Stanley Pinker; South African 1924-2012; Boating
Provenance : Graham's Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg, 13 July 2006. The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection.
Exhibited :
Literature : Sean O'Toole (ed) (2006) Between Foothold and Flight, catalogue number 3, Johannesburg: Graham's Fine Art Gallery, page 100 and illustrated in colour on page 101.
Notes : "This languid portrayal of a couple out boating is illustrative of Pinker's essentially modernist approach to painting. The work cues numerous early twentieth century art historical references, from the indolent figures in Cezanne's work to the stillness and lazy repose of figures in both Seurat and Matisse. Much like the latter artist, particularly around the period he painted Luxe, Calme et Volupte (1904/05), Namibian-born Pinker focuses largely on composition and colour. Pinker's two figures, the woman clothed in sexualised red, the man wearing a triangular wedge of blue, inhabit flattened picture plane that defies illusionism. Despite the reach of the man's oars, which effectively bisect the picture horizontally, the composition is more obviously read by its vertical delineation. The scene on the left, the exaggerated figuration of the man recalling San rock paintings, exists in opposition to the abstraction that dominates the right. Here Pinker appears to fulfil Cezanne's exhortation to 'treat nature by sphere, the cylinder, the cone'. Not that the two exist in opposition. The simple geometrical shapes on the right are echoed in the composition on the left: the man's circular head, his triangular bathing trunks, even the radius of his buttocks. The woman's fishing rod serves as a bridge between these two oppositional realms, where figuration and abstraction meet. Notwithstanding Pinker' skilful and restrained use of red, blue and yellow, the overall tone of the painting is muted, melancholy almost. The couple is looking back at a scene in which the sun rests low on the horizon. The woman's rod serves as a wistful anchor to the past, the man's ambiguous gesture adding to the uncertainty. Is he leaving the boat? The uncertainty this question proposes marries well with Pinker's approach to painting generally. 'An essential quality is mystery,' he states in his self-titled monograph from 'For me no good work gives up all its secrets.'"1 1Sean O'Toole (ed) (2006) Between Foothold and Flight, catalogue number 3, Johannesburg: Graham's Fine Art Gallery, page 100.
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