Notes

Following Alfred Jarry’s play, ‘Ubu Roi’, artists have engaged with the satirical and absurd fictional story of a greedy, amoral, and tyrannical Ubu-a fictional character interpreted by South African artists as a metaphor for the insane policy of Apartheid and all things base and cruel. Pippa Stein describes Ubu as ‘synonymous with the grotesqueries and obscenities of tyrannical despots, the murderers who think of themselves as heroes and who use rational discourse to commit massacres.’¹

Produced and created in 1896, the play inspired the genre- the Theatre of the Absurd- inspiring artists such as Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso, to Robert Hodgins. In the context of South African history, Ubu, has been likened, for example, to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ (1997) directed by William Kentridge. Here, tales were recounted by those who painfully witnessed and endured the grotesque violence of Apartheid, and those who executed its unspeakable horrors, in a necessary series of cathartic events that characterised the TRC hearings.

Executed in 1997, in the wake of the TRC hearings, the current lot is a further consideration of the narrative of Ubu in relation to the postcolonial nation and the bestial nature of man. Stein elaborates: ‘Bell’s series of etchings makes explicit the extent to which regimes of domination in Africa actively produce worlds of narcissistic self-gratification, leaving devastation and profound suffering in their wake’.²

This offering is one of the few works where Bell has made use of satire and dark humour and it was done in collaboration with William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins in the early years of her career.³

^1. David Krut Publishing (2004) Deborah Bell, Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing cc, Taxi Art Book 010, page 59.

^2. Ibid

^3. Everard Read (2016) Behance, Deborah Bell: Dreams of Immortality: Blood and Gold, online: https://www.behance.net/gallery/45660827/Deborah-Bell-Dreams-of-Immortality, accessed, 26 February 2023.

Literature

Pippa Stein (2004) Deborah Bell Taxi-010, Johannesburg: David Krut, illustrated in colour on pages 58 and 59.

Rory Doepel (1997) UBU: ± 101, Johannesburg: The French Institute of South Africa, illustrated on pages 32, 35, 39, 41, 42 and 44.