THE SOUTH AFRICAN

ART TIMES
November 2009
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Art Life: Cathy Layzell captures the dreamy lyrical of the Cape

CAPE has 6 months to Emma Bedford joins Strauss & Co. The new Art Life newspaper

pay former director

Steve Kretzmann
Cape Africa Platform (CAPE) has
six months to come up with the ap-
proximately R250 000 they owe to
former arts director Gavin Jantjies
This follows CAPE conceding
judgement to Jantjies’s claim in the
Cape High Courtin October.
CAPE, which organises one of
the largest arts biennales in South
Africa, don’t have the money at
the moment, said CEO Mirjam
Asmal-Dik, but would hopefully be
able to pay Jantjies out in about
May next year.
Jantjies intimated that should they
fail pay him, or try avoid paying
him, he would not hesitate to start
liquidation proceedings.
Jantjies’s claim stemmed from
CAPE’s ill-fated attempt to host
their inaugural biennial, TRANS
CAPE, in 2006.
According to Asmal-Dik, Norway-
based Jantjies was contracted to
curate the ambitious 2006 event
and developed an exhibition which
would have cost R11 million, a
third of which involved paying for
the transportation and insurance of
international artist’s work.
Read more on Page 3
as Paintings Specialist
Ms. Emma Bedford
Emma Bedford has joined Strauss
& Co as Paintings Specialist
starting from 1 November 2009.
Although she will be based in
the Cape Town office, she will
liaise on a regular basis between
Johannesburg and Cape Town.
According to Stephan Welz,
Managing Director of Strauss &
Co, it is not often that someone
of Bedford’s calibre becomes
available. Highly regarded both
locally and internationally, Bedford
played an unequalled role as
a Curator at The South African
National Gallery and as Director of
Goodman Gallery Cape. She is an
acknowledged expert in modern
and contemporary art with par-
ticular reference to South African
art, has extensive experience in
curating exhibitions and collections
management, has written and
edited many publications and is a
popular public speaker.
See: Business Art for more
ART LIFE
In our first issue: Tea & charcoal
with Irma. Lisa Grobler talks to us
on her 1 day residecies at the
Irma Stern Museum
lanched inside
South African visual arts needs
more titles in order to cover the
great diversity of its contemporary
art. To date there have been few
magazines that come and go that
all like to claim to be the sole or
premier authority of Art. Art Life
seeks to actively promote fine artist’s
who seek excerlence in all media,
especially painting and age- old
proven and enjoyed mediums. In
addition Art Life’s content is focused
on writing by artists, for artist’s. We
are deibrate in printing more images
than normal as this contributes to
creating a greater showcase of SA
visual art. Our website at:
www.artlife will be launched soon.
Enjoy. Gabriel Clark-Brown, Editor

LI T
UA Y
LEN Q

PRODU

C T ZEL

,
PROFESSIONAL

Published monthly by Global Art Information Editor: Gabriel Clark-Brown editor@arttimes.co.za News: news@arttimes.co.za Newspaper rights: The newspaper reserves the right to reject any material that could be found offensive by its readers.
Opinions and views expressed in the SA Art Times do not necessarily represent the offi cial viewpoint of the editor,
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 You are invited to our 17 & 18 November 2009 Johannesburg Auction of

Decorative & Fine Arts,

Furniture, Ceramics, Silver, Books & Jewellery

François Krige GEELBECK FARM, WESTCOAST R250 000 – R350 000

Maurice Charles Louis van Essche INTERIOR, CAPE R250 000 – R350 000
vladimir griegorovich Tretchikoff ZULU MAIDEN R400 000 – R600 000
george Mnyalaza Milwa Pemba THE CARD GAME R250 000 – R350 000
Alexander Rose-Innes LADIES BAR, WYNBERG R120 000 – R160 000

