Strauss & co - 5 March 2018, Cape Town

205 508 Breyten Breytenbach SOUTH AFRICAN 1939- From the Heart’s Song signed, dated 2001 and inscribed “ê kissie keise fani jille gabiet fan boegegipte toet byfatoem eks seilknakwind oo wegholkind poespetaljer talltrommmeltarrentaal wegkaknôk seilholnol so deedielewe vedodedoem enniksing vijille myhart silliet” mixed media on cardboard 100 by 75cm R  –   Best known for his lyrical poetry and his erstwhile political activism, Breyten Breytenbach is also an accomplished fine artist in his own right. He has mounted exhibitions all over the world and his paintings appear on most of his poetry anthologies. Occasionally, however, he combines his poems and his paintings into one new artwork, such as in the case of the present lot. “Painted words are nothing else but meaningful images”, he once said. One such example is Boekdoek/Lappasait , exhibited at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, in the Netherlands. Words and images are combined in ten elongated pieces of fabric, referencing Tibetan paper prayers, mandalas with formulas and figures used for meditation purposes, as well as Chinese scrolls, often depicting landscapes and, by implication, travels with poems written in fine calligraphy. These pieces of fabric can be easily rolled up and unfurled at any new site where the poet wants to camp out next. They essentially serve as textbooks or roadmaps or even an inventory of his whole life. The present lot, a self-portrait, is another telling example of his practice of combining word and image. Words spring directly from his heart: he proclaims himself as emperor of the whole of North Africa, from upper Egypt to Faiyum in middle-Egypt. This portrait, incidentally, references the famous Faiyum funereal portrait tradition. However, this braggart is just making fun of a gullible reader or viewer; he is essentially a poet, a word artist, a ‘’catcher of the elusive wind’’, enjoying word puns, alliteration and assonance that any language enables a creative person to invent. He is also the prodigal son, returning from voluntary exile, an outsider speaking in a Cape Flats vernacular, rather than the standard Afrikaans. Only one poem ‘’Koong Byten 1’’ in his latest anthology, The Wind Catcher (2007) has a similar subject matter and is also composed in this vernacular. In this poem he unashamedly declares himself ‘’King of Paradise’’. Breytenbach lures the reader into saying the words out loud, into repeating this mantra, straight from his heart, and in this manner he becomes part of the artwork itself thereby completing the creative process that Breytenbach has set in motion.