Cain and Abel

OH YES! The Willem Boshoff Art Collection offers works from the personal collection of South Africa’s first word and leading conceptual artists. Willem Boshoff was born in 1951 in the industrial town of Vanderbijlpark and obtained his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees at the Johannesburg College of Art and Technikon Witwatersrand (both later absorbed into the University of Johannesburg). Boshoff’s father was a carpenter, which nurtured a deep appreciation for woodwork in the artist that he would later incorporate into his art practice.

Boshoff sensitises audiences to the knowledge systems, power dynamics and cultural memory that words carry through provocative sculptures, installations, prints and performances. Scale is key for Boshoff and is expressed through the sheer size of the artworks he constructs and the depth of the research that anchors his explorations of linguistics, natural science, politics and philosophy.

Boshoff’s fascination with words has seen the artist amass a collection of over 500 dictionaries and create many of his own. The title of this sale is a positive spin on his latest OH NO! Dictionary published in 2022 by The Ampersand Foundation. The glossary is a collection of strange and surprising words from dictionaries he compiled himself, such as the Dictionaries of Manias and Phobias, Red Names and Places Mother Might Not Approve Of.

Of Boshoff’s own works in this sale, his Highveld etching (lot 10) is captivating for how its indexing of the diverse plant species found in South Africa’s interior plateau mirrors the very grasslands that blanket the region. Dubul’ ibhunu (Kill the Boer) lot 14 also stands out for its confronting title, which brings up the complex histories and the debates about the political contexts of language in South Africa.

Many artworks in Boshoff’s collection, like Philippa Hobbs (lots 20 and 21) and Claude van Lingen (lot 1), were exchanged with his colleagues at the Technikon Witswatersrand (now the University of Johannesburg), where he taught for many years. They serve as gentle reminders of the influential role Boshoff has long played in South Africa’s art ecosystem as a mentor, educator and academic. In addition, Jackson Hlungwani’s woodcarvings (lots 6, 28 and 30) and Christo Coetzee’s symbolic compositions (lots 13 and 18) reflect Boshoff’s admiration of artists with similar material or conceptual approaches to him.

Following his initial reluctance to exhibit publicly, Boshoff had his first exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) in 1981. A set of 12 prints from his concrete poetry anthology, KykAfrikaans, that featured in this exhibition, is also under the hammer in our spotlight Evening Sale of Modern and Contemporary South African Art (lot 222). Since the exhibition at JAG, his artworks have been exhibited widely and are included in the permanent collections of important museums around the world. This sale presents the opportunity to bid on items that exemplify Boshoff’s pioneering use of language as a primary medium and conceptual framework, as well as the mainstays of his personal art collection.