AUCTION DATES: 17 & 18 November 2009 vIEwINg DATES: 13 - 15 November 2009

Johannesburg
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corner Oxford Road Rosebank
Telephone 011 880 3125
jhb@swelco.co.za
www.swelco.co.za
South African Art Times. November 2009
CAPE given six months to pay former arts director
Gavin Jantjies Photo: MP
Continued from page 1
“We couldn’t get that money…
there was no chance,” said Asmal-
Dik.
Instead, she said Jantjies was
asked to work within a R2 – R3
million budget, which he refused to
do. “We should have told him then
that it (his refusal) was a breach of
contract,” she said, which would
have forestalled Jantjies’s claim,
or at least given them a much
stronger legal case.
Jantjies said he refused to work
with the much reduced budget as it
would have forced him to produce
sub-standard work and compro-
mise his professionalism.
TRANS CAPE was subsequently
postponed and eventually can-
celled.
When the dust settled, Jantjies
apparently still owed CAPE 25
days of work and he was owed
R155 000 out of an agreed upon
fee of R622 000, an amount CAPE
agreed to settle in full as soon as
outstanding Lotto funding amount-
ing to R2,85 million, came through.
Asmal-Dik said despite waiving a
counter-claim for the 25 work days
owed, and reaching an agreement,
a week after Jantjies returned to
Norway she received a summons
for the money.
Asmal-Dik said she admitted
CAPE, and the board of direc-
tors, made a number of mistakes
in dealing with Jantjies, but had
always acted in good faith.
The result was that they had a
weak legal case and their attempts
to defend Jantjies’s claim of a
breach of contract crumbled on
Wednesday when Judge Lee
Bozalek refused their application
for a postponement, leading them
to concede to judgement.
Commenting on Friday, Jantjies
disputed Asmal-Dik’s assertion
that they had offered to settle with
him when CAPE received the
outstanding Lotto funding in late
2007.
He said he had left after the 2006
TRANS CAPE fiasco on friendly
terms, and had issued a sum-
mons for the money owed to him
because he was advised not to
return to Norway before ensuring
the matter could be followed up via
litigation if necessary.
However, he said he made it “very
clear” that a settlement could be
reached and the case would be
withdrawn when he got paid.
His resolve to press through with
litigation hardened, he said, when
he was still not paid after discover-
ing CAPE had received their
outstanding Lotto funding.
“I would have dropped the claim,
even dropped the legal fees,” he
said.
“Now of course they have to face
the music.”
Regarding the possibility of forcing
CAPE to liquidate in order to pay
him, he said if he discovered they
continued to avoid paying him,
he would “liquidate them in two
seconds flat”.
Gavin Jantjes &
the fate of CAPE Africa
Follow up from CAPE given six months to pay former arts director
‘I never pulled out of Cape’
says Gavin Jantjes, speaking after
the court judgement which has
given his legal team the power to
exercise liquidation proceedings
if Cape Africa Platform fails to
pay him the sum of R255 000 by
March of 2010.
This has arisen from the fact
that Cape failed to honour their
contract with Jantjes in 2006 to
produce Transcape. Jantjes says
that his contract stipulated that he
would produce an international
exhibition to the value of R14 mil-
lion, of which Cape had R4 million
hard cash and the rest ‘approved’
by various funders.
Upon realising that Cape would
not be able to raise the funds,
Jantjes says that he compromised
to scale down to R11 million as
well as postponing the event. At
this stage Jantjes says Cape had
six months to raise R7 million, with
himself personally raising funds for
the catalogue.
But when Cape failed to raise the
funds, because applications that
were thought to be previously
approved weren’t and amid added
woes from the lottery who failed
to deliver on time only to come
through a year later, Jantjes says
that Cape had failed to meet their
end of the contract.
Herein lies the source of the
dispute and the resultant court
case. When Cape failed to stand
up to their end of the contract
