Notes

This painting appears to be unique in Tretchikoff’s body of work. At first glance, it could fit into his gallery of ‘exotic’ portraits of black South Africans that he regularly expanded throughout his career in this country. The artist would dress his urban models in diverse items of ‘traditional’ African clothing, add European jewellery for good measure and end up with pastiches that were visually pleasing to admirers of his work. It would seem that the ‘witch doctor’ in this painting wears a similar outfit, a product of Tretchikoff’s imagination. He was known to disregard cultural significance and authenticity, embellishing the look of his African models according to his taste and ideas of beauty. We see a similar approach in his iconic Chinese Girl, whose permed hair and Western-style make-up suggested the emancipated Asian woman of the mid-twentieth century while her heavy embroidered robe dated back to the times when women in China still bound their feet.

Yet, apart from the Witch Doctor, I do not know of any other African portrait of his in which Tretchikoff expressed his fascination with magic, occultism and the supernatural. Readers of his autobiography would remember that ‘13’ was his lucky number, and he tried to time important events so that they would take place on the thirteenth day of the month. His international success was foretold to him at a séance in Jakarta during World War II. Even the title of his book, Pigeon’s Luck, referred to a supernatural occurrence. Before his first exhibition in South Africa, a pigeon came to live on the balcony of his flat and left only after that show made him a celebrity. Tretchikoff’s interest in the irrational emerged in China, where he spent his teenage years. His early graphic work that appeared in Shanghai magazines in the 1930s often featured statutes of Buddha, meditating monks and dragons, mythical Chinese creatures remotely related to the serpent we see in the Witch Doctor. In the mid- 1970s, when the Witch Doctor was produced, Tretchikoff returned to these subjects. Monks and statues of Buddha reappeared for the first time in forty years in the canvases he showed at his exhibitions in England and Scotland.

The highlight of his last display of new work (1978) was a series of paintings called The Ten Commandments – allegorical interpretations of the biblical laws. It would have been inspired by the Rosicrucian teachings: Tretchikoff was a member of the Good Hope Chapter in the 1950s. The order sponsored his first show in the US.

The original owner of the Witch Doctor purchased this canvas in Durban in 1976. It was the last exhibition tour of South Africa for Tretchikoff. Shunning ‘elitist’ art galleries, he showed at a department store as he always did. His exhibition opened in June on the first floor of Greenacres, where, as his adverts promised, admirers could ‘see his controversial canvases and meet him in person daily’. It came to be the best-attended Durban show of his career. Nearly fifty thousand visitors saw the Witch Doctor within the five weeks it was on display.

Never recognised in his lifetime for what he was worth, South Africa’s leading purveyor of ‘mass-market masterpieces’, Tretchikoff remained a pariah in the country’s art circles. ‘I would like them to admit I am an artist’, he told a Durban newspaper during the exhibition. To verify his claim, the journalist asked Chand Singh, the doyenne of South African palm readers, to study Tretchikoff’s hand. After a thorough examination of his Head Line, Singh pronounced, ‘Of course, he is an artist.’ Viewed in this context, the Witch Doctor reflects the artist’s lifelong interest in spirituality that intensified in the period when this work was produced.

Boris Gorelik

Provenance

Bought by the current owners parents in 1976

Exhibited

Tretchikoff exhibition at Greenacres, Durban, June 1976.