Literature

Michael Stevenson, Stanley Pinker, Cape Town, 2004, p 89, illus no 65

'I was once amazed to receive a letter from a government deparment in which 'To whom it may concern' was translated as 'Heil die Leser' ! At the bottom the little dog sits looking up at a circle with 'GOD' written in it. The painting leads upwards and the blue line becomes a road that crosses over a landscape-collage of pieces of sandpaper. In this landscape are ordinary things, like sun and a bar of soap. The little plastic clouds are bits of foam packaging glued to the surface. Attached to the top panel is a gold bar - the economic essence of the old South Africa and the new - as well as a little skin-colour litmus test which, when hung against a white wall of a gallery, disappears: what I am alluding to is basing judgments on the colour of skin. The chevron barrier and the flags on the very top are warnings about proceeding into this mad space that verges on being hell, far removed from the bottom panel that is heaven, with God and a faithful dog.'