Jantjes was unwilling to compro-
mise further saying that his original
Page 3
proposal (Transcape) couldn’t be
done of the R2.8 million budget
available. Hence Cape ’07, minus
Jantjes, who stayed on in an
advisory capacity.
Of the court case, Jantjes says
that it was brought about in 2006,
when Cape failed to honour their
contract, purely a ‘safety measure’
taken due to the funding woes they
were experiencing.
Managing director of Cape Mirjam
Asmal-Dik says that Cape offered
Jantjes two settlements that were
‘refused’ due to the fact that he
wanted interest that had incurred
during the time elapsed. Jantjes
said that upon Cape failing to pay
him when the Lotto came through
a year later with their pledge, he
had no choice but to begin court
proceedings.
This he said was unfortunate as he
felt South Africa needed more art
institutions and boiled down to a
case of bad management.
At this stage Asmal-Dik says
that she is awaiting word from
the board as to whether to grant
Jantjes’ legal team access to
Cape’s accounts. Approached for
comment Jantjes’ said that the
matter was now out of his hands
and up to his lawyers. He further
noted that should Cape fail to
honour the conditions stipulated he
would have no problem in ‘closing
them down’.
Page 4
Loss of
NIVEA
Start Art
Award a
blow to
KZN Art
Bheki Khambule , 2008’s START Nivea Art Award winner, with no formal
art training, Khambule’s progression has been impressive, the Nivea solo
show rocketed him even further....
“After much discussion…we have
decided to bring our South African
Corporate Social Responsibil-
ity Initiative more in line with the
International Beiersdorf Donation
Guidelines”
–Mitja Zupancic, Managing direc-
tor of Beiersdorf SA, explaining
NIVEA’s decision to pull its support
from the KZNSA’s annual art
competition.
Beiersdorf, holding company of
skin care brand NIVEA has pulled
all it’s funding from the KZNSA gal-
lery, bringing an end to Kwa-Zulu
Natal’s biggest art competition, the
NIVEA Art Awards.
In a shock decision aimed at
aligning the brand to its interna-
tional Corporate Citizen strategy,
funding will now be focussed on
‘improving the future prospects of
underprivileged children or families
through education or family assist-
ance’, said managing director Mitja
Zupancic in a letter explaining the
decision.
Times November_09.indd 1 2009/10/19 05:52:26 PM
Bheki Khambule, detail of self portrait
Beiersdorf was ironically a promi-
nent sponsor at this year’s 53rd
Venice Biennale, adding to KZNSA
curator Brenton Maart’s confusion
over their decision to withdraw
their funding.
CEO of the KZNSA, Trevor Moore
also expressed dismay at this
development saying that, as a
non-profit institution, the KZNSA
is committed to art outreach,
education and development at
grass roots level, with previous
winners of the awards coming
from underprivileged communities
who have benefitted from NIVEA’s
involvement.
He further added concern over
the low priority given by corporate
sponsors to the arts saying that
‘there is no other way to keep a
culture alive’ without focussed par-
ticipation from corporates. He also
expressed that finding sponsor-
ship that aligns itself to the ethos
and concerns of a contemporary
gallery is difficult, added to the fact
that provincial government also
gives low priority to the arts.
South African Art Times.
Durban’s
defiant
persistence
Arttimes spoke to galleries in Durban to take the tone
of the local art scene and to understand why events
like the Spring Art Tour don’t venture to warmer shores.
Despite the relative anonymity of
Durban in the national art scene,
as seen most prominently with the
Spring Art Tour only going to Cape
Town and Jo’burg, the feeling of
local gallerists is that, despite the
lack of commercial infrastructure,
the audiences are there.
For many it is a problem of
sustainable infrastructure. There
is simply not a larger enough eco-
nomic base for galleries to function
effectively. Yet despite this there
are initiatives taking place that
indicate a large receptive audi-
ence. The art bus, started last year
as a part of the Celebrate Durban
festival, runs every weekend with
