Johannesburg (Manual Labourers Digging a Trench)

The painter Robert Hodgins once told me, “No statue has ever been set up in honour of a critic!” He was admiringly quoting the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The bon mot has a sting, but as a statement of fact is untrue. There are two public sculptures in France honouring Denis Diderot, the father of western art criticism.

Anyone interested in the history of art criticism in South Africa will know that, for a period, Hodgins was an art critic – at Newscheck magazine, from 1962 to 1966. He succeeded Esmé Berman. What, you wonder, does any of this have to do with my selection? Firstly, some of the artists in this selection – Walter Battiss, Carl Büchner, Richard Cheales, Braam Kruger – worked as regular art critics. Others – George Hallett, William Kentridge, J.H. Pierneef – jobbed as editorial illustrators for news media and publishers. Some – Battiss and Peter Clarke – were even competent poets.

It was as an art critic – not an aspiring littérateur – that I met many of the artists in this selection. At some point over the last quarter century (yikes!), I have written about many of the artists presented here. Talking with artists has been my art education. Peter Clarke impressed on me the value of penmanship. Alice Elahi vividly recalled the atmosphere of studying under Maurice van Essche in the late 1940s. Hylton Nel and Jeanne Gaigher helped me understand post-impressionism and its many offshoots. Santu Mofokeng introduced me to avant-garde Japanese photography. And so on.

I owe a debt of gratitude to each for my eccentric education.

—Sean O'Toole