Strauss & co - 4 June 2018, Johannesburg

166 211 Conrad Botes SOUTH AFRICAN 1969– Terrible Things are About to Happen signed with the artist’s initials and dated 13 acrylic on canvas image size: 145 by 145 cm R30 000 – 40 000 Conrad Botes adopted a Pop Art style long after the early 1960s American and British stylistic movement had exhausted its aesthetic value criticising dehumanisation brought about by large-scale consumerism. Botes works with the legacy of Pop, focusing on the dehumanisation resulting from the virtual and hyperreal world of the Internet. The impossibility of any human interaction is captured well in the present two lots. Figures and faces are essentially isolated on a bland picture plane. They appear emblematic in nature: whether of Calvinism or Catholicism in the work, Something Terrible is about to Happen or of the Letter of the Law in the work, The Law. But each with an ironic twist: in the former, it is not Christ dying in the lap of Mary, but the Devil himself. In the latter, the Book of Law is literally carried by Botes himself in a characteristic, bearded self-portrait. Continuedonpage167