bookings having to be done well
in advance. Recently the Durban
Art Gallery revived Red Eye, an
event that sees the party spill from
the gallery to the streets of Durban
central.
Printmaker and academic Vuli
Nyoni, based at the Centre for
Visual Arts at the University of
Kwa-Zulu Natal in Pieterma-
ritzburg, suggested that it is
partially an institutional problem
that resulted in the province being
overlooked as an art destination.
Citing the fact that, as opposed to
other provinces, which have major
institutions teaching art all in a
close radius, KZN only has two.
For this reason Nyoni suggests
that ‘the points of access don’t flow
November 2009
both ways’, in many ways contrib-
uting to a relative brain drain.
Nathi Gumede of the Kizo Gallery
said he finds it unfortunate that
Durban is compared to other
centres saying that it presents
different challenges. He also
added that many profiled figures
in the South African art world have
their roots in KZN, with names like
Jeremy Wafer, Andries Botha and
Walter Oltman being some that
spring immediately to mind.
Karen Bradtke of ArtSpace says
that one of the problems lies with
the artists. As a huge province
the infrastructure cannot support
those in rural areas and those in
the developed centres also are
not applying for funding, simply
for the reason that they are simply
not aware that it exists. Despite
this, ArtSpace runs successfully as
a commercial venture and has a
flagship project in Berlin.
A major blow to the art community
is the loss of the NIVEA Art Awards
held annually at the KZNSA. As
one of the provinces nationally rec-
ognised art events such a develop-
ment does not bode well.
Yet optimism, if not echoed from
the institutions can definitely be
seen in the audiences. As long as
people attend event like the Red
Eye, art can be sure to continue.
South African Art Times. November 2009
Photographer Garth Stead found dead at home
Award winning photographer
Garth Stead was found dead in
his Woodstock home yesterday
by concerned friends when he
was unable to be contacted by
telephone.
Stead was arguably one of South
Africa’s top photojournalists and
was awarded the esteemed Fuji
Press Award. As a former picture
editor of Die Burger and photogra-
pher for the Cape Times from 1996
-1999, Stead was currently work-
ing as Cape Town picture editor
for Foto24, a division of Media24’s
photographic department.
Die Burger news editor Michele
O’Connor said of Stead “He was
someone who not only took pic-
tures, but painted with his camera.
I remember him fondly as a person
who cared deeply for people,
especially his children.”
Friend and fellow photographer
Mark Wessels said yesterday:
“Garth was a brilliant photogra-
pher, who worked at developing
photography in South Africa,
particular with underprivileged
people. He gave people opportuni-
Page 5
ties when no one else would. He
looked inside people and could
see the gems there,” Wessels
said.
With Karin Retief and Robin
Sprong, Stead founded what
became Icon Images school of
photography, where they and
others helped train underprivileged
people in photography.
A quality selection of SA old masters
“It started over a beer one night and selected contemporary art
www. art wessels.co.za
when Garth said: ‘It’s time to give
back’,” Retief said.
They began teaching eight- and
nine-years-olds at a Mfuleni
orphanage.
One of those children, Mxolisi
“Whitey” Madela, is now an adult
working at the Cape Argus as a
photographer.
“He taught me a lot of things. He
was more than a friend, more like
a father,” Madela said yesterday.
Stead was 37 and is survived
by two sons. Arttimes expresses
sincerest condolences to the
Stead family.
IRMA STERN
THE ANNUNCIATION
53 X 41 CM
OIL AND GOUACHE ON BOARD
Tel (+27) 12 346-0728 / Fax (+27) 12 346-0729
alette@artwessels.co.za gerrie@artwessels.co.za
Alette 082 652 6663 Gerrie 084 589 0711
Alette Wessels Kunskamer
Maroelana Centre, 27 Maroelana Street,
Maroelana, Pretoria
GPS S25º 46.748' EO28º 1.5615'
OPEN
Mon to Fri 09h00 - 16h00
Saturday 09h00 - 13h00
DECADE HIGHLIGHTS
from 10 Years of Collecting
for the Sanlam Art Collection

