28th Oct, 2018 8:30
Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art
57
Robert Hodgins (United Kingdom 1920-2010)
A Distant Connection
oil on canvas
Artwork date: 1994
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title and medium on the reverse
Literature: Powell, I. (1996). Robert Hodgins. Johannesburg: Robert Hodgins and Ivor Powell, illustrated in colour, plate 17.
oil on canvas
Artwork date: 1994
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title and medium on the reverse
Literature: Powell, I. (1996). Robert Hodgins. Johannesburg: Robert Hodgins and Ivor Powell, illustrated in colour, plate 17.
(1)
121.5 x 91 cm
Notes:
A Distant Connection (1994) forms part of an important body of work that Robert Hodgins produced around the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy in the mid-1990s. In
1996 Hodgins self-published a slim ephemeral volume devoted to illustrating the most significant of these works with an accompanying, almost collaboratory text by Ivor Powell. In
the preface the artist speaks of the making of these works as ‘a generous experience’1. Significantly, amongst the handful of paintings chosen to illustrate the volume, are two interiors: the present work and another titled Madhouse with a view of Tyburn (1994). The latter is dominated by warm colours, but the scene is one of horror: cell doors bolted, a telephone hanging unanswered and in the background, a figure seemingly engulfed in a structure that is half-gallows and half-guillotine. A Distant Connection has visual similarities, but could not be further apart, I would argue.
The muted colours speak, I believe, of a sort of tranquillity in the context of Hodgins’ use of garish and strident colours to denote authoritarianism and dominating power. Significantly in the upstairs window, there is a yellow patch of light from outside, as if offering the first rays of illumination into the grimy chamber before us. And to the right, also powerfully illuminated with similar contrasting sunny yellow, an open door. In his caption to the plate of this work, Hodgins intimates that that door may be threatening, leading to negation or even hell … But he also makes it clear that the opening of the door is something he would like to pursue. I believe this pivotal work stands at a threshold for the artist: between past and unknowable, fear-ridden future. Between a South Africa of suppression, brutality and cruelty that he spent much of hiscareer articulating and one that was to come, unknowable. It is a fin-de-siècle work, painted at a time of uncertainty and yet, it seems, one that is suffused with hope and the distillation of Robert Hodgins’s great gift: endless generosity of spirit.
Warren Siebrits
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Auction: Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art, 28th Oct, 2018
Aspire Art Auctions brought a significant double-header of top lot leads to this sale.
Stellar results were achieved for internationally prominent William Kentridge and Alexis Preller, one of South Africa’s most respected and collectable modern artists. Collectors were attracted to Kentridge’s remarkable, Drawing from Stereoscope (Double page, Soho in two rooms) (1999), which sold for R6 600 400, while Preller’s Adam (1972), sold for a world record at R9 104 000. Modern offerings also included works by Peter Clarke, Kenneth Bakker, and Douglas Portway, while the contemporary segment included Moshekwa Langa, Penny Siopis, Simon Stone, Clive van den Berg, and Georgina Gratrix, amongst others.
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