Strauss & co - 20 May 2019, Johannesburg

9 Kevin Atkinson ‘Atkinson’s skill as a teacher had long been apparent, but it was only in the mid-1970s [when he was appointed at the Michaelis School of Fine Art] that he began to acknowledge the personal creative gratification latent in that area of his professional activity. By his own account, he now ‘became conscious of Teaching as an art form’.’ 1 ‘Kevin Atkinson was a challenging, charismatic and mind-blowing teacher who adopted an entirely unorthodox approach. He challenged everything his students did and said in an effort to develop their own personal vision – rather than concerning himself with what they actually painted – and this focus on process rather than product dominated his oeuvre during the 70s.’ 2 Testimony to the brilliance of Kevin Atkinson as an art teacher abounds. He was eminently suitable to be an educator, because not only did he travel extensively in and through the art world, but he also experimented widely in his own art practice, and realised the importance of artist-run initiatives (as opposed to, say, the white cube gallery space approach to selling art). Atkinson studied under Stanley William Hayter in Paris after graduating from Michaelis in 1962 (Breyten Breytenbach had been a classmate). Hayter’s work is characterised by a very lively, linear abstraction, a style that Atkinson related to at the time. The influence of Josef Albers was also important and Atkinson responded to the theories about the interaction of colour that Albers developed during the time he taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, in the United States. The most significant single experience, however, was Atkinson’s visit to Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1972, where he met Joseph Beuys. Atkinson experimented with a wide variety of styles ranging from abstracted landscapes, to colour field painting, conceptual art, Op Art, Land Art, minimalism, performance art, and photograph as means of artistic expression (Lots 130, 164). Atkinson was involved in numerous artist-run initiatives, including the Cape Town Art Centre (1963); the Artists’Gallery (1968) (which showed the work of such prominent artists as Claude Bouscharain, May Hillhouse, Erik Laubscher (Lot 248) and Stanley Pinker (Lot 113)); the Visual Arts Research Centre (1968); the Space Gallery (1972) and the Artists’Guild (1980). Atkinson’s students at Michaelis included Bruce Arnott; Wayne Barker (Lot 131); Marlene Dumas; Tembinkosi Goniwe; Stephen Inggs; Brett Murray (Lot 157); Malcolm Payne; Berni Searle; Pippa Skotnes (Lot 161); Helmut Starke and Gavin Younge. 1.  Esmé Berman (1983) Art and Artists of South Africa , Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 51. 2.  Lloyd Pollack (2016) The Many Atkinsons: Kevin Atkinson’s Re-opening Plato’s Cave, Artthrob , 3 November 2016. Brian Bradshaw Brian Bradshaw was appointed professor of Fine Art at Rhodes University in 1960, taking over fromWalter Battiss, who left the university in 1959. His inaugural lecture, titled The Culture Plan: World still be seen in the work of other artists who studied under him, including Robert Brooks; David Champion; Hilary Graham; Noel Hodnett (Lot 112), Wendy Malan; Thomas Matthews; Joss Nell; Neil Rodger (Lot 129) and Christopher Till. 1. Esmé Berman (1983) Art and Artists of South Africa , Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 74. Alan Crump When Alan Crump was appointed professor and head of the Fine Art department at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1980, through the influence of Neels Coetzee (Lot 215), it was a radical change from the benign reign of the avuncular Robert Hodgins, who had been acting-head of the department the year before. Crump fairly terrified junior students with his scathing critique of pedestrian conceptual frameworks and less-than- perfect craftsmanship. Only 31 years old at the time of his appointment, one of the youngest professors ever appointed at the university, the Fulbright scholar and international art world luminary shook things up and pushed the boundaries of creative practice and art education and helped make Wits one of the leading art schools in South Africa in the 1980s and beyond. Techniques in Uniformity, criticised the reigning orthodoxy of social realism in the UK at the time, and proposed replacing it in South Africa with a strident expressionism. ‘As a teacher Brian Bradshaw radiated a personal magnetism which imprinted itself upon his students. In 1964 he founded the Grahamstown Group as a vehicle for the artistic attitude which he shared with several of his graduates. Many of the young artists who clustered around Bradshaw in the Group subsequently became teachers themselves, and aspects of their mentor’s approach were inevitably perpetuated both in their own work and in their teaching. Although he departed from South Africa in 1980, Bradshaw left his imprint on the art of the country.’ 1 Bradshaw’s use of thick impasto, and his aggressive forms, were weighted with the dignified atmosphere specific to a place, engulfed in sunlight, and surrounded by opulent, vibrating colour. One of his most renowned students, Penny Siopis, embraced the use of thick impasto, especially in her early cake paintings (Lot 286). His influence was apparent in the work of the artists of the Grahamstown Group, and it can Kevin Atkinson and Walter Battiss Brian Bradshaw Alan Crump