Durban Art Gallery 18 November 2009 – 25 January 2010

Anton Lembede Street Monday – Saturday 08:30 – 16:00
(formerly Smith Street) Sunday 11:00 – 16:00
Durban Closed on Christmas Day
Tel: 031 311 2264/9

For more information call the

Sanlam Art Collection
Tel: 021 947 3359 / 083 457 2699
www.sanlam.co.za
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
 Helmut Starcke
N ow living and working in
the Southern Cape, Helmut
Starcke continues to produce
challenging and powerful paintings
at the age of 73. His creative work
has bridged advertising, teaching
and the career of a professional
artist. This supplement attempts
to create a broader awareness of
his immense contribution to South
African art. Fundamental to his
achievement is the fact that he is a
highly-gifted, inventive and flexible
draughtsman. Initially nurtured in
advertising in Germany with no
formal art school training, that gift
has been extended far beyond the
ephemerality of consumer ‘art’.
He has made enduring images
that remain in the mind’s eye and
he is represented in many public,
corporate and private collections..
In an age where draughtsmanship
and the very idea of hand-eye co-
ordination has been demoted and
dulled by the computer and a re-
lentless deluge of photo-generated
images, he stands as an exemplar
of just how drawing still stands as
an intellectual discipline and activity.
Drawing for Starcke is the basis
of creation on a two-dimensional
surface; it is about the profound
freedom to inscribe; it is always
about ‘resisting’, as he says, ‘the
temptation to do the harmonious
thing ’. It is about how one handles
and exploits the infinite possi-
bilities of paint. It is about retaining
independence from the tyranny of
the photograph, which is but one
tool among many at the disposal of
the artist. Possessed of an unerring
eye, Starcke is a professional
picture-maker who knows how to
make images ‘work’.
Starcke’s most recent important
exhibition was held in Johannes-
burg in 2007. Entitled Reflections
and consisting of six large paintings
in acrylic, it opened at the Everard
Read Gallery in May, 2007. A no-
table feature of his mature work of
recent years is his engagement with
the European Old Master tradition,
which indicates the terrain he has
covered since he was first hailed
as South Africa’s pre-eminent
‘Pop’ artist, with the bright colour
and stimulating optical concerns
of his work in the 1960s and 70s.
As a former advertising man he is
concerned with making an art that
engages with a broader, rather than
an elitist art constituency. As he
says of his most recent work: ‘all
of [my] images have multiple entry
points, and this is why I do not want
to push my secret ingredients …
I prefer to regard them as a form
of respectful co-opting from art
history, which is due to my enduring
respect for the Old Masters’.
Starcke’s paintings can often
remain long in gestation, always
subject to reconsideration and
amendment. Homage to Gus-
tave Dore, for example, was first
commenced in 1999 but only first
exhibited in 2007. Using Dore’s
19th-century engraving entitled
The Battle of the Angels, which is
transposed into acrylic on canvas
over a vista of the Cape Peninsula,
its theme of the struggle between
good and evil becomes a metaphor
of sorts for our own contemporary
political situation in the Western
Cape. As his earlier works testify,
Starcke remains ever skeptical
about man’s relationship to the
I hope my paintings are understandable for a lot of people. Perhaps that
comes from an advertising background, and maybe I have always been a
teacher at heart, trying to tell people something specific about a situation
… I do not want a closed-circuit art. Ideally I’d like people simply to want
a painting, to love it with that mysterious chemistry that just happens.
- Helmut Starcke, interviewed by Dale Lautenbach, March, 1983.
natural environment.
His recent Vaalputs Madonna,
based on the Venetian Giovanni
HELMUT STARCKE: THE CONTEMPORARY AND THE ETERNAL
Bellini’s San Zaccaria Altarpiece
(c.1495) exposes the damage and
high incidence of leukaemia in the
local community wrought by Eskom
and the Nuclear Energy Corpora-
tion of South Africa (NECSA)
through their dumping of nuclear
waste at Vaalputs, near Upington.
Christianity’s image of the promise
of renewed life, the Madonna and
Child, becomes an endorsement
of eternal death at Vaalputs. The
Madonna and Child are framed by
the branches of an abandoned,
unfinished indigenous dwelling;
the sky seems redolent of clouds,
dust, wind and rain that are in effect
radioactive.
Transfiguration on the Pipetrack is
another visionary work that raises
issues of environmental abuse.
One of Table Mountain’s most
popular walks, the Pipetrack, with
its plethora of indigenous plants, is
slowly being degraded by litter bugs
and erosion. Using Bellini again
as his touchstone, Starcke creates
an image of Christ as ‘transfigured
nature’, his divine human attributes
replaced by botanical forms of a
transient, blossoming beauty which
stand in contrast to the discarded
rubbish of consumerism thrown at
his feet. As an immigrant to South
Africa from Europe, Starcke has
always been able to retain a degree
of bemused detachment in his
wry observations on this country’s
schizophrenic dilemmas. Colonial
and African cultures contest and
contrast with each other and this
is the subtext of many of his best
works. His Fateful Encounter,
where the angel of a Flemish Mas-
