Strauss & co - 4 June 2018, Johannesburg

299 321 Robert Hodgins SOUTH AFRICAN 1920–2010 Ubu Portrait 1990 oil on board 57 by 60,5 cm R200 000 – 300 000 NOTE Authenticated on the reverse by JH Neethling 25/08/2012. Based on the overweight regent presented in Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi (1896), Ubu is a recurring figure throughout Robert Hodgins’s oeuvre from the 1980s and 1990s. Jarry’s Ubu is a cauldron of human follies, especially those associated with power. In equal parts crackpot emblem of the aristocracy and cartoon capitalist, Hodgins successfully transposed this vulgar European figure to late-apartheid South Africa. While not as corpulent as the archetypal Ubu, the sober-suited personage in this composition embodies Ubu’s virtues of menace and ostentation. As in every Hodgins painting, this work stages an argument between icon and matter. The fleshy pink, while descriptive of race, also acknowledges the simplified figuration and vital colouration of Philip Guston, whomHodgins esteemed. The composition is neatly intersected, the right half painted a menacing wine-red. The two geometric forms in this interior room, if indeed it is a room, suggest paintings. Is this Ubu an art collector?    Sean O’Toole