Robert Hodgins (South Africa 1920-2010)
Ubu at the Penitentiary Ball Game

oil on canvas

Artwork date: 1980-84
Signature details: Signature details: signed, dated, inscribed with the title, medium and exhibition information on a label adhered to the reverse
Exhibited: Carriage House Gallery, Johannesburg, October to November 1984.
Exchange Rates*: USD 13572.54 – 19001.55
EURO 12334.13 – 17267.78
GBP 10379.89 – 14531.85

(1)

61 x 91 cm; framed size: 66 x 97 x 7 cm

Provenance:

The personal collection of Mr Jan Neethling.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

In Ubu at the Penitentiary Ball Game, Robert Hodgins revisits one of the most enduring figures in his oeuvre: the grotesque and tyrannical Ubu. First explored in a series devoted to Ubu between 1981 and 1983[1], at the beginning of his full-time artistic career, this figure became a vehicle for Hodgins’ sustained inquiry into power and its abuses. Dated 1980-84, this work is among the earliest explorations of the Ubu figure in Hodgins’ practice, marking a formative moment in the evolution of this motif.

While inspired by proto-Dada playwright Alfred Jarry’s anarchic 1896 play, Ubu Roi, Hodgins’ Ubu is not a direct incarnation of Père Ubu, but rather a conceptual descendant – a witness and emblem of power, absurdity and cruelty. Through this character, Hodgins explores the darkest edges of human behaviour, exposing the theatricality and moral corruption of authority. As Kendell Geers notes, Hodgins approached these subjects “with Hogarth’s satirical eye and Monty Python’s humour,”[2] creating figures that are both grotesque and comical, yet carry the weight of history and human failure.

Across Hodgins’ oeuvre, Ubu appears in many guises: politician, patriarch, lawyer, interrogator; each role embodying what art historian Michael Godby describes as maniacal and malevolent power.[3] Often mask-like and distorted, Ubu appears here as one of three figures, ranging from vaguely human to increasingly amorphous – marking a visual descent into abstraction. This progression, with bulbous heads, crude outlines, and fleshy pinks and reds leans into Hodgins’ embrace of ambiguity, and his interest in the limits of figuration, perception, memory and constructed histories.

Set in Alabama, with the location name very clearly swept across the upper half of the composition, the work hints at layered political allegories. Alabama, deeply associated with the American Deep South, evokes a history of racial segregation, injustice, and the prison-industrial complex. A football arcs overhead – the only clue to the so-called ‘ball game’. The figures appear to watch from behind bars, drawing attention to ideas of spectatorship, containment, and complicity. Is this a game, a punishment, or a theatre of violence? Who is really behind the bars? And are the figures behind the bars being kept in, or kept out?

The flag-like background is executed in a palette that unmistakably recalls the Confederate flag – a loaded visual that gestures to the legacy of white supremacy and America’s segregated past. The painting draws a pointed, if indirect, parallel between apartheid South Africa and the United States, underscoring Hodgins’ ongoing critique of power structures, even if he rarely spoke in overtly political terms.

The left-hand figure’s swollen, elongated, dented head may also nod to Philip Guston’s artworks, which Hodgins admired greatly for their unflinching, cartoonish depictions of the Ku Klux Klan.[4] Like Guston, Hodgins used satire and distortion to confront uncomfortable truths. Guston’s influence is further displayed in lot X, Four Simple Paintings Instigated by Philip Guston.

In this painting, Ubu becomes a proxy for humanity’s worst instincts. Rendered with Hodgins’ distinctive blend of painterly bravado and moral irony, the work turns a simple game into a damning spectacle – where power performs, and the world watches from behind metaphorical bars: bars of history, privilege and wilful ignorance.

[^{1] Becker, R. (2002), “Made in Africa?”. In Atkinson, B. (et al), Robert Hodgins. Cape Town: Tafelberg, p.38.}

^{[2] Geers, Kendell. (2002), Undiscovered at 82. In Atkinson, B. (et al), Robert Hodgins. Cape Town: Tafelberg, p.67.}

^{[3] Godby, M. (2002), The Old Man Mad About Painting. In Atkinson, B. (et al), Robert Hodgins. Cape Town: Tafelberg, p.77.}

^{[4] Interview with Neil Dundas.}

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Anglo-American collection, Johannesburg; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Javett Art Centre, Pretoria; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of the Witwatersrand Art Gallery, Johannesburg and the William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberly.