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On the 8th of March TAXI - 013 Diane Victor was launched at David Krut Projects, Parkwood, Johannesburg. This monograph chronicling Diane’s career has been long awaited and some may say overdue and was received with enthusiasm by teachers and peers. Karen von Veh, Senior Lecturer in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg gave a speech that gave insight into Diane’s work method and themes. von Veh is also a contributor to the book and provides a provocative analysis of the Gothic elements in Victor’s drawings.

Opening speech for the book launch of TAXI 013 Diane Victor
By Karen von Veh

It was a pleasure to be asked to collaborate on a Taxi book project featuring Diane Victor as I consider her to be one of the most accomplished and prolific artists working in South Africa today. From the outset of her career she has maintained a high profile, winning numerous major awards and international fellowships and her work forms part of many important national and international collections. Both the quality and quantity of her work are astonishing, particularly when one looks at the labour intensive nature of the processes involved – such as the detailed, finely worked drawings, the shaped printing plates and complex, almost obsessive etchings, and the innovative techniques used in both media.

The strength of Victor’s art lies not only in her technical mastery of graphic media but also in her intense response to social injustices. This is the kind of work that lends itself to discussion and debate as it appears to illustrate the artist’s reaction to the excesses of society through intensely laboured, visceral details and shocking use of displacement and parody. Whether in simple line drawings or more complex compositions, Victor’s work is distinguished by its powerful iconography and an uncanny ability to disrupt complacency and disturb long-held beliefs or values.

Themes of lust, gluttony, rape, abuse of power and the general depravity of mankind are a continuous thread through both Victor’s drawings and her prints partly because she views her work as a form of therapy, a way of processing upsetting subject matter, or coming to terms with people who have angered or disgusted her. Much of her work, consequently, is autobiographicalcontent and is largely and confrontational. Her need to purge emotions such as aggression, bleakness and depravity is often expressed on paper by inflicting both metaphorical and physical violence on the images. She has said that the slashing, staining or destroying of finely worked, labour-intensive surfaces provides isa cathartic, effect that relieving the emotional tension derived from working with distressing subject matter.

This is evident for example in works commenting on the lack of social accountability such as The Good Preacher, The Good Doctor and The Honest Politician. These ‘pillars of morality’ are finely etched but defaced with stains and even slashed with a razor blade to more forcibly indicate that they are not only ineffectual in their positions of leadership and supportas leaders but have themselves become the cause of many social problems.
A similar effect is obtained in Stained Gods (2004) which subverts religious authoritywhich by indicating its obsolescence. The icons of Christianity Images of God the Father, the Son and the Virgin - represent a support system that has failed and are therefore stained and smudged with charcoal and water that not only besmirches these icons but also creates an effect similar to the ‘hazing’ from damp or mildew that affects old, unwanted books and pictures and infers abandonment and neglect.

It is Victor’s magnificent accomplishments as a printmaker and the technical excellence of her drawings that so ably express the messages carried in her iconography through her ability to fuse form and content. Her control of these graphic media is what sets her apart from most artists. I have seldom met anyone who works such long hours and is prepared to move out of her comfort zone and experiment with the limits of her media to such a degree and with such forceful results.

As Elizabeth Rankin has pointed out in her essay on Diane’s prints, these experiments have enabled her “…to create images in new and unexpected ways….and…have afforded her a versatility of expression that not only carries the multiple meanings evoked by her very personal imagery, but adds a further layer of signification through the process itself.”

Victor’s ability to keep moving forward throughout a career that spans over 20 years, has ensured that she remains at the cutting edge in terms of craftsmanship and techniques. It also pertains to experimental drawing techniques as seen in her recent invention of smoke drawings. These portraits were made quite literally with smoke (carbon), from a burning candle held beneath the paper, a technique that is extremely difficult to control and produces a fragile end result. The transience and ethereal quality of the medium, however, made it ideal for portraits of the lost, the dispossessed and the dead or dying. They were made to represent lost children in Stained Gods and the HIV portraits used for the Sasol Wax installation, - The Recent Dead (2006). In the last-mentioned exhibitions of these works, Tthe ghostly wisps of disembodied souls amassed around the walls make a stark contrast to the all too solid images of depravity and moral turpitude embodied in the social and religious leaders placed at the end of the installation.

Unfortunately there is not enough time here to do justice to the many and varied examples of Victor’s work. If you want to know more you will have to read the book which, I might add, is beautifully illustrated with a good cross section of both drawings and prints. I would like to congratulate Diane on this public recognition of her position as an influential artist in South Africa and I trust that this Taxi book will prove a useful and thought provoking resource, as well as a visual delight for both scholars and art lovers alike.

Keywords: Diane-Victor, Drawings, karen-von-veh, Printmaking, taxi---013:-diane-victor