ter confronts a shamanistic figure
with the head of a springbok, is the
visualisation of a ‘battle between
divergent belief systems – between
Western-imposed doctrine and
[indigenous] traditional faith’.
Fateful Encounter acrylic on canvas
Homage to Gustave Dore (1999-2007) acrylic on canvas
Giovanni Bellini S. Zaccaria
Altarpiece (1505) (detail)
Bellini The Transfiguration
Transfiguration on the Pipetrack (2007) acrylic on canvas The Vaalputs Madonna (first exhibited in 2007) acrylic on canvas
(1490-95) (oil on panel)
In 1998, hinting at the new directions his work was soon to take in his post-
retirement years, Starcke stated: ‘I shall proceed both in celebration and
in criticism, with a sense of personal encounter in [the] history of art and
the pleasure of “another viewing’ of well-loved images, as well as of things
that lie far outside of the edge of the canvas’. His quest to mine the history
of art to make creative comment on both contemporary and eternal issues
continues.
EARLY YEARS IN GERMANY
Helmut Starcke was born in Offenbach-am-Main, a town in Hesse in the
former West Germany. His father Heinrich Starcke was trained as a mas-
ter-craftsman and made fine leather goods for which Offenbach-am-Main
was renowned. In the seven years prior to Adolf Hitler’s appointment as
German Chancellor in 1933, Heinrich Starcke was unemployed because
of the severe economic depression caused by the crippling reparations
imposed on Germany by France and Britain after the end of World War I
. Hitler’s economic policy led to a quick turn-about in this state of affairs,
which increased his popularity. He also quickly began rearming Germany
in contravention of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, an action that enabled his
seizure of control over Czechoslovakia and Austria. His invasion of Poland
in 1939 finally ignited the Second World War. Heinrich Starcke, like many
other skilled Germans at this time, found employment in the war industry
and was thus able to support his family of two children, which included
a daughter born in 1930, and his son Helmut, born in 1935. The year in
which Helmut was born saw the imposition of the draconian and racist
Nuremberg Laws which discriminated against German-Jewish people,
excluding them from many professions. It was the start of a process
that would culminate in industrial-scale genocide at Treblinka, Dachau,
Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. When war broke out in 1939, Helmut was
four years old. When it ended with Germany’s almost total annihilation in
1945, he was only ten. Those Germans - mostly women and children - who
survived the War, faced terrible hardship in Germany’s devastated cities
and unsympathetic treatment at the hands of the victorious Allies. Helmut
continued his education until he was 16. He then left school to seek work
in order to augment the family income, taking up an apprenticeship at the
Werbekunst Publicity Studio in Frankfurt. He later took up an appointment
as a graphic designer with the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson,
also in Frankfurt.
ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL REALISM
I
n 1958, aged 23, Starcke left
Germany to settle in Cape-
Town, where he initially worked for
P.N. Barrett Advertising, switching
to Lindsay Smithers Advertising
in 1962. His burning desire to
paint manifested itself in his first
solo exhibition at Fabian Fine Art in
1963. The late Neville Dubow ,
who was writing art criticism inthe
local press at the time, re called
meeting Starcke. He recalled him
as ‘pretty economical with words’
because of his initially limited
ability in English, but that there
was, ‘so to speak, a glint in his eye
Government Avenue, Cape Town when he looked at South African
(1961). Acrylic on canvas. society in the locust years of
Iziko SA National Gallery apartheid.’
It was ‘this glint’, noted Dubow, that ‘sparked off some of the earliest exam-
ples of socially-satirical art that began to surface in the early 1960s.’ At this
time Starcke was a great admirer of the work of Ben Shahn (1898-1969),
the American social realist painter and photographer. His acerbic eye set
a precedent for Starcke, whose own sardonic eye was, in turn, levelled at
the strange society which now surrounded him. Jesus Lives (1962) seems
well within Shahn’s sphere of influence, but in Government Avenue, Cape
Town (1961) Starcke paints a then-familiar annual Cape Town sight with
biting and cynical caricature. This work, since acquired by the SA National
Gallery, shows phalanxes of grim and porcine-faced ministers of the
Dutch Reformed Church walking down Government Avenue, traditionally
dressed in white shirts and white ties with black suits and hats. The orange
background with the blue trees and shadows allude to the oranje-blanje-
blou of the old South African flag under the National Party government of
the day. It is an unforgettable image of repressive Calvinist rectitude; of the
virtual theocracy that underpinned and justified the philosophy of apartheid.
Government Avenue, Cape Town has now become a historical image; the
nearby the Synodal Hall has been converted into a hotel, apartheid is now
buried, and the ‘penguins’, as Capetonians called them, no longer make
their seasonal appearances. As Dubow observed, ‘nobody else in the local
context had come up with an image of this kind … here, it seemed, was an
