely at odds with our contemporary urban values.
Often he manages to render perfectly the melancholy of that provincial existence. When they succeed, these images burn with the peculiar intensity of the commonplace, a vision almost entirely empty of comment, which simply traces the appearances of the given. But occasionally his images are banal, feeling almost unfinished. This is not because of the plainness of their subject matter, but due to a certain technical flatness, a lack of acuity in the gaze the paintings record and reflect.
Meyer’s images of still streets and squat, immobile vehicles, familiar from his two prior exhibitions, are joined here by works depicting more traditional South African landscapes. Where the quiet street scenes are often gut- wrenching in their ordinariness, bringing one face to face with “here” and “home”, these landscapes sometimes slip into kitschness. One wonders how they differ from the kind of paintings found in any number of shopping-mall framing shops.
Art viewers are accustomed to search for irony in contemporary art, and one feels a compulsion to see in Meyer’s work reproach or parody, some kind of sociological comment on the scenes he depicts. When one realises it’s not there, that there is simply no irony in these paintings, one is simultaneously more and less moved by them. More moved because of the fervour of the artist’s vision of the prosaic; less moved because some of the scenes he depicts remain so mired in the mundane.
The way the paintings are hung plays on their ordinariness: unframed and in straight rows on white walls. It speaks of their not needing any embellishment, of dissenting even from the pretensions of the market. This presentation works well, as it emphasises the images’ earnestness and underlines their function as “windows on the world”. But the sheer size of the Newtown Gallery has dwarfed Meyer’s work – the paintings that work best are those behind the front desk, hung in among the pillars, chairs and tables under the mezzanine and staircase. Here they maintain a sense of intimacy which is dispersed in the larger exhibition space.
The exhibition runs until December 15