Chairs

Literature

Anthea Buys (ed.) (2012) A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print Archive, Johannesburg: Wits Art Museum. Another example from this edition is illustrated on pages 202 and 280.

Notes

In the print, Chairs (2009) Hodgins illustrates the kind of sinister control that power carries in its wake. We see a figure dark and gloomy in appearance, guarding the door from which a yellow light is emitted. For Hodgins, the open door was an important metaphor for uncertainty. He said, 'I would like to pursue this open door idea, the idea of a door that opens into … what? Hell, heaven, nothing, space, negation. I very much like to pursue the notion of something absurd to the point of being slightly threatening happening in a picture that is otherwise fairly explicable.' The recurrence of the empty chairs may again be seen as an absence of witnesses or critics. In this instance, however, the absence could possibly read as a way in which the wielding and display of power can be overall an absurd thing. The figure guarding the open door, guards it from nothing except its own aversion to the light - a suggestion that power perpetuates itself even when it lacks subjects.

Mpho Moshe Matheolane (2012) Robert Hodgins: The Artist as a Journalist, Art as Reportage. In: Anthea Buys (ed) (2012) A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print Archive. Johannesburg: Wits Art Museum publication, pages 205 and 206.