Notes

Judith Mason’s work bears traces of the technical mastery of Fra Angelico, creative eccentricity of French symbolist Odilon Redon, cadaverous humanism of Francis Bacon and existential intensity of Marlene Dumas, but is nonetheless distinctly her own. “I am not part of any movement that I can easily identify with,” said Mason in 1981. “I just pinch little bits as they seem to nourish my own painting.”¹ The present lot sees Mason use a familiar motif from her image archive, the skull, and apply it to a display format, the triptych, that is linked both to early Christian art and modern paintings by Francis Bacon and Max Beckmann. Painted in her flat style, the lot depicts six skullcaps (two per board) delicately presented by human hands and floated against a neutral ground. A stylised memento mori painting, the transformative action depicted in the three compositions collectively also read as a meditation on alchemy – an idea frequently invoked by the artist. Commenting on Mason’s practice in a 2018 obituary, Hayden Proud notes: “In her best work, she reconciled the romantic qualities of the visionary, the mythical and the surreal with the formal practicalities of good picture making.”² Sean O’Toole

1. Peter W. Bode, Interview with Judith Mason screened on Portfolio, SABC, 1981
2. Hayden Proud, “A Deep But Dazzling Darkness: South African Artist Judith Mason,” Whitehot Magazine, January 2018: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/south-african-artist-judith-mason/3874

Exhibited