Exhibitions
Paula Rego (Dulwich Picture Gallery, till 26 July)
Rego's novel approach
Martin Gayford Many modern artists and critics have evinced a morbid horror of narrative art, or what Francis Bacon, with a shudder, used to call 'illustration'. Many, but not all Walter Sickert, to infuriate the Blooms- '? urYs, used to insist that all great art is illustration. And the contemporary painter Paula Rego is not only unashamed of pro- ducing narrative pictures, Out her latest work at the Dulwich Picture Gallery actual- ly Purports to be a series of illustrations to a 19th-century Portuguese novel. On show is a set of very large — in some cases more or less life-size — pastels relat- ing to the plot of The Sins of Father Amaro by Ecra de QueirOs (1843-1900). It is a weird premise for an exhibition in south London. Apparently — and I am• prepared to believe it, given my deep ignorance of all Hispanic literature apart from Don Quixote — Eca de Queiros is an important writer, the Flaubert, say, of Portugal. But clearly, although apparently a trans- lation has been published (Carcanet Press, 1994), remarkably few of the visitors to the show at Dulwich will have read it. Dulwich Picture Gallery have helpfully provided a short summary at the beginning of the show, which reveals that the book deals with a clandestine love affair between a priestly libertine and the daughter of the house in which he lives. Even armed with this information, how- ever, it is by no means easy to decode these enigmatic images. For one thing, Rego, though ready enough to tell a story, takes no account of the humdrum conventions of illustration. Thus, the same character may be represented in different pictures by radi- cally different models (one black, one white). On the other hand, the same adult male figure represents Amaro in childhood as well as manhood. Modern-looking clothes and props turn up in some pastels, period costume in others. In One, 'The Granddaughter', an extremely late 20th-century shopping-bag on wheels turns up, inexplicable until one reads Paula Rego's insouciant explanation. Nothing to do with the book. One thing follows another. I wanted to do that trolley, which has all my stuff in it.' So, evidently, she did not approach this task in, say, the spirit Tenniel brought to his illustrations of Alice (although there is something Lewis Carrollish about Rego).
The overall effect is a little like a modern historical novel such as A.S. Byatt's Posses- sion, in which contemporary characters merge and contrast with Victorian ones. But Rego seems a good deal more arbi- trary and whimsical in her methods than that. Objects and people are often includ- ed, it seems, because it strikes her they fit there. A beguiling non sequitur or a little pink sponge pig in 'In The Wilderness' one of the best of the series — is an example.
The novel was evidently a way of opening up familiar Rego territory — the suffocat- ing respectability of the Portuguese past, with clandestine sexuality bubbling malevo- lently beneath the surface. Once given that start her imagination got going. It's partly the fact that they aren't direct illustrations of anything that makes these pictures good, when they are good. So is this a good batch of Rego? In one way yes, in another less so. In the past few years she has made a technical advance, I think. For some reason — perhaps because it would make her imaginative fantasies too solidly real — she avoids oil. In the Eight- ies and early Nineties her paintings were generally executed in acrylic, a horrible medium which very few artists — the late Michael Andrews was one — have man- aged to get to sing. The last two or three series, however, like these, have been giant pastels mounted on aluminium. This is .much more satisfactory, producing much more light and life. Sometimes, especially with the single figures such as 'Looking Out', she produces an imposing amplitude of form.
Those earlier paintings, conversely, were packed with much more subversive, disqui- eting erotic menace. Some of these pictures deal with the same sort of theme, enfee- bled men, tough-looking women assuming command (she has said that her work is `always, always' about revenge). But a lot of them look more like people posing in the Paula Rego's 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1998 studio — Freud without the power — the disquiet, weirdness, and vengeance she used to evoke having seeped away.
Still, sometimes it's there. As one enters the Gallery, one encounters a single Rego — 'Angel', a woman in 19th-century cos- tume holding a sword in one hand and a sponge in the other — hung beside Muril- lo's 'Madonna of the Rosary'. Admittedly, this is the least marvellous of the magnifi- cent Murillos at Dulwich. Still, the Rego holds its own surprisingly well, which is probably achievement enough for one show.
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