John Kramer’s paintings bring to mind long, hot, lonely Sunday afternoons in the platteland. The images of slightly dilapidated buildings are both achingly familiar and strangely foreign. Inevitably they evoke feelings that hover somewhere between warm comforts and quiet despair.
This piece was first published in Cape Review July 2001. I’m posting it again because I love John’s paintings and also because he is having his first solo exhibition in 25 years at the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town and there are only 5 more days to see it as the exhibition ends on the 27 September and I need to go and see it within the next day or so because art is feeds the soul and sometimes you take it for granted and then one day it’s no longer there, like beautiful exhibitions and old corner cafés…
(I love this painting so much. The Princess Cafe in Hermanus was where we used to buy soft-serve ice creams. We drove passed it last week and it's been replaced by a R5 store.)
A
conversation with John Kramer
John Kramer’s paintings portray the everyday
ordinariness of our country. Old buildings and corner cafés embody the spirit
of a community and times that has almost been erased from our memory. He paints
with compassion and affection, affection, I suppose, born out of a familiarity
with the scenes he paints.
He explains, ‘It helps to paint what you
understand. I’m not saying I completely understand these communities, know
exactly how a shop is run or who the owner is, but I certainly understand or
can relate to the scenes I paint. I can recall those quiet, boring Sunday
afternoons. I’ve sat under verandas in small towns as a child, wishing something
exciting would happen. I remember those moods and remember hating it.
‘You must paint from this place inside
yourself. And I’m interested in the places I know; the idiosyncratic little
towns which are rapidly disintegrating and I suppose a lot of my work today is
to hang on to those memories because I actually did experience the end of that
era.’
The passion for what John sees as typically
South African architecture, stems from his having grown up in Worcester. ‘In a
town like Worcester in the 50s, nothing much ever happened but there was the
old Van Vuuren’s Milk Bar, a real American Milk Bar with a juke box and soda
fountain and there were two bioscopes, the La Scala and Twentieth Century Fox.
In the 60s when I left Worcester to go and study art at Michaelis there was an
economic boom and things started changing in Worcester. This was the time when
TV came to South Africa and inevitably things started changing. La Scala closed
and places that I’d associated with my childhood started disappearing. I felt
an awful sense of loss and I wanted to hang on to some of those memories, so I
went around and photographed some of these buildings, just to have a visual
record.’
These photographs would eventually form the
basis of John’s early work. In 1971 he went to visit his brother David who was
studying in Leeds and it was here that John realized the significance of these
seemingly ordinary and almost forgotten buildings. ‘David and I were talking
about our search for what we called The Real South Africa, whatever it was in
those days. We were looking for something that was essentially South African.
Obviously we were looking at it from our white middle class perspective, but we
still felt that there was something uniquely South African that wasn’t being
commented in in the arts. I returned to South Africa and noticed for the first
time the quality of the light and the vast space. In contrast to the red brick
and industrial architecture I had seen in Leeds, I was now confronted with
buildings in an assortment of colours and houses with gardens and fences. What
I had always thought was normal now seemed quite bizarre. And then I realized
that it was this ordinariness that was the essence of The Real South Africa.
The South Africa of the Cape Dutch kultuur
where little architectural gems that were being preserved by the various
cultural societies in the small towns were all historical buildings but I felt,
and still do, that the Brody’s Hardware Shops and the Van Vuuren’s Milk Bars
are the more realistic representation of the architecture of our country.’
