Strauss & co - 10 October 2016, Cape Town

627 Robert Griffiths HODGINS SOUTH AFRICAN 1 920-2010 Ek sal jou so ‘n klap gee! signed, dated 2001 and inscribed with the title on the reverse oil on canvas 90 by 120cm R600 000–800 000 EXHIBITED Aardklop Festival, University of Potchefstroom; SASOL Art Gallery, Stellenbosch; Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Robert Hodgins: 50 Years a Painter , 2001-2002 LITERATURE Kathryn Smith (2001) Visual Art at the Aardklop Festival, Artthrob , Issue nr 50, October 2001. Illustrated in colour http://artthrob.co.za/01oct/ reviews/aardklop.html: In 2001, Robert Hodgins was awarded the status of festival artist at the Aardklop National Art Festival, a predominantly Afrikaans-language cultural event held in Potchefstroom from 1998 until its demise in 2016. The honour included a survey exhibition. Entitled ‘50 Years a Painter’, the exhibition was held in the Sanlam Auditorium of the University of Potchefstroom Art Gallery (now North-West University Gallery), and subsequently travelled to various venues nationally. This work was especially painted for the exhibition. The painting’s colloquial Afrikaans title infers a quarrel between the two barely differentiated figures locked in embrace. Couples, of various relationships, are a recurring subject in Hodgins’s print and painting oeuvre. They are often set apart in his compositions, but just as often Hodgins depicted them in complicated embraces. His unusual title, which loosely translates as “I’ll whack you!”, merits discussion. It is clearly a concession to his Potchefstroom hosts. London-born Hodgins developed a good working knowledge of Afrikaans from his many years living in Pretoria, where Afrikaans usage is widespread. In 1954, he took up a lectureship at the Pretoria Technical College (now Tshwane University of Technology). Hodgins spent the next decade living in Pretoria, for a period even staying with an Anglicised Afrikaans family. In 1989 he briefly moved back to Pretoria from Johannesburg, describing himself to friends as “a Johannesburg artist in exile in Pretoria”. 1 His understanding of colloquial Afrikaans would most likely have derived from his extended residences in this city. The role of arts festivals in introducing Hodgins to a wider public also deserves mention in relation to Ek sal jou so ‘n klap gee! . In 1986, Hodgins wrote a letter to painter Mark Hipper in which he discussed his upcoming retrospective exhibition at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. “By next year this time I’ll be the most famous (more likely the most detested) painter in South Africa.” 2 Hodgins wasn’t far off with his estimate. He was adjudged the overall winner of the prestigious AA Mutual Life VITA Art Now Award in 1987. But his reputation with a large public still lagged. Writing in Hodgins’s 2002 monograph, published to coincide with his travelling survey, artist Kendell Geers remarked: “Despite the fact that he has been producing significant works for more than half a century, his works still do not enjoy blue-chip status, either in terms of the marketplace or the proverbial art historical canon.” 3 This assessment has been overhauled. Hodgins has in recent years emerged as one of the most important South African painters of the late twentieth century at auction. 1. Interview with Retief van Wyk, 20 April 2015 2. Unpublished letter from Robert Hodgins to Mark Hipper dated 23 February 1986 3. Kendell Geers. (2002) ‘Undiscovered at 82’, in Robert Hodgins , Cape Town: Tafelberg. Page 62. 314