3rd Mar, 2019 12:00

Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art

 
Lot 67
 
Lot 67 - Moshekwa Langa (South Africa 1975-)

67

Moshekwa Langa (South Africa 1975-)
the cyclone that never abates

acrylic, watercolour, ink and thread on paper

Signature details: inscribed with the title

Sold for R455,200
Estimated at R280,000 - R360,000


 

acrylic, watercolour, ink and thread on paper

Signature details: inscribed with the title

(1)

138 x 100 cm

Notes:

Since the early 1990s, Moshekwa Langa’s art has been consistently elusive; on the run. Prominent American curator Hamza Walker characterized it as “consciously cryptic”.[1] Late art critic Colin Richards also weighed in, describing it as “cryptic and diaristic, his aesthetic one of wit and whimsy, a sharp feel for the game and a devotion to keeping on the move”.[2] Langa himself has described his work as being “sparked by so many different things that it is very, very possible to have more than 10 things at once because they are prompted by different desires and different needs”. [3] The painting at hand, The cyclone that never abates, expresses just that. A watery crimson hue drapes down from the top, interrupted by a microscopic cursively written inscription, “the cyclone that never abates”. The title suggests turmoil and disquiet, but the painting depicts no traces of destruction. However, it would be negligent to claim that what visually unfolds before us is ‘simple’ despite it seeming so. Here, existence itself appears merely abstracted, surrealistic, and prevaricating. Human figures, creatures, animals, boats, airplanes, birds, ships, and residencies are cartographically dispersed across the picture plane in ways that flatten the space. Dumile Feni’s The African Guernica comes to mind here, except Langa refuses us the comfort of a narrative arc. His characters and scenes, always childlike, have no clearly visible relation to each other or the viewer.There’s no intelligible disaster in this cyclone then, but instead, there’s a compositional and formal recalcitrance. A disaster is immanent in the very visual properties of the work itself. The discordant palette of turbid greys spread unevenly across the lemony acrylic, touches of watercolour, and the faint blues and pinks of woolen thread textures present a disturbing disharmony. We can sense a disaster but

Athi Mongezeleli Joja

Sources:

[1] Walker H. (2003). Moshekwa Langa: The Global Village Revisited. in Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, edited by Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell. London: inIVA.

[2] Richards C. (2004). Aftermath: Value and Violence in Contemporary South Africa Art. in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Edited by Terry Smith, et al. Durham: Duke University Press.

[3] Ellipses Exhibition Outline. https://www.stevenson.info/exhibition/44. Accessed 15 January 2019.

You can place an absentee bid through our website - please sign in to your account on our website to proceed.

In the My Account tab you can also enter telephone bids, or email bids@aspireart.net to log telephone/absentee bids.

Join us on the day of the auction to follow and bid in real-time.

The auction will be live-streamed with an audio-visual feed.

Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 3rd Mar, 2019

Aspire Art Auctions set a new bar for the market in its Autumn 19 Auction in Cape Town, with a South African auction record for its cover lot.

An early work, by international star Marlene Dumas, Love Lost (1973/4) achieved R7 283 200, more than doubling its pre-sale estimate of R3 000 000. Further successful sales included a range of paintings by Alexis Preller from across his career, and new world records for work by Jane Alexander, Simphiwe Ndzube, and Moshekwa Langa. These results further establish Aspire’s growing reputation as the discerning auction house for handling contemporary South African art.  

View all lots in this sale

Images *

Drag and drop .jpg images here to upload, or click here to select images.


 

IMPORTANT NOTICE:


 

Logistics

While we endeavour to assist our Clients as much as possible, we require artwork(s) to be delivered and/or collected from our premises by the Client. In instances where a Client is unable to deliver or collect artwork(s), Aspire staff is available to assist in this process by outsourcing the services to one of our preferred Service Providers. The cost for this will be for the Client’s account, with an additional Handling Fee of 15% charged on top of the Service Provider’s invoice.

Aspire Art provides inter-company transfer services for its Clients between Johannesburg and Cape Town branches. These are based on the size of the artwork(s), and charged as follows:

Small (≤60x90x10 cm): R480

Medium (≤90x120x15 cm): R960

Large (≤120x150x20 cm): R1,440

Over-size: Special quote

 

Should artwork(s) be collected or delivered to/from Clients by Aspire Art directly, the following charges will apply:

Collection/delivery ≤20km: R400

Collection/delivery 20km>R800≤50km

Collection/delivery >50km: Special quote

 

Packaging

A flat fee of R100 will be added to the invoice for packaging of unframed works on paper.

 


International Collectors Shipping Package

For collectors based outside South Africa who purchase regularly from Aspire Art’s auctions in South Africa, it does not make sense to ship artworks individually or per auction and pay shipping every time you buy another work. Consequently, we have developed a special collectors’ shipping package to assist in reducing shipping costs and the constant demands of logistics arrangements.

For buyers from outside South Africa, we will keep the artworks you have purchased in storage during the year and then ship all the works you have acquired during the year together, so the shipping costs are reduced. At the end of the annual period, we will source various quotes to get you the best price, and ship all your artworks to your desired address at once.

Aspire Art will arrange suitable storage during, and cost-effective shipping at the end, of the annual period.

 


Collections

Collections are by appointment, with 24-hours’ notice

Clients are requested to contact the relevant office and inform Aspire Art of which artwork(s) they would like to collect, and allow a 24-hour window for Aspire Art’s logistics department to retrieve the artwork(s) and prepare them for collection.

 


Handling Fee

Aspire Art charges a 15% Handling Fee on all Logistics, Framing, Restoration and Conservation arranged by Aspire.