Notes

Preller’s imposing Head (Adapting Itself to the Unendurable) is a magnificent and important work from the artist’s celebrated Seychellois period. With its very large, beautiful blue eyes and plump, sensuous lips, Head (Adapting Itself to the Unendurable) is in many ways strikingly similar to The Greek Boy, another significant work from 1948. The model for both paintings was probably a young man that Preller encountered during his happy and restorative weeks on the Indian Ocean islands.

This Christ-like head, which Preller revisited throughout his career, and which, to the irreligious artist, represented an image of personal confrontation and shifts of consciousness as opposed to devotion, is placed on a plateau that drops away dramatically in the foreground. This flat plane, with mountains only on the horizon, appears desolate, very typical of the context in which Preller placed many of his major subjects. The stormy, dark blue sky, moreover, seems out of keeping with the paradisiacal qualities of the other Seychelles paintings. It is important to recall that while on the islands, and for the most part contented there, Preller was also wrestling internally with his own sexuality, which troubled him deeply. We might see the present lot therefore as reflecting his intense, often punishing attempts at coming to terms with himself.

The head is enclosed in a transparent shell or visor – an external constraint – that immediately calls to mind those that hover around the Christ Head of 1947. Rather unusually, however, the sharp-edged and glass-like visor is accentuated by scarlet, spindly and curving forms, each of which casts its shadows around the head’s brow, cheek and neck. These remarkable coils might hint at the crown of thorns in the Christ theme, but they also prompt the viewer to look through the transparent cranium itself into the very epicentre of being, of thought, and of consciousness.

Head (Adapting Itself to the Unendurable) is a very powerful, contained and confrontational work, not to mention a vital marker for a post-war moment in Preller’s life.

Karel Nel and Alastair Meredith

Literature

Stephan Welz (1989). Art at Auction in South Africa, Johannesburg: AD Donker. Illustrated in colour on page 181.
Esmé Berman and Karel Nel (2009). Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing. Illustrated in colour on page 133.