Travels with Pierneef

The other day we had supper with my friend Larry, a keen cyclist. Not just an old toppie donning a lycra suit because he doesn’t know what else to do with his retirement, but a one – time USA Olympic cyclist. We brought with us a large bottle of peaches. Fantastic! he said, these are the best thing to eat when you get The Bonk.

The Bonk is when you’re 20 kilometres into a bike ride and you have a total blood sugar collapse, with 20ks still to go. Hitting the wall and all that. Outside of physical exertion, how about creative endeavours: writer’s block, lets say – or blogger’s block, in this blogger’s case.

Us painter types are frequently under the threat of The Bonk. Like a tokoloshe hiding under the bed, it lurks behind every painting we do. I recently began a set of 28 small works. The first seven went pretty well, but on painting number 8, I suddenly had no idea what I was doing, The colour was out, the composition was kak, I had no idea about tonality, I didn’t even know how to draw. It was The Bonk.

Only the day before I’d thought I was in control of my destiny. Nah. When you get the Bonk, you stop trusting your instinct, and a downward spiral ensues. Pissed off about the waste of time and energy, there’s nothing for it but to scrape the whole thing down, muttering the well- worn mantra “in order to be creative, you have to be destructive.”

At this stage you’ve just gotta put the whole thing behind you. Back in the day, my strategy was always to go to a bar and spend a long time there. Now I’ll just get the hell out of the studio and park out on the beach with a flask of tea. Who knows, I may even go so far as to do a bit of plein -air painting for a change. Meanwhile, how about those bottled peaches?

tokoloshe : a malevolent gremlin of African folklore

At last the December holiday invaders have left us and it is High Summer. In other words, long lazy days, the plaintive trilling of the European starlings, the evening scent of the Milkwood tree. We’ve had unseasonal rain, even thunderstorms, and fierce fires sweeping around the nearby settlements of Betty’s and Pringle Bay. I never quite know what I’m supposed to be doing in January – scratching around the studio, flipping through an old journal, wilting in the heat. The best antidote to this lethargy is to get into the water in the nearby Kleinrivier estuary.

On a muggy afternoon, you wander into a low – colour monotone beachscape, with little to differentiate sky, water and sand. Against this very big abstract canvas, humans inject bright colour contrasts and darker tones. Our usual goal-driven behaviour is also somewhat nullified by the nautical scale of things – here we are, us innocuous Sapiens and our beloved canines, just being lateral for a change.

Next to the water, it is almost desolate one moment, the next all cameraderie and hail-fellow-well-met. Soon there was a robust young couple taking the waters with definite purpose. They plunged recklessly in, floating along on the ingoing current for a while before running back and repeating the cycle. For a moment it seemed as if the resolve of the male had faltered as he lurked behind.: Kom Poppie! cried the woman, in a tone that would not be defied.

A group of Eastern Europeans had gathered to watch the antics of Poppie and Popette, and it wasn’t long before they overcame their fears and were flinging themselves into the water with the same childlike abandon. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t tepid, it was Just Right.

You know, there’s something about that oke there that rings a bell – ah, yes, is he not perhaps that man from Trinidad, as depicted by one Peter Doig in his enigmatic work called Pelican? Or am I just getting too lateral?

I’ve been going to nearby Grotto beach a lot lately. It is sometimes wind-swept and deserted, at others it’s the most chilled and joyous of places: children jumping into the sea, the good residents walking their dogs, the cheery cries of the beach volleyball teams. On a calm evening the waves lap in and there may even be a Southern Right whale lolling a few hundred metres out to sea. For a moment the vast and alien Atlantic seems benign, and the beach visitors serene and contemplative.

I often get to the beach, ready to draw, and think “mmm… nothing here,” but then something happens. Yesterday it was the arrival of those two girls, the only swimmers on the beach. They sat for a long time, deeply engaged. I had my subject. I quickly put down the figure on the right, followed by that large bounding dog. Then the left figure draped in the towel. Then the whale -watching boat and finally the dog on the left. The drawing is a gathering- together of small moments. Nothing stays still for long and it’s a test of speed and the ability to imprint what you’ve just seen – I mean what the hell do the legs of a running dog actually look like?

