Evening Sale
Live Virtual Auction, 12 November 2024
Evening Sale
About this Item
inscribed with a dedication 'To Linda many kind thanks from William' and dated Sept 85
Provenance
Acquired from the artist.
Linda Givon Collection.
Notes
William Kentridge’s early career is closely linked to two influential Johannesburg art dealers: Reinhold Cassirer, a Kentridge family friend who was married to author Nadine Gordimer, and Linda Givon, founder of the Goodman Gallery in 1966 and recipient of this drawing. Givon knew Kentridge through his parents. They frequented her gallery. Givon’s professional association with Kentridge however postdate his uncertain beginnings as an artist in the 1970s.
Following his 1979 debut exhibition of mostly prints Kentridge moved to Paris in 1981 to study mime. His artistic practice ground to a halt. In 1984, at the persistent prompting of Cassirer, Kentridge began drawing again. His first exhibition with Cassirer a year later included mixedmedia drawings combining charcoal with pastel, crayon and/or gouache in the style of this lot. Their subject was the haute bourgeoisie, typically shown at leisure in congested drawing rooms, cafes and opera houses. The mood of these claustrophobic interior compositions was excoriating and existential.
A child of great privilege, Kentridge knew that he was not disconnected from the scenes he wilfully skewered. Already in 1980, he depicted himself seated on a Tulip chair (quoted from his parents’ garden) in the etching Seated man + Dancing companion from the Domestic Scenes series. He also made a large drawing of himself seated in a grand room combining raw black marks with overlays of decorative colour. These early self-portraits ultimately led to the creation of Felix Teitelbaum, an artistic alter ego who appears in Kentridge’s stopanimation films of the late 1980s and 1990s. Teitelbaum closely resembles Kentridge.
This lot is not linked to any particular drawing series from the 1980s but is important for two reasons. Principally, it asserts the centrality of the artist as subject and agent in his own work. Kentridge continues to use his image and body in his diverse output of drawings, prints and films. But the work is biographically resonant too. The period of its making was a formative and transitionary time for Kentridge. He struggled to find representation in New York and received little critical attention when he exhibited in London. His audience was resolutely South African.
Kentridge continued to show with Cassirer until his retirement in the early 1990s. Cassirer, the scion of an important Berlin art family, arranged a lunch with Givon and Kentridge, then 36, to formally hand over the artist to the Goodman Gallery stable. Cassirer, who took a horse and cab to the Berlin school of his youth, sternly admonished his artist in front of Givon: ‘William, now I am going to retire and I invite you to lunch because you are going to join this lady, okay. She will be very good for your career. I want you to know she is a lady, so you mustn’t eat with your hands when you have lunch with her. You must eat with your fork and knife.’1 Asked to corroborate Givon’s popular yarn, Kentridge laughed: ‘I know the story. I can’t remember it well enough, but it is very likely to be true.’2
Kentridge’s move to Goodman Gallery did not result in immediate success. ‘It was tough in the beginning to sell William’s work,’ said Givon. ‘I can’t pay my kids’ school fees with what I’m earning,’ she recalled him saying.3 Givon closed her gallery in 1995, citing ‘high overheads, a punishing exhibition schedule and the difficulty of persuading locals to visit the gallery and buy art.’4 The period between the two Johannesburg Biennales (1995 and 1997) marked a decisive shift in interest in contemporary South African art. David Bowie praised Kentridge’s collaborative presentation with Doris Bloom as the ‘whiteheart high point’ of the first Biennale.5 Givon reopened her gallery in October 1996 at its current Parkwood address. In 2008, she sold her interest in the gallery to Liza Essers. The Goodman Gallery proudly continues to represent Kentridge.
1 Sean O’Toole (2007) personal interview with Linda Givon, Johannesburg, 25 May2 Sean O’Toole (2024) personal interview with William Kentridge, Johannesburg, 15 October
3 O’Toole, interview with Givon
4 Sue Williamson (2020) Remembering Linda Givon, Artthrob, 13 October: https://artthrob.co.za/2020/10/13/remembering-linda-givon/
5 David Bowie (1995) ‘The Cleanest Work of All,’ Modern Painters, Summer. Page 45