Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art and South African Fine Wine

Live Virtual Auction, 26 - 28 July 2020

Monday Evening Sale

Sold for

ZAR 170 700
Lot 287
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych
  • Wim Botha; Smutsdrift, diptych


Lot Estimate
ZAR 150 000 - 200 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 170 700

About this Item

South African 1974-
Smutsdrift, diptych
c.1996
bronze with a brown patina and found objects
(1) height: 16cm; length: 42cm; width: 30cm; (2) height: 25cm; length: 55cm; width: 30cm

Notes

A third work in this series is in the Sasol Corporate Art Collection.

Wim Botha studied sculpture at the University of Pretoria and graduated in 1996 with distinction. He formed part of a talented cohort interested in exploring the formal and material limits of sculpture and painting. ‘I think the common factor between us was that we distrusted a lot of what was taught, and so had to find our own approaches,’ Botha later reflected.1 The present lot dates from that period of enquiry and discovery. Originally presented as a triptych, the work is composed of silver-plated bronze figures mounted on a plinth of steel plate and government documents. Many of the artist’s future working methods and material concerns are latent in this student work. The role of human figure, an abiding concern in his practice, is clearly stated, as is his interest in harnessing tradition and innovation. The work suggests the influence – or at least awareness – of David Brown’s speculative figural tableaux, as well as Jane Alexander’s use of deformation and monstrousness to lodge social critique. The work’s title is a composite of two words, each referenced in the ensemble. The recurring winged figures, each with distinctive goatee, invoke Jan Smuts, a worldly South African statesman once caricatured by an American journalist as ‘a pink-cheeked, kinetic old gentleman with a white goatee’.2 According to the artist, the drift in the title could refer to a landscape element as well as to something translatable as ‘strife’.3 ‘These were fun allegorical and political satire in the days following democracy,’ says Botha.

1. Wim Botha (2005) ‘In conversation with Michael Stevenson’, in Wim Botha, Cape Town: Standard Bank, page 66.

2. Noel F Busch (1944) My Unconsidered Judgment, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 57.

3. Wim Botha, by email, 6 May 2020.

View all Wim Botha lots for sale in this auction