And then things got weird. Into view came two blokes with black plastic bags over their shoulders. They were scuffling through the bins looking for stuff to re-cycle. And they were wearing masks. Not covid masks, but scary Crazy -store type masks. Wha HA HA! they shouted at the girls, waving their arms about. Although some distance away, the bikini – clad ones quickly gathered up their stuff and scuttled off. Having gone through the bins and chased away the girls, the Masked Ones sat down on a bench and regarded the sea. And a huge black Raven, right on cue, descended onto one of the bins. A pure Twin Peaks moment – I’ve never seen that Raven on the beach before. But I know a performance artist when I see one, and I went over and had a chat to the lads. These okes, who are clearly on the outers, scrabbling for aluminium tins to put bread into their mouths, are still capable of existential jest. I would have loved to draw them, but there just wasn’t time. They might still find their way into a painting of Grotto beach.

I got a call out of the blue from the South African Society of Artists asking if I’d be prepared to be one of the judges to select work for their annual exhibition. Of course I would. I was to report to the Rondebosch Boys Prep school on Sunday 6th August at 9.00am sharp. After reading the email describing my duties and obligations, I put on my judge face and headed for the Mother City.

The SASA has been around for more than 100 years, so they’ve had a bit of time to work out how to judge a competition. Three seated judges on one end, five people opposite to record the judge’s marks, and fifteen volunteers to present the work to the judges. Upon our tables there was a revolving wheel to signal our chosen score for each work. Also on the table were two energy bars, some sweets, a notepad and pen, some tissues and a small bottle of Panado. And a small blanket. It was cold in the Rondebosch Boys school hall.

There were 250 paintings to look at. That’s a lot and in the beginning its hard to figure out what the parameters are. One is gauging the work but also monitoring oneself: am I being too mean here? Did I just give that person a 9 because I just gave three fives in a row? Did I give that painting an 8 because it has a cat lying on a carpet, and like cats? Why am I marking the watercolours so high? Is it because lately I can’t do a decent watercolour and clearly these amateurs are better than me? I have no idea what marks the other judges are giving. The work keeps coming and eventually I’m running on autopilot, which is a good thing because in these matters you just have to trust your instincts.

As it happens, I’m reading the memoirs of one A S Hartrick, a forgotten English painter of the late 1900s. He belonged to the International Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers. They got that great narcissist James Whistler in as President, of which he says ” The methods of Mussolini and the Fascists in a small way appear to have been tried out here thoroughly, long before we heard of them politically.” Indeed. Aesthetic matters are deeply subjective, and I’m wondering what the biases of the other two judges are, and if we’ll see eye to eye on what comes out on top.

After a home – baked lasagne for lunch, we got through to the final stage, where us judges were at last allowed to confer. The highly – marked work was up on the stage and now came the tricky final hierarchy bit.

It turns out to be easy. We quickly agreed on what was “commended,” “highly commended,” and which works were the winners in their categories. If the judges put their egos aside, a measure of objectivity is possible! I had feared that I may have needed a Panado or two after that relentless inward tide of work, but i left feeling uplifted. Not that far from us, there were taxi operators blocking roads and wielding AK47s. People are on the take, dying in the streets, putting the screws on each other in all sorts of ways. But here are the devoted painters voluntarily giving up their time in a collective effort to improve what they love to do

It was 1994, in Yeoville. Across from the Checkers in Raleigh road, there was an old railway coach that went as a diner. I was in there, having coffee with James Philips. It was noon. His hair was long and somewhat unkempt and he smelled of nicotine. He was excited. “Carl, this new shit we’re doing is radical, broer; horn arrangements, weird time signatures, complicated shit!” He was telling me about the new Lurchers’ cd they were recording. And he said ” I’ve got an amazing painting that we’re going to be putting on the cover of the cd. It’s by Walter Meyer. Have your heard of him? ” No I hadn’t.

The cd was called Sunny Skies, a caustic jab at the popular “Braaivleis, sunny skies and Chevrolet” adverts that had been aimed at the myopic white tribe in the 1980s. Meyer’s painting was of an eerily barren 70s East Rand-type house about to be swamped by the mother of all thunderstorms.

