Ein Tag Wie Gold (A Day Like Gold). Acrylic Pop Art Painting on Canvas
A chorus line of dancers strides confidently across the foreground, one hand on the hip and the other flung outward, their arched bodies moving in unison.
In front of them, the main dancers take the spotlight on centre stage, their movement in harmony with the chorus but delivered with a more measured energy.
Supporting dancers are rendered in an orange tone
The supporting dancers are rendered in an orange tone, not cast in shadow but positioned just outside both the literal and figurative limelight.
Across their backs appears the title of the piece in German, Ein Tag Wie Gold (“A Day Like Gold”), serving as both the name of the work and as a visual element related to it’s inspiration.
*Artist Doug Kemp with Ein Tag Wie Gold (A Day Like Gold – Small Town Dramas) Series Painting
Strange is often just beneath the surface.
The central dancers are derived from a single character in the television series Babylon Berlin.
Not portrayed as a stage performer, the figure once wore a gold lamé tails suit and danced in a club competition, along with other participants marked by numbers on their backs.
The text across the chorus line echoes this detail, drawing a link between staged performance and spectacle.
The video featured here from ‘Babylon Berlin’, a German TV series, encompasses just about everything Doug loves about the late 1920s nightclub scene. The music, the vibe and the banana girls. Other fruits are also available.
Babylon Berlin is a German-speaking neo-noir television series and is set in the latter years of the Weimar Republic (1929)
