BIOGRAPHY / EXHIBITIONS / COLLECTIONS / PUBLICATIONS

Nationality: Canadian

Born: London, England, 2 November, 1932

Education: Vancouver School of Art

Family: Married Carol in 1960 daughter from earlier marriage: Rachel, a singer-songwriter who lives in Vancouver, B.C.,

Canada Career:

Independent artist since 1954 lived in Vancouver, 1954-59, in Paris, London and Leeds, Yorkshire, 1959-69, in Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1970-78, in West Berlin, 1978-80 and in Munich since 1981; worked again in Paris 1976-78. Guest Lecturer, High Wycombe College of Art, and Coventry College of Art, 1963-65; Senior Lecturer, Leeds College of Art, 1965-70; visiting professor University of Essen, 1978; professor of Painting and graphics, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, since1981; professor of painting, Internationale Sommerakademie für Bildende Künste, Salzburg, 1986; "dyed and went to Bluebeard, 1987", conception of the Bluebeard Amuseum, 1987. Awards: Canada Council Senior Arts Grant, Ottawa, 1974 DAAD Artists Fellowship, West Berlin, 1978

Individual Exhibitions:

1969 Art Intermedia, Cologne 1971 Eat Art Gallery, Düsseldorf 1972 Galerie Müller, Cologne 1973 Kunstverein, Cologne Galerie Müller, Stuttgart Galerie Gunter Sachs, Hamburg 1974 Galerie Foncke, Ghent Salon de Mai, Paris (travelled to Braunschweig, Germany, and the Lijnbaacentrum, Rotterdam) 1975 Galerie Allen, Vancouver 1977 Junior Galerie, Goslar, Germany Galerie Vallois, Paris 1979 Galerie Redmann, Sylt, Germany Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1980 Galerie Redmann, Berlin Galerie Redmann, at ART '80, Basle Kunsthalle, Darmstadt, Germany 1982 Kunstverein, Augsburg, Germany 1993 Galerie Klewan, Munich

Selected Group Exhibitions:

1964 Cross Section, City Museum, Leicester Amadou in A, Antwerp 1970 Happenings and Fluxus, Kunstverein, Cologne 1972 Documenta, Kassel 1973 6th International Triennal of Coloured Graphic Prints, Grenchen, Switzerland 1976 Holz-Kunst-Stoff, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden- Baden 1978 Museum des Geldes, Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf 1979 Ten Artsits from the DAAD Programme, DAAD Galerie, Berlin 1989 Fluxus Fluxorum, Venice Biennale 1994 Fluxbritannica, Tate Gallery, London 1996 Flappenings and Huxus, Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica California Club Galerie, Leerer Beutel, Regensburg

Collections:

Museum Folkwang, Essen; Stattsgalerie, Stuttgart; Art Bank, Ottawa; Australian National Collection, Canberra.

Publications:

By Page:

Article: "Robin Page" in Flash Art (Milan) May 1972

On Page:

Books:

Mail Art: Communication à Distance: Consept by Jean-Marc Poinsot, Paris, 1971 Robin Page: Bildparabeln, exhibition catalogue,Augsburg, 1982

Articles:

"A Note on Robin Page" by E. Lynn in Art International (Lugano, Switzerland), May, 1973 "Robin Page, Galerie Müller" by G. Wirth in Das Kunstwerk (Baden-Baden), July, 1973 "Everybody Invited" by John Anthony Thwaites in Art and Artists (London), November, 1973 "Artist Dips His Brush in Canadian Wry" by Art Perry in Vancouver Province, November 1974 "I Am a Unique Idiot" by Marq de Villiers in Weekend Magazine (Montreal), Febraury 1975 "Art in a Brown Papar Bag" in Weekend Magazine (Montreal), May 1975

 

On the surface Robin Page in the archetypal frontier Canadian - big, brash, tough-talking, hard-drinking, gravel-voiced, complete with beard and blue jeans. Almost a caricature. He even hangs tree-felling saws on the walls of his Munich home. Yet beneath the gruff protective exterior lives a dedicated, articulate artist and teacher. Page's work presents a similar dichotomy. At first glance it is jokey, fun. But the artistic wit Page is only a tool he uses to make serious statements about art, life and communication. Son of Peter Carter-Page, humorist and cartoonist, who worked as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios in Hollywood in the thirties, he got his first lesson in abstraction from a Mickey Mouse Control Sheet, which said: "Remember, fellas, no matter which way Mickey's Head is turned, his ears are always shown in profile". After finishing with Art School in Vancouver he worked for a while on the Vancouver Province as a cartoonist before the lure of hard-edge and Europe brought him to the stimulus of Paris - so often an artist's catalyst - and London life gave him access to surrealism and the anti-art of Fluxus. Page was associated with Fluxus almost from the beginning, contributin major and minor Happenings throughout the 1960's. The 1970's found Page in Germany where he was able to function tatally as an artist for the first time with his first one-man exhibition and artist-in-residence positions providing studio space and stability. Images, in good art, cannot merely represent themselves. The guitar in Page's work is onde of his multi-layered autobiographical images which give depth and continuity to his oeuvre. Page played the gutar in a Victoria, B.C., band, and later supported himself by busking on the streets of Paris; the guitar was the central object to one of his earliest Happenings - at the Misfits Consert 1962, he kicked his Guitar from the ICA through the streets of London with the help of audience members, returning with a few fragments to the concert stage; later the guitar appears in a painting and an actual object in "The Blind Man" of 1970, one of his "Parables". The Parables began in Germany. They are Page's statement about art, conservation, politics, modern life. Central to each Parable is an action self-portrait. Painted from photographs, the painting is highly detailed and technically skilled.Page uses his own image as an object, raw material, just as he incrporates work of other artists - Picasso, Brancusi, Duchamp, De Chirico. A Charlie McCarthy-like dummy named Whildon (well-done?) acts as occasional comic to Page's straight guy. The action in the painting does not, however, remain on the two-dimensional canvas. It thrusts into space in front, completing the artist's statement with a three-dimensional object. Expectations of reality are fulfilled. Indications are that Page's Parables have all been written and new work is about to emerge from this artist who asks "Hey, Whildon, why has humour never replaced seriousness as the most respected cultural attitude?" Answer: " Because People can't fake it!"

Marlee Robinson, 1988

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