There was a rapport between James’ music and Walter’s painting . Here were two dissenting white men, each blessed with unique gifts in their own fields, calling the last round on the culture they grew up in. At Meyer’s first one man show in Joburg, at Ricky Burnett’s Newtown Gallery,  the Lurchers played live to mark the event. Not that Meyer needed the extra noise. His paintings – and there were a lot of them coming at you – were like a well- timed punch in the gut. This was the South African hinterland at the end of Apartheid : desolate small town houses, deserted main roads, broken farm buildings.  Things that we’d all seen were suddenly there in a way that was both familiar and utterly new. Meyer had a way of transforming the photographs he worked from. This was “realism,” but the brushwork – intense and absolutely assured – took the images well beyond the photograph. Here, in grungy downtown Joburg, was a major painter announcing his arrival.

Goedemoed, Kalahari,1995. Oil on canvas 48 x 58cm

Innovators see what everyone else sees but doesn’t really notice. They figure out how to paint it. A glare of light on the Karoo ground at noon, the relentless sun casting deep shadow. Nondescript railway sidings in the veld. How a few scraggly palms planted in hope come to signal despair. These subjects were a far cry from the concerns of traditional landscape painters. Meyer looked unsparingly on the mark of man on the landscape and what he saw was definitely not a Chevrolet commercial. In Pierneef, nature is mostly nurturing and benign: Man succeeds against the odds and a feelgood order prevails. There is nostalgia in both Meyer and Pierneef, but in Meyer there is little consolation. Instead, we sense loss, alienation and the downright strangeness of the world.

Jagersfontein, 1997, oil on canvas 84 x 100cm

Walter was a man for heat, arid vistas and big skies. He didn’t, like many of us, live in suburbia and make occasional forays into the platteland. He lived it. He also, to be sure, knew degrees of anguish – a man of few words, unable to keep off the booze, the hangover a constant companion. A mark of an artist must surely be his or her influence on their peers. Just as it is difficult to bypass Pierneef, the aspiring landscape painter should now address the work of Meyer. He was the kingpin in a moment of South African painting in which I would include such luminaries as Anton Karstel, Johan Louw, Kobus Kloppers and Clare Menck for starters. He will be missed. Hamba kahle, WM.

Rand Gold Mine , 90x80cm, oil on canvas,2013

A long time ago, when Hermann Niebuhr came back to Joburg, we made some excursions down Main Reef road, looking for clues to the spirit of Jozi. On the East Rand, close to the fabled Snake Road mine dump, we found some derelict buildings. In the detritus were many small plastic signs that had once steered mineworkers around the equipment that gets the shiny stuff out of the ground. And one of the signs we took back to Lilian Road bore the simple inscription “propane on”.

Over the course of many workshops held on the stoep of Lilian Rd, “propane on” became a key idea in the mythology of how an exhibition comes together. Further workshops revealed that the stages are: 1. Churning or scratching around. 2. Finding your Line and Length. 3  Propane On, and 4. Brushes Down.

I reached Brushes Down last Friday at 6.30pm. I’ve been at the landscape business again, from early January, working towards a June 1 show at the William Humphreys Gallery in Kimberley. It’s a grand moment, make no mistake, but one still has a lot things to do. Like taking stuff to the framers, touching up nicks and scratches on old frames, listing and photographing work, and varnishing the paintings I did two years ago. I like W& N Satin varnish, by the way, and the best thing to apply that with is the Roberson Priming Brush, purchased in London by Marjorie MacLean. It has a copper ferrule and a handle made out of laminated wood, and it lasts forever.

Made in France, nogal

There was a lot of work involving crates. The unpacking and re-packing thereof. My rudimentary carpentry skills were called into service (ah, what a fine invention is the electric screwdriver!) I’ve sent 62 pieces off to the North West, and it was a moment of pure delight when finally the laden truck trundled off down the road. I shall soon be bringing up the rear, with a few stragglers in the back of the Nissan. Onward to Kimberley!

Sometimes a crate notion…..

Dear Reader

Latterly, you may have noticed a great scarcity of reports from this absent blogger. The Pierneef project is still simmering, I’ve just got the flame turned down for a bit. In early November, I ventured once more to the Drakensberg, making a day trip into Lesotho on the way. Those Maloti mountains are lovely, but the Pierneef site remains elusive. I came back with about 500 photographs and have no inclination to work my through them, let alone actually write about the adventure. Instead, I find myself drawn to the smell of freshly – cut linoleum and printing ink. Ah, the pleasures of the linocut! So old – fashioned and challenging in its simplicity! Without further ado then, loyal subscribers, here is this year’s Christmas card.

