oil on canvas

Signature details: signed top right; inscribed with the artist's name, the title, medium and dimensions on a Knysna Fine Art gallery label on the reverse
Literature: Pollak, L. (2013). Simon Stone: Collected Works. Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing, illustrated in colour on p.131.

(1)

106 x 183 cm; framed size: 107.5 x 185 x 4 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Knysna Fine Art, Knysna.

Notes:

In the artist monograph Simon Stone: Collected Works (2013), art historian and writer Lloyd Pollak describes the impressive large-scale painting A History of Bush Fires from 2006 as “one of Stone’s most captivating works”. Pollak further elaborates that “the looseness, freedom and spontaneity of Stone’s cloyingly beautiful evocations of colour, light and atmosphere are virtually unrivalled by any other contemporary South African artist”.

He further analyses the painting as follows: “As the eye travels from left to right, so it journeys from light into darkness. The painting divides vertically into two: one half is misty, but bright and light-filled; the other is dark, tenebrous and macabre. To left, a figure coalesces out of swirling sunlit clouds and mist like a ghostly apparition. The vaporous haze fudges line and contour, endowing the scene with a wispy fragility that contrasts with the solidity of the figures to right, where the lights dims, and the mood becomes ominous and threatening. There, firmly planted on terra firma, a seductress in black lingerie and high heels raises her arms to adjust her hair, thereby exposing her ample cleavage. By her side, stands a thuggish man. His weapon, a lethal sawfish snout, and the metal helmet concealing his face, both suggest the dangerous criminal.

A History of Bushfires seemingly consists of shards that refuse to cohere. In the critical literature on postmodernism, this absence of meaning is frequently justified, as reflecting the postmodern breakdown of any coherent world view, the collapse of the ‘grand narratives’ upon which our understanding of life and society were posited. Such a theory would assert that Stone’s enigmatic figures, standing on the shore, are castaways from the cultural shipwreck which drained meaning from the world.

Such an interpretation is supported by Stone’s account of a dream he once had, and which casts light on his use of juxtaposition [in his paintings]. ‘How are you connected to the rest of the world’, Stone asks vis-à-vis the dream. ‘I have always had a sense of apartness … a feeling of not belonging, not knowing and not understanding. I have always had it since my childhood, and I still have it today. I have always tried to make sense of the world, and in a way, I think that is why I paint. I think my primary urge is to put things together and see how they connect, and I think that is what my work is about.’

The apparently unrelated figures in A History of Bushfires transform the painting into a visual metaphor that communicates the mystery and bafflement that the artist claims existence has always provoked in him. The painting reflects its creator’s bewilderment, and mirrors his feelings of ‘not belonging, not knowing and not understanding’”.[1]

Marelize van Zyl

[1] Pollak, L. (2013). Simon Stone: Collected Works. Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing, pp 130 – 131.