City at Night

Buster Black’s gritty and energetic City at Night is no quiet nocturne. The uneven grid of thick lines loom towards the viewer, pushing out and up into the indigo sky while passages of fathomless darkness flow at the edges. Painting in the early 1960s, at a time when six ‘o’clock closing sent patrons home and cities slept, Black’s night landscapes represent a singular vision in New Zealand art. Not only was it unusual to paint the landscape cloaked in darkness, but Black also had new and unexpected ways of handling paint. City at Night is heavily impastoed with thick sand-filled globs rising off the board, announcing themselves with every stroke.

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