oil and graphite on canvas

Artwork date: 2003
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title, the medium, date and 'My first London painting since 1953'
Exhibited: 34 Long, Cape Town, 'Robert Hodgins', 24 October to 4 November 2006.
Location: Cape Town

(1)

92.5 x 121 cm; framed size: 100 x 130.5 x 6.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK:

Sharply-witted depictions of 'the office’, ‘businessmen', 'chairmen and CEOs in pinstriped suits' as metaphors for social and economic power structures is a recurring and popular theme in some of Robert Hodgins’ most notable and important paintings. Not only as critical – or satirical – commentary on the corporate world and the (very serious) battles that are fought around boardroom tables[1], but also as psychological portraits of individual and group male identity.[2]

Simple and forthright in style, A Day at the Office (2003) is a striking and sophisticated painting that exudes the artist’s mature confidence and triumphant control of his medium, technique and pictorial content. Here, a typical stark office scene (with a line graph in the background) is rendered with extraordinary deftness and economy of line and colour. The forms of the figures merge fluidly in an otherwise tight and strictly delineated composition. Three suited male characters, two standing and one seated dominate the foreground, poignantly interacting in this tableau. Although their faces are not fully defined, they quirkily encapsulate the idea of the ‘smug masters of the financial universe’.

The relationship between the characters is ambivalent, leaving the viewer curious and engaged, wanting to know more about the individuals and the scenario they find themselves in. However, "the odd thing is" states the artist, "when you talked about my characters, they can start off with a blob of red on green, just to see how they ire of each other. In the end, by the time I've finished them, I've got to know them as somebody too. This is interesting – is it in an imaginary world? A literary world? Or the real world?”[3]

A keen social observer who curiously and critically evaluated the doings and dramas of humankind, Hodgins often referred to people as ‘visual facts’ or “painting facts……that gradually become real facts”.[4] For the artist, the act of image-making was exciting, amusing, and an intelligent means to understand and examine the complexities and dramas of human life.

Aspire Art sold Hodgins’ similarly themed paintings A Suit of Flames and a Brooks Bros' Shirt for R1,081,789.97 in September 2020, Tenth Circle (1994/5) for R853,500 in September 2018 and Office Hours (2006) for R 740 389 in November 2017.

Text by Marelize van Zyl

1. A Suit of Flames and a Brooks Bros' Shirt, n.d.
2. The Tenth Circle, 1994/5
3. Office Hours, 2006

[1] Bedford, E (2020), Robert Hodgins: A Suit of Flames and a Brooks Bros' Shirt in Aspire Art Auctions, Modern and Contemporary Art (auction catalogue), Johannesburg, 3 September, p.158.

[2] Dodd, A (2017), Robert Hodgins: Office Hours in Aspire Art Auctions, Modern and Contemporary Art (auction catalogue), Johannesburg, 12 November, p. 82.

[3] Smith, K (2008), Some General Rules: Robert Hodgins in Conversation with Kathryn Smith in Julia Charlton, J and Buys, A (eds) (2012). A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print Archive. Johannesburg: Wits Art Museum, p. 122.

[4] Ibid. p.130.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE:

This painting was produced shortly after the artist’s major retrospective exhibition; 50 Years a Painter which first opened in 2001 and travelled for two years nationally to major intuitions, concluding at the end of 2002 at the Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of Witwatersrand.

In 2003, the same year this work was produced, the artist presented his last international solo exhibition at Simon Mee Fine Art in London, UK. That same year, his work was also showcased in a group exhibition; Absolutely/Perhaps, with William Kentridge, Johannes Phokela and Sam Nhlengethwa at the same gallery.

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Javett Art Centre, Pretoria; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.