Notes

This work forms part of a highly successful and influential series of drawings produced after the artist’s visit to Paris following her winning the Volkskas Atelier art competion in 1988. Employing Renaissance compositions, Victor subverts her subjects in order to mirror the disturbing socio-political landscape of South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This work was a finalist in the Standard Bank National Drawing Competition of 1990.

Describing her visual vocabulary the author Karen von Veh observes that:  “Victor’s tendency towards visual over-statement also betokens a forceful directness aimed at reviving society’s dormant conscience. This technique recalls the structure of gothic or medieval imagery, and can be seen in the vignettes of scenes and events that unfold like comic-book narratives, and in the wealth of symbolically loaded details and elements of the grotesque that permeate Victor’s work”’.¹

The dystopian narrative of this diptych underlies the anxiety and disquiet of a white suburban couple who are intruded upon by a naked tightrope walker. The tightrope walker’s expression and sureness of purpose are contrasted against his nakedness, bugle, body lacerations and blood bag suspended from his left arm.  The horror of this carnivalesque intrusion becomes a metaphor for the inescapable insanity of a dehumanising system at the point of collapse.

1. Elizabeth Rankin and Karen von Veh (eds.) (2008) Diane Victor, Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing, Johannesburg, page 50.

Exhibited

Grahamstown, Johannesburg, East London, Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Windhoek and Pretoria (1990) Standard Bank National Drawing Competition 28.06.90-25.03.92, catalogue number 1.

Literature

Professor Alan Crump (Chairman of the Festival Committee) (1990) Standard Bank National Drawing Competition Catalogue, Standard Bank, Johannesburg. Illustrated in colour on page 9.