graphite and oil on canvas

Artwork date: 2006/7
Signature details: signed, dated, inscribed with the title and medium on the reverse

(1)

90.5 x 120.5 cm; framed size: 92 x 122 x 7.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Notes:

Quintessentially Hodgins, this strikingly planar painting vibrates with several of the artist’s perennial strategies. Firstly, there is his unexpected choice of colours that infuse the narrative of the painting with their own sublimely off-key logic. A soft, fleshy pink offsets the hard red lines and complex geometry of the furniture and the painting as a whole, asserting the co-existence of abstract sensuality and cerebral complexity.

Secondly, there is the postmodern composition. In a nod to Mondrian, the surface of the painting is divided into three rectangular planes, each framing a vignette, suggesting that the content of these three planes may be related, but may also depict occurrences of their own order. With this conceptual architecture, Hodgins questions the relationship between the artist in his studio, the model or subject of the painting in real space and time, and the public arena of exhibition. The painting suggests that they are at once related fields, but also separate from one another, imbued with their own moods, demands and atmospheres – all of which must be factored into the daunting act of painting.

Is it any surprise then that the humble painter finds himself squeezed into the corner almost overpowered by the demands of translating the scene before him onto his easel? This configuration is Hodgins’s humour at play, because he is the small man in blue trying to make sense of the challenge that he has set himself. The joke and the abiding irony is that he has succeeded!

According to Neil Dundas, Senior Curator at Goodman Gallery, the blue artist figure in the corner is instantly recognisable as Hodgins, who often wore an oversized, blue overall. Hodgins only ever did three self-portraits, and only much later in life, says Dundas.[1] This painting was the first. It is a self-reflexive meditation on painting and the studio as a complex space of production and meditation.

Alexandra Dodd

[1] Neil Dundas, telephonic conversation with Sarah Sinisi, 19 October 2022.

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.