Great good greetings to all of you, and have a fab 2016!

I visited Richard Smith in his studio on a balmy Spring day last week. Smith has been living in Onrus, near Hermanus, for more than a decade. He works at home, upstairs, and has a view of a pleasing expanse of lawn hemmed in by big bluegum trees. His wife Li, also a painter, has her studio downstairs and they share the space with a dog and two tabby cats. The studio is neatly kept. Smith is an organised kind of a painter – one has the sense here of well-established systems, of working to deadline. He is preparing work for his November show at Ebony, in Cape Town, and going into the critical last 6 weeks. There are canvases on easels, more canvases hanging from the eves, and one lying flat on the floor, which he approaches keenly. “Look at this – I’m very excited about some of the things happening here. ” He points to an area where he’s dragged a big house-painting brush through wet oil paint, leaving a multi-coloured smear in the centre of the canvas.

He leaps to another canvas leaning on an easel. “This one’s showing potential.” There’s a figure, loosely tacked in with a brush, on a pinkish background, offset by a fierce cadmium yellow.”This one still needs something, I’m going to put it away for a while and then look at it again.” He points to another large canvas – a nude male figure leans on a pedestal in a nascent cityscape. “I killed that one,” he says, exasperated. “It’s overworked. It’s dead!” There’s a subtle difference between the two, but, compared to the pink canvas, the nude somehow lacks urgency. The element of self-surprise – even puzzlement – is Smith’s bread and butter. “Yes,” he says, ” the painterly process is all important. It’s about doing something that isn’t preconceived. I want to find colours I haven’t seen before.” He scrutinizes more of the canvases close up. “These backgrounds are very light, perhaps too light.” There are expanses of light greys, some pink-hued, others blue-grey, made up of interlocking brushstrokes of varying thickness. Daubs and dabs of colour enliven the surface and there are remnants or beginnings of subtle line drawings that have been engraved into the paint. It is from these accretions of paint that ideas emerge, and the content of the painting begins to reveal itself. The areas where paint collides are like fields of energy from which ideas sprout. They blossom or are ploughed back into the field to emerge later.

We don’t talk much about the content of the painting, as if the question is somehow invasive. At times, Smith will even deny that he’s responsible for imagery. He points to a fish flipping its way onto a canvas. “Look at that fish, I don’t know how it got there or what it’s going to do.” Fair enough, the likes of Picasso and T S Eliot were similarly reluctant to expound on their imagery. Many painters view painting as an autonomous language – to think that painting can be explained in terms other than its own is to miss the point. And these paintings, which you could call “figurative,” are deeply attached to a tenet of much abstract painting: that the act of painting is itself the content of the painting. This way of working is as much a journey into uncharted realms as it is a desire on Smith’s part to subvert his exceptional ability to articulate objects and ideas. He is that rare artist who can draw – on command – what he pleases: A rhino, a dog, a Greek temple, whatever. The current procedure subverts the temptation to easily knock out pictures. The intent is to avoid formulas. ” Lots of artists who are commercially successful get stuck in a formulaic way of doing things. When that happens, you’re dead.” But he acknowledges that professional painters are subject to the whims and fancies of market forces. And despite the dogged example of thwarted early modernists like Cezanne, most painters have pretty fragile egos. “Frankly,” says Smith, “we actually do need the recognition that sales give us.”

Death of Sardanapalus (detail)

Smith admires R B Kitaj, as well as the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, both consumate draftspeople with a potent ability to express complex and mysterious stories. And he has a favourite painting: Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapulus, that great heaving drama of sex and death. Although Smith is not given to angst, there are some heavier, somber paintings emerging.

Smith’s new show is titled ” Music and no music.” Smith certainly plays music, and he listens widely to music while painting. The sound of painting is the sound of a bristle brush on canvas, footsteps going back and forth, sharp intakes of air, sighs of despondency. But that’s not what he’s talking about. The music is the sound of serendipity, the state of joyous flow that brings things into being.”How important is Art, really?,” he asks “there’s this whole world of galleries, international art fairs and so on, all manufacturing importance, telling us how important Art is, but at the end of the day, a lot of it is fashion and propaganda.” Smith has got beyond all that now – it doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is to make the music.

c  Carl Becker  September 2015