Robert Hodgins - Undiscovered at 82 ???

Kendell Geers, 2002

 

Very few artists, anywhere in the world command the respect and admiration of their peers the way Robert Hodgins does, often verging on cult status. In South Africa he is the quintessential artist=s artist, a guru for four generations of artist, a point of reference for every self respecting curator and a voice of reason in an age where video has all but killed the painting star. And yet outside of this circle of virulent adulation Robert Hodgins remains virtually unknown. Despite the fact that he has been producing significant works for more than half a century, his works still do not enjoy blue chip status either in terms of the marketplace or the proverbial art historical canon. Internationally the situation is even more dire for I can remember a very famous Cork Street Gallerist scoffing at the work as derivative of English painters like Howard Hodgkin and Francis Bacon.

Of course the influence of such artists is clear and acknowledged and had Hodgins remained in England instead of taking up his teaching position at Pretoria Tech in 1954 these influences may have in fact increased his market position. The problem is not one of influence for the more than passing similarity between Bruce Nauman's "Space beneath my Chair" and Rachel Whiteread's entire oeuvre has never been considered anything other than positive. Similarly Rirkrit Tiravanijia's cooking and relational aesthetics has never been compared with or placed within the tradition and context of Daniel Spoerri's "Coin" or Gordon Matta Clark's "Food." On the other hand the very same Cork street dealer derided the work of William Kentridge as uninteresting and derivative of Czech and Polish animation, the very same works that today command prices in excess of one hundred thousand dollars at Christies in New York.

Within William Kentridge's own rise to international stardom are many of the clues that would explain Hodgin's obscurity. Both Hodgins and Kentridge were among the 26 South African artists that presented work at the 1993 Venice Biennale, for the first time since the cultural boycott began in 1968. Their works were exhibited on the ground floor of the very same building that housed the FlashArt offices for the duration of the opening festivities. Every important and aspiring curator, critic and socialite passed through that very same exhibition, most likely a few times every day and would have seen the very same films that today are being screened in many of the world=s most important museums. Since then these films have featured, often alongside Hodgins= paintings, on exhibitions in Paris, New York, London and Chicago before they found their way onto Documenta X and Kentridge apparently thus discovered. With lightening speed and amnesiac certainly his career assumed an entirely different direction and relevance. Not only did the nature of his work not change but he showed the very same drawings and films that had previously commanded only a parochial interest and cursory consideration. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the work itself for all that had changed was the art systems attitude towards it or more precisely a few curators had decided to take a chance and risk their reputations on an unknown artist from the periphery.

Robert Hodgins will sadly never live to enjoy the same career shift, for apart from the seniority of his age, the world has no further use for another white artist from the same school of thought as Kentridge, still living in South Africa. In their method there is very little that distinguishes them although their products could not be further apart. Both artists draw upon scholarly, literary, philosophical, poetic and art historical references in a freely associative construction of the image. Their cultural memories provide the clues and references whereby the image slowly materialises with neither pre-meditation nor pre-emptiveness. Of course these images are never neutral nor dislocated from the worlds they live in for they are both highly sensitive creators in tune with their environment. The work of art reflects their recent thoughts on a particular political situation as much as their musings about a poet or play long since drained from the popular imagination.

Robert Hodgin=s exclusion from the international marketplace and art history speaks more of that environment than it does of his work. The International art system is a highly conservative environment where free thinking and independence are as rare as snow in Johannesburg. For the most part curators hide behind the mistakes of other curators and critics, waiting in the wings for a sure thing before making their own position known. In recent years the marketplace has become so strong that at its most extreme the curators often await the permission of the collector trustees and powerful galleries before deciding to champion any particular artist. It not a conspiracy as much as a market imperative.

Such a market imperative can only really function within an amnesiac ahistorical environment where influence and points of reference are never acknowledged much less respected. Once again it is worth noting that despite having now enjoyed 2 retrospectives no curator has yet reflected upon where William Kentridge comes from as an artist and what his points of reference are, for without understanding the political and structural marriage of Dumile and Hodgins, one would not be able to understand the true nature of his project. For the time being the art system has no use for a Robert Hodgins and thus he shall remain unknown, although that could change with an opportunistic moment=s notice.

It was through art museums, theatres, music and literature that the young Robert Hodgins found his escape from the depression thirties, an escape that no doubt still informs his conception of art and understanding of its possibilities. In his work art historical references are woven into and disrupted by the brutal forms of comic book pop culture, famous lines and quotations from Shakespeare, Goethe and Jarry are spiced with the colloquial outbursts of scoundrels and poker players. But most important of all Robert Hodgins is a painter in a age of mechanical reproduction.

In his hands the paint is made flesh, the forms visce-real and haunting, the desire fluid and pain sits on the edge of her seat. A vast library of cultural knowledge and points of reference is filtered through lived experience and deposited onto the white canvas, a battleground of countless possibilities but only one solution. The end is never the destination as colours shift and are overpainted, forms are left unfinished as ideas are slowly given expression. Failure is always an option for such is the nature of the subject, namely the human condition.

