Strauss & co - 6 March 2017, Cape Town

312 571 Norman CATHERINE SOUTH AFRICAN 1949– Crocodile Tears signed and dated ‘93 oil stick on paper 137 by 119 cm R  –   LITERATURE Hazel Friedman. (2000) N orman Catherine , Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery Editions. Illustrated in colour on page 111. Beastly anthropomorphic creatures such as this human- crocodile hybrid are an integral part of Norman Catherine’s fantastical vision, which was much admired by the late David Bowie. They have played a key role in the artist’s rehearsal of his core themes of avarice, cruelty, excess and psychological estrangement.“Over the years Catherine’s creatures have become the embodiment of his creative mythology,”notes his biographer Hazel Friedman.1 Crocodiles first began appearing in Catherine’s paintings in the late 1980s. Catherine’s reptiles possess no fixed meaning. Sometimes they are fire-breathing creatures, yet again humans in animal skin. They have occasionally appeared as visualisations of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s story of a patient who complained about a crocodile hiding under his bed. 1. Hazel Friedman. (2000) Norman Catherine . Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, page 122.