Strauss & co - 12 November 2012, Johannesburg

160 219 Robert Griffiths HODGINS south african 1920–2010 Pregnant Woman signed, inscribed with the artist’s name, title, medium, dated 1998, and further inscribed ‘titles considered were: Oh no, not again!, The end of the affaire, So now they tell me it’s too late now to forget you; But all terribly frivolous’ on the reverse hinged multiple of four oils on canvas 232 by 61 cm R250 000 – 350 000 literature Fraser, Sean (ed.), Robert Hodgins , Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2002, page 15, illustrated in colour. notes ‘ Pregnant Woman is another deceptively light-hearted example of ’ talent for a turn of phrase. Exhibited in 1998 on his enormously energetic solo show at the Goodman Gallery, the work consisted of four canvases joined vertically and hinged so that the third canvas from the top – depicting the woman’s belly – jutted out from the wall in angular parody. The pregnant woman herself was a distraught frump in candy stripes, hair blurred, skinny arms rigid with any number of suppressed emotions, her ankles swollen and pink. With wonderful insight into the pregnant woman’s ambivalence about her own condition, had set this one off-balance: one green shoe was all platform-heeled glamour, the other simply a flat slipper. On the uppermost canvas, above her head, he inscribed the legend ‘Women’s Ward’. A peek around her back revealed that had written about his naming dilemma on the back of the canvas: titles like Oh No, Not Again and It’s Too Late Now To Forget You had been abandoned as ‘too frivolous’. Although he seldom uses titles to state the obvious, ’ arrival at the title Pregnant Woman allowed its subject to emanate emotional conflict and physical discomfort. In this instance, by opting for textual understatement, avoided crowding the image, instead leaving the busy stripes and distracted hair to speak – volubly and convincingly – of the complex ‘condition’ of pregnancy, including but not restricted to accidents of conception and issues of paternity.’ 1 1 Fraser, Sean (ed.), Robert Hodgins , Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2002, pages 15–16.