With a few exceptions, most notably the dark landscapes of White River in the mid fifties Hodgins has focused on the human being as both subject and object. The pathetic tyrannical comedy of Alfred Jarry's Pere Ubu, lost inside the demented kingdom of his imagination, the usurper that lives inside every one of us. Most telling is the frequency with which Hodgins returns decade after decade to particular forms and subjects, often in different guises. Compare for instance the figure of the "Jogging Man" from 1991 with that of the "Persius" from 1960 whose repetition of form 3 decades apart is every bit as obsessive as Josef Albers. The disregard for history that is embodied in the practices and manipulations of the commercial gallery system and even the auction houses has meant that few people even realise that Hodgins even painted prior to 1985. He is not alone as the likes of Dumile, Shilakoe, Jensma and Goedhals slip through the cracks in both art history and the commercial market.

The direction of the flow of Hodgins= work has been from the known to unknown, from the early landscapes around White River and Biblical narratives to the fluidity of "The Night of The Awards." This journey and acceptance of failure as an option is best illustrated in a 1956 landscape that on its reverse lies a rare, albeit incomplete, crucifixion scene. This incomplete recto masterpiece is material evidence of the process through which an image is born, the struggle, not only with materials, but also with forms and subjects, a struggle born less out of raw talent as much as the distillation of the image-divination. Very early on the "traditional" crucifixion scene and structure provided the young painter with a framework through which he may explore the possibilities and boundaries of his medium. The pathos and emotional subjectivity of the most replicated image in the western canon appropriately act as the archetypal raw material that would haunt the painter's vision all the way through to the present day.

The dark outlines that structurally punctuate the White River landscape are also adopted in the 1956 painting known as "The Warrior." No doubt a device that was lifted from Max Beckmann, the dark outlines locate and fix the viewers eyes, manipulating the perception of the image by framing and capturing. These early tentative explorations soon gave way to the self confident explosion of paint and form that today sets Hodgins apart from any other painter. The dark outlines can also be understood metaphorically as the art historical convention, the languages and canons against which Hodgins has rebelled and with his palette decimated.

Robert Hodgins' oeuvre is best understood in terms of play, being both verb and adjective - the hide and seek play of forms, a game of eternal youth, a theatre of paint, the coy playfulness of meaning trapped behind mercurial forms. Witness for example the playful coyness with which he reinterprets Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds and the enigmatic epitaph "Et In Arcadia Ego" which has perplexed historians ever since it was completed. Even in Aracdia, there is death, even in perfection there is a glitch caused by human error, the witnesses to the crucifixion, the survival tactics of yesteryears "warrior" reinventing himself as today's corporate "Jogger."

With Hogarth's satirical eye and Monthy Python's humour, Hodgins has frequently returned to the vehicles of Pere Ubu and his modern counterpart the fat businessman in a stuffed suit. The businessmen and their trappings can be interpreted as metaphors for the deceptiveness of outward appearances which seem with a cursory glance to subscribe to convention, whereas on closer inspection it becomes clear that the rotten core is in the process of devouring the image, from the inside out. Behind the pin stripes and safety of a dark suit lurk the lurid ogres of rampant convention, the sloths of greed and priests of emotional apathy. Most strikingly these forms bear strong kind resemblances to people we all know, often being the same people who buy such paintings for their investment potential without realising how they in turn are the implicated subjects. As with the superficial resemblance to the paintings of Francis Bacon or Asgar Jorn the external is only a mask or a convention through which the freedom to explore structural fluidity of forms and emotion is won.

The history of western art is the foundation upon which Robert Hodgins has built his painter=s castle. With the stability that these forms and influences provide they are then stripped bare and opened out through the assimilation of less noble forms like cartoons, graffiti, comic books, bathroom humour, tragi-comedy, soap operas and of course rampant play. The forms are not contrived, the trap that Bacon so often fell into towards the end of his life, for Hodgins conjures the image not from convention but from his memories processed through the sub conscious. With the enthusiasm of a Sunday painter no form or subject escapes his curiosity or exploration. Where Gerhard Richter explores the mechanics of expression through the convention of paint Hodgins explores the mechanics of paint through the convention of expression. Being neither as propagandistic as Luc Tuymans or as banal as Gary Hume or even as cryptic as Neo Rauch, Hodgins is an artist=s artist and a painter=s painter. He is unknown outside of South Africa precisely because his work defies convention and cannot be understood or decrypted without the effort of an open mind on the part of the viewer. For the time being his work escapes any particular stereotype or wave of fashion and thus the art system has no use for him.

There can be no doubt, in my mind at least, that Robert Hodgins is the greatest painter in the history of South African art. Such a bold statement is made with the full awareness that there are a great many works by this great artist out in the world that are less than competent. On the other hand that has always been his secret, the ability to risk all in order to win all and in the process create as many failures. It is very striking that in this Post-Mortem age where artists are "discovered" and jettisoned onto the cover of FlashArt or Frieze even before their 21st birthday, an artist of uncompromising vision and brilliance can escape notice for more than half a century, despite his cult following and international success of his prodigy. Understandably his work is not for the faint hearted for he is certainly an acquired taste reserved for the few who try to penetrate the surface, who have an innate urge to scratch beneath convention and open their imaginations to the demons of viscereality