Strauss & co - 4 June 2018, Johannesburg

17 The combination of an emphasis on formalism/abstraction, and the interest in the human condition, inevitably led to the development of a social consciousness in the late-1970s when the South African art world had to articulate its political posi- tion in a troubled country. Essentially, the major forces that shaped the art of the early 50s include the Wits Group (Christo Coetzee, Nel Erasmus, Larry Scully, Cecil Skotnes, Gordon Vorster, and art historian, Esmé Berman); the influx of immi- grant artists (Armando Baldinelli, Guiseppe Cattaneo, Pranas Domsaitis, John Dronsfield, Alfred Krenz, Maurice van Essche, Edoardo Villa, Jean Welz); returnee South African artists from Europe and the United Kingdom (Bette Cilliers-Barnard, Sydney Goldblatt, Georgina Ormiston, Douglas Portway); and such South African outliers in exile as Ernest Mancoba in Copenha- gen, joining the CobrA group, and Gerard Sekoto in Paris. In addition, the impact of such movements as Op Art (Cecily Sash and the revolution in art education at Wits she brought about in the late-1960s), and Conceptualism (under the aus- pices of the young Willem Boshoff at Wits Tech, together with Michael Goldberg, Wopko Jensma and Claude van Lingen) form part of this era. The 70s, unfortunately, saw a renewed isolation from the West through a series of cultural boycotts of South African arts, and the rise of protest/resistance art (Norman Catherine, Dumile Feni, Gavin Jantjes, Paul Stopforth, Gavin Younge), but it did not diminish the internal dynamism of local art which ex- plored other forms of expression, such as the use of photogra- phy as means of artistic expression, a notion rigorously debated at the Michaelis Art School at UCT, the first performance piece in South Africa, Crying Earth, staged by Shelley Sacks in Thibault Square, Cape Town in 1975; and the criticism that accompanied the belated visit by Clement Greenberg, high-priest of formal- ism in the same year, purportedly to endorse the local versions of abstraction. Abstraction in South African art is best described by Hayden Proud when he called this period, a ‘random colli- sion of energy’ 1 1 Hayden Proud (2011). ‘Formalism in Twentieth Century South African Art’. In: Mario Pissara (ed) (2011). Visual Century: South African Art in Context Volume 3. Johannesburg : Wits University Press, page 128 Lots 67, 72–77, 79, 80, 85, 91, 93–95, 97, 104, 107, 108, 112–145, 147–162, 166, 167, 173, 175–177, 183–185, 190, 195, 200, 214, 223, 244, 245, 276, 297, 298, 299, 300, 306, 309, 324