12th Nov, 2017 17:00
Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art
83
Willie Bester (South Africa 1936-1975)
Bench for Mr Semikaze
mixed media assemblage
Artwork date: 1994
Exhibited: The Granary, Cape Town, Staking Claims: Confronting Cape Town, 22 September to 6 October 1999. Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, Off The Wall: An 80th Birthday Celebration with Linda Givon, 11 August to 13 November 2016.
Literature: Off The Wall: An 80th Birthday Celebration with Linda Givon exhibition catalogue. Johannesburg: Wits University Art Museum, colour illustration on pp.60–61.
Sold for R250,096
Estimated at R100,000 - R200,000
mixed media assemblage
Artwork date: 1994
Exhibited: The Granary, Cape Town, Staking Claims: Confronting Cape Town, 22 September to 6 October 1999. Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, Off The Wall: An 80th Birthday Celebration with Linda Givon, 11 August to 13 November 2016.
Literature: Off The Wall: An 80th Birthday Celebration with Linda Givon exhibition catalogue. Johannesburg: Wits University Art Museum, colour illustration on pp.60–61.
(1)
115 x 141 x 68 cm
Acquired from the artist by the current owner.
Notes:
Willie Bester has long been known for his assemblages, objects often compiled from the detritus of his domestic surrounds, and put to symbolic use in mixed media sculptural works. These assemblages are often quite overtly agitprop, and explicitly anti-apartheid in sentiment. This bench, despite, or perhaps because of, its date, is a splendid example.Bester’s benches have always attracted interest in the market. This one bears the notorious petty apartheid legend ‘Whites Only’ on its back frame, and bears the Act is the Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths Act under the Nationalist government, which would have had implications for racial classification in the apartheid era. Bringing another prominent theme of Bester’s into the work, the seat of the bench contains an old, neatly folded military uniform jacket, and an open book: one page contains a bolted glass covered compartment for a gun and ammunition; the facing page bears a diatribe against the injustice of unequal compensation for white, black and coloured soldiers.The back of the bench features characteristically realist paintings of three figures from Bester’s life – the central one is probably the titular Mr Semikaze, a fellow resident of Bester’s home at the time in Crossroads informal settlement outside Cape Town. In his inside jacket pocket he reaches for the infamous ‘dompas’ definitive of so much apartheid identity deformation. This multi-layered work is not a functional object, but tells the stories that lead the viewer into Bester’s anatomy of apartheid.
James Sey
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Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 12th Nov, 2017
Aspire’s final auction for 2017 ended the year on a high note with a collection of top historical, modern and contemporary artworks.
A number of superb historic paintings came to auction, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Among them were works by Hugo Naudé, Anton Van Wouw, and Dorothy Kay. A fine collection of mid-twentieth century modern work by South Africa’s best-known artists at auction including Edoardo Villa, Maggie Laubser, Sydney Kumalo and Irma Stern were also on offer. The top lot by value was, however, a contemporary work. A superb drawing by world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge. Drawing from Mine (Soho with coffee plunger and cup) (1991), sold for R5 456 640, a record for a drawing by Kentridge in South Africa.
Viewing
Thursday 9 November 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Friday 10 November 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Saturday 11 November 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 12 November 2017 | 10 am – 3 pm
HIGHLIGHTS
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