Archived

A Feast of Indulgence

9 Jun 2014

Medley No. 1 displays the quality of line and confidence of hand of Walter Battiss in a work that demonstrates his draughting talent and dexterity. The economy of line with which he describes the figures is reminiscent of the San rock art that was so influential in the development of his style. Comprising only three colours: black, cerulean blue and bisque, the figures are rendered without paint. The negative shapes produced by the black outline define the ground while the unpainted area represents the figures – the primed canvas as bare as the figures it suggests.

Though sexually charged, the figures in the ‘erotic’ art that Battiss produced between the mid-sixties and seventies are never specific, nor vulgar. Always innocent and playful, he removes any sense of the unsavoury or exploitative. Rather, he depicts icons of a liberated ideal of freedom and emancipation, a concept particularly pertinent in a repressive 1970s South Africa.

The stylisation of the figures and the simplification of their form is derived largely from the rock paintings he studied around Southern Africa coupled with the influence of Modern art movements of the late twentieth century like Abstract Expressionism, while the bold areas of flat colour are particularly evocative of the concurrent Pop Art movement in America and Britain. The confluence of this simplification and stylisation in these erotic works subverts the subject and renders it in an un-offensive manner, precluding any sense of distaste or lasciviousness.

Nicolaas Coetzee argues that the eroticism in Battiss’s work also functions as social criticism, noting that the artist believes, though never states explicitly that “his society, and even perhaps his whole civilisation, are sexually repressed and dishonest” and that he observed this “dishonesty, bigotry, prudery and repression as signs of the distances between people”. ² In the works of this period, it is exactly this ‘erotic anxiety’ which Battiss gently parodies.

In the undated publication of interviews taped and transcribed by Manie Eager and Barry Davidow entitled Battiss by Battiss, the artist, a self-confessed hedonist, explains: “I do erotic art, which to me is a form of beauty which I think should be expounded. I think that it is very necessary to liberate the mind to another beauty. A beauty called love, which should be made manifest through art… I prefer the human form to all other objects. I like the lines and rhythms of people. I think they fascinate me.” ³

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¹ ‘Battiss by Battiss’ in Andre Croucamp. ‘The sexual banter of the jester-king of Fook’ in Karin Skawran (ed.). (2005) Walter Battiss: gentle anarchist. Johannesburg: Standard Bank. Page 56.

² Nicolaas Coetzee. ‘Eroticism and Battiss’ in Karin Skawran and Michael Macnamara (eds.). (1985) Walter Battiss. Johannesburg: AD Donker. Page 88.
³  Karin Skawran. (2005) Op cit. Page 55.
Lot 236
Walter Whall Battiss (South African 1906-1982)
Medley No. 1
signed
oil on canvas
74 by 59cm

R500 000 – 800 000

Literature:
cf. Skawran, Karin (ed.) (2005) Walter Battiss, Gentle Anarchist, Johannesburg: The Standard Bank Gallery. A similar example illustrated in colour on page 152.

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