Self-Portrait Alpha Batt 155

Literature

Julia Charlton (ed) (2014) From Sitting to Selfie: 300 Years of South African Portraits, exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery, illustrated in colour on page 113.

Karin Skawran (ed) (2005) Walter Battiss, Gentle Anarchist, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery, illustrated in colour on page 137 and illustrated in black and white in a photograph with the artist.

Karin Skawran and Michael Macnamara (eds) (1985) Battiss: Johannesburg, AD Donker, illustrated in colour on page 209.

Warren Siebrits (ed) (2016) Walter Battiss: "I Invented Myself", exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, lithograph created from the original illustrated in colour on page 159, cat. no. 1975.71 S8*.

Provenance

Estate Late Walter Battiss.

Exhibited

Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, From Sitting to Selfie: 300 Years of South African Portraits, 25 June to 6 September 2014.

Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, Walter Battiss, Gentle Anarchist: A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of Walter Whall Battiss (1906-1982), 20 October to 3 December 2005.

Notes

Every wrinkle, every blemish, every facial mark and spot, every furrow on his brow, every scar, unashamedly depicted in this phenomenal self-portrait by South Africa’s foremost water colourist, Walter Battis, or, as he tongue-in-cheek signed the portrait, Alpha Batt 155. Mouth pursed, eyes disdainful, hair dishevelled and stringy from old age, Battiss looks defiantly at the viewer. He is the sage that after a lifetime of living life to the full, can look back on it over his shoulder, his upper arm with the scar of what appears to be an inoculation left from childhood, and, also, tellingly, the Roman alphabet ‘tattooed’ on the arm as well. Is that to what the ‘Alpha’ of the signature refers, or is Battiss mockingly calling himself an ‘alpha male’? (The ‘155’ playfully interchangeable with the last syllable of his surname, ‘iss’). Battiss invented his famous Fook Script or Alphabet in the mid-1960s, and he used it as a language throughout the rest of his life in various forms of writing and publications, from personal letters, dictionaries, poems, and two Fook books. At the end, however, it is curious that he returned to the conventional symbols of the alphabet, the playfulness of the Fook Script left behind. He now looks life clear-eyed in the face in this spectacular self-portrait in watercolour. Says Alan Crump “By re-examining Battiss’s watercolours today, one has to acknowledge his technical eloquence and his mercurial virtuosity in watercolour, but ultimately Battiss’s major contribution was his image and persona. A serious prankster with self-interest and delightful intent, using an assertive palette”.¹

^1. Alan Crump (2005) “Battiss’s eloquent vocabulary with pen and brush” In: Karin Skawran (2005) Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist. A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of Walter Battiss (1906 – 1982), Johannebsurg: Standard Bank Gallery, page 35.