John paints buildings that still exist in
modern South Africa but which also echo layers of the past. For him, the
buildings must have a feeling and this feeling has nothing to do with
architectural beauty. It’s how the viewer relates to the building that gives it
its significance. Those who respond to his work, do so because there is
something in their collective memory that sparks recognition. It may be the
building, a windmill or a metal Joko Tea plaque which reminds them of their
past,
There is something melancholic about these
paintings but still they manage to celebrate the very ordinariness of that
society has begun to reject. It is no wonder that his works are highly sought
after by South Africans living abroad. Looking at them, you can almost hear the
call of the cicadas and smell the small town dust. For some it is the Afrikaans
lettering on the buildings that remind homesick South Africans of their
heartland. But it isn’t only the images of the platteland which conjures up memories. John’s body of work
depicting the corner cafés awaken a long forgotten suburban memory of old
chocolates, glass jars filled with loose sweets, brown paper packets and
magazine racks where Scope magazines
were furtively read by schoolboys behind the trays of warm government loaves of
bread.
The demise of the suburban corner café almost
caught John unawares. ‘I never worried too much about the corner cafés until
one day I realised they were almost all being replaced by franchised cafés. I
don’t think any of us could have imagined how fast they would have disappeared
in the past 10 years. These are real losses and I’m glad that I managed to
capture some of them.’ The Imperial Café with its corrugated iron roof and
wooden structure was a Cape landmark; nestling underneath the incomplete
flyover at the entrance to the Waterfront. It was a source of irritation to
some but a source of joy to others. It burnt down a year or two ago, but John’s
painting managed to capture the mood of this late night convenience café. Then
there was the exotically named Zanzibar Café in Voortrekker Road. It was one of
John’s favourites reminding him of the legendary Baghdad Café (of the film of
the same name) where anything may happen.
I remember the Onrus Cash Store. It now
longer exists, but then much has changed in this small seaside village near
Hermanus. Looking at a painting of it, I’m transported back to cold wet Cape
winter weekends in a village with few inhabitants, even fewer playmates and
where a visit to Mrs Hen’s café would mean sticking your grubby hand into a jar
filled with Apricot sweets, Wilson toffees and cheap peppermints. Hot summer
days would necessitate a similar barefoot journey to but ice-lollies which then
dripped orange syrup all over warm sunburnt arms.
This is what John Kramer does best. He
captures a moment in time.
Driving through a town you may or may not
notice the tin barrels converted into garbage cans, or the car tyres now used
as a planter for the Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, or the windmills, or the short
picket fences painted in oranges and browns, or the wire garden gates. It is
only in a painting that our attention is focused on these details that convey
the soul of a place.
According to John, ‘ I’ve always maintained
that the small town is much more interesting than New York. For me a Karoo town
is special. You don’t know what’s going to be there. You look and at first you
don’t see anything and then you notice the dryness and even though everything
is rundown, there’s an honesty about the place. People often ask me why there
aren’t any people in my work but this omission is deliberate. My paintings are
actually portraits and the buildings with their faded advertisements, mix of
architectural styles and peeling paint do convey the history and the
personality of the locals.’
John Kramer tells the story of how having
spent the day exploring Sutherland, the town famous for its observatory and icy
winters, he was ready to check into the local hotel. The receptionist welcomed
him warmly, asking him what he was doing in the area. ‘I’m looking around,
taking some pictures; it’s a wonderful town this, ‘ he assured her. He recalls her
wistful expression, and her skeptical ‘gmff.’
Things aren’t always what they seem.
But for how long will these small towns
continue to be an example of Real South Africa? John believes that their time
has almost passed.
‘The slow demise of the railways has killed
these places. With the railways pulling out of the towns, the economy collapsed
and the Karoo fell apart far quicker than one would have imagined. The arrival
of television also signaled the end of an era for small town South Africa.
Suddenly the whole world was being beamed into everybody’s living room,
including the people who lived in these small towns. For the first time they
became aware of how the rest of the world lived and those fantastic naïve combinations
of colour and whatever they did décor-wise that was perhaps regarded by those
more sophisticated people as being in bad taste, disappeared. ‘And then of
course city folk bought up houses for weekend homes. New designer colours
appeared on the scene, new broekie-lace
was put up and while the houses may now look lovely and small town appear on
tourist maps, they’ve lost their authenticity and soul.
‘But I suppose that’s what my paintings are
about. Memory and loss.’
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