28th Oct, 2018 8:30
Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art
74
Deborah Bell (South Africa 1957-)
Fortuna
charcoal, pastel, collage and oil on paper
Artwork date: 1993
Signature details: signed and dated; signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse
charcoal, pastel, collage and oil on paper
Artwork date: 1993
Signature details: signed and dated; signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse
(1)
146.5 x 116 cm
Notes:
Deborah Bell’s Fortuna was produced at a critical time in South Africa’s history, after Nelson Mandela’s release from incarceration and in the build-up to the first democratic elections in 1994 – a period of transition fraught with political violence and instability and yet permeated with hope. Fortuna is thus an apt vehicle for reflecting on those times. As the Roman goddess of fortune and the personification of luck, she was often depicted with a ball or Rota Fortunae (wheel of fortune). She might bring good or bad luck: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice, and came to represent life’s capriciousness. Bell notes that this work was produced in the wake of Easing the Passing (of the Hours), a computer animation produced collaboratively with William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins.
1 Aware of the ending of an era, the film is dominated by a legless general in a wheelchair, his puppet and the crowds that he addresses and is interspersed with a beheaded man, dancing nudes, microphones and the paraphernalia of despots. Some of these elements find their way into the present work: the general astride his wheel of fortune, as if cycling through history, while a nude woman dances like Salome at a feast. A phallic gun and the gloves and boots of workers or the military are strewn about, reinforcing associations of brutal power. Made at a time when Bell was exploring the visual and conceptual potential of torn colour collages, the medium itself contributes to the meaning of the work. ‘The sense of displacement and fragmentation of lives which occurs as a result of oppressive regimes is reflected in the spatial arrangement of the images on the page’ as Pippa Stein so perceptively points out (2004)2. While the signifiers of that remarkable era are invoked, any sense of a coherent narrative structure is challenged, alluding to portentous events, but leaving the viewer to piece together the fragments.
Emma Bedford
Sources:
Telephonic interview with the author 11 September 2018.
Stein, P. (2004). Deborah Bell. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing. p.60.
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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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