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... dust yourself down...

How good it is to see the sea again! My exhibition in Johannesburg was successful, even if it was not the great triumph I may have hoped for. It was lovely to see old friends and to make a whole lot of new ones, but best of all was the sense of support and goodwill from so many of you. What I have to do now, having learnt so much in this adventure, is to re-strategize and to look at my plans for the rest of the year.

So take a deep breath,
Pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.
Fred Astaire.

The fear of beauty

A friend of mine is in his third year at Wits Fine Art. He is a good student with a number of prizes, but now he has run into trouble.

The problem is, you see, he creates images of beauty.

This, to his professors, is unacceptable. Luke, who came to Olargues with us, has been threatened with failing marks unless he abandons all ideas of beauty, and his work has been abused as "irrelevant" and "not art".

One of his heads of Department told him that she found one of his pictures so beautiful that she would love to have it in her own house, but that if he submitted it, he would fail, because it is not art. Other pieces which had been praised by external examiners and sponsor investors had to be de-selected because "we do not regard it as valid".

Finally he was summonsed and told that he has to realise, once and for all, that there is no place for beauty in art, and that unless he changed his attitude, he would have to leave the University. "We have no interest in technique." Art they said has to engage the reality of the world.

Reality; but not the rising of the sun, the falling of rain, the colour of the rainbow, the glory of youth, and the dignity of age.

Simply, these people are schizophrenic. They have been appointed to their positions for life, and the one thing they fear is their own emptiness. Like all mentally disturbed people they project their own failings onto their opponents. This is why they keep using the word "irrelevant".

Beauty, truth, power, and meaning; these are the things they fear most; as they should for their beloved ugliness and misery have no substance, like darkness, they are only he absence of light.

Why beauty? Because nature is the manifestation of beauty in colour, in texture, in atmosphere; why power? Because it is the manifestation of all power, in the sun, the wind, the rain and the ocean; the manifestation of truth in its consistency, and its regularity, and of meaning in the thoughts of its great minds.

Throughout time, artists have been the ones to see these truths, and to show them, and to celebrate them, creating the very Gods.

But these decaying toothless art-academics see only their own faces in the mirror, spending tax Rands on themselves in a fine game of financial musical chairs. In authority since the seventies, they are out of touch by 40 years, promoting as avant-garde an aesthetic dating from seventy years ago. Somehow it escaped them that the dominant social considerations of our time has shifted from materialism to concerns of ecological and holistic significance.

Flying on

Like all of us, I have encountered death many times, but once have I been blessed to experience it.

I was walking across the lawn, motorbike helmet in hand.

Swooping from behind, just above eye level, a bird, a dove, or a pigeon, flew by, silent as silver, smooth as white.

I heard a soft flutter, and its dead body tumbled to my feet. But the bird flew on, silent, white, perfect, pauseless.

It never even saw its body fall.

The Rand Club

My first exhibition at the Everard Read Gallery was a success. After the opening, we were all taken to the Rand Club for a formal dinner. "Ladies are requested to take the elevator," the butler intoned, "Gentlemen to use the stairs..."

My second exhibition with the Reads was also my last one. One of my favourite paintings was bought by a husband and wife. Although I was never properly introduced to them, they shared with me one of the formative moments of my artistic life.

"It shall go in my office", the husband said, "Right behind my desk."

I was honoured... "But, I said, I really do not want my paintings to hang in offices, all alone at night. My hope is for them to hang in a home, where they can share in the warmth of the family."

It was an awkward moment, charmingly defused by the wife. "Not to worry", she said, "I shall make sure that it hangs in our home. "

I trust that they understood my simple hope for my work, but, even as the door to their home opened, unheard by me, the massive portals of the Rand Club swung shut.

In Paris, by contrast, I moved in the highest circles. Counts and ambassadors entertained, even feted me. My lunches were bread and cheese, but my dinners were Cordon Bleu; my clothes, denims. But even as I ran my hands over the original, nude bronze of Degas' Little Dancer, there were no guarded portals between my garret and their palaces, just easy, open hospitality. No-one asked about my merit, nor about my success. One thing only I heard, kind words:

Regard comme il est bien elevé, ce jeune.

What, in the end, is a painting? Autumn leaves falling to the ground, rich with the colour of the earth, deepening to a fiery red until it becomes one with the soil, absorbed in perfection, worthless, and priceless.

Website

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The art of Ryno Swart