artist with a hand and an eye capable of making us look at ourselves’.
In addition to his acerbic images of people, Starcke also made a number
of works dealing with older buildings in Cape Town. In works like The Blue
Shop (1961), the collage of signs and advertisements attached to the build-
ing were familiar territory to a painter already so steeped in advertising.
His works in this vein prefigured the photo-realist paintings of vernacular
buildings in South Africa’s rural dorps made in the later 1970s and 80s by
younger artists such as John Kramer (born 1946).
Jesus Lives (1962) The Blue Shop (1961)
Acrylic on canvas. Acrylic on canvas.
FLIRTATIONS WITH ‘OP’ AND ‘POP’ CAPRIVI OF MY MIND: A SERIES
Bushveld Light (1968). Acrylic on canvas, Wits University Art Galleries
Caprivi of my Mind #3. Acrylic on canvas, Private collection
S tarcke’s series of paintings and prints entitled Caprivi of my Mind was
produced over a period of some years between c.1970 and c.1976.
The title of the series shows a more marked emphasis on ‘African’ subject
matter in his work, alluding to the Caprivi Strip, that narrow, 450 km-long
protrusion of Namibian territory that runs between Angola, Botswana and
Zambia to the north-western tip of Zimbabwe. Caprivi was a nexus of ongo-
ing conflict in the 1970s when South Africa governed the then-South West
Africa, and was involved in wars against SWAPO, the ANC while covertly
supporting UNITA in the Angolan civil war. Many languages are spoken in
Caprivi, and in African terms it is the meeting place of many cultures and
ideas. In these years Caprivi represented a distant war that existed only in
the minds of white South Africans, symbolising their fight against the sup-
posed ‘forces of darkness’ in the form of ‘communism’, ‘atheism’ and forces
bent on the destruction of ‘western civilisation’. The reality of this faraway
war never impinged on their daily lives, but the lives of young white men
were heedlessly sacrificed in the process.
The Hitch hiker (1968). Acrylic on canvas, Iziko SA National Gallery Some paintings in this series combine disparate images that seem hal-
lucinatory, their strange junction and conflation appearing redolent of the
heraldic and the emblematic. Caprivi of my Mind #3, with a Zebra kitted in
medieval jousting-attire and surmounted by a mysterious, faceless, lynx-
W
hile Starcke’s early social realist work garnered critical attention,
like creature wearing antlers seems such an image. Caprivi of my Mind
as his own sternest critic he began to consider other possibilities for
#1, on the other hand, shows an ostrich pulling a chariot-like cart driven
future directions in his painting. Social realism, he realised, was ‘natural’
by a cut-out human figure reminiscent of those used as targets in training
for him as a new immigrant. But as he admitted, ‘coming from outside,
military snipers and marksmen. Caprivi of my Mind #6 shows a winged
from Europe, one always [had] a lot of criticisms; but my paintings posed
Zulu warrior with his feet enigmatically
questions and didn’t pretend to offer solutions’. By the later 1960s his work
entrapped in the earth, at the same
had shifted in directions being explored by many international artists and
time bathed in lurid lighting effects so
colour theorists such as Josef Albers (1888-1976) who were exploring
as to appear like some kind of
simplified forms, bright flat colour, hard edges and spatial ambiguity.
African Archangel. Caprivi of my
These features are synonymous with ‘Op Art’, but Starcke did not fully
Mind #10, using the space-frame
embrace either its wholly abstract approach or its eye-teasing effects,
device, fuses two disparate images,
preferring, rather, to retain figurative elements that had been subjected to
one of aswimming pool and the other
some degree of abstraction. In particular, aspects of the work of the British
of a crocodile amid the beauty of
painter Bridget Riley (born 1931) and the American Larry Poons (born
flowering water plants. The luxury of
1937) were deeply internalised and integrated into his work. Figuration had
suburban life in white South Africa is
staged a come-back after the orthodoxy of abstraction in the 1940s and
simultaneously contrasted with death Caprivi of my Mind #6.
50s, reappearing in the initially surprising phenomenon of Pop Art.
lurking beneath an alluring guise. Acrylic on canvas, Private collection
Pop’s use of mass-media images and processes no doubt appealed to
an artist already well-steeped in the devices of advertising. Starcke began
to use the ‘cool’, photo-derived techniques of illustrative advertising as a
new basis in his work and this replaced the expressive tendencies of his
social realist work. Bushveld Light (1968) sets the simplified image of a
hunter and his dead trophy in a bleached landscape against flat areas of
colour overlaid with a grid of coloured dots. It is an attempt to render the
retina-scorching glare and contrasting deep shadow of African light in a
contemporary idiom. Starcke’s use of repetitive colour dots is often said to
have been derived from the ‘Ben-Day’ dots used in screened commercial
photographic processes, in much the same way as in the work of Pop artist
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) used them in his paintings. Starcke however
denies this, pointing out that his use of repetitive colour ‘discs’ has more
to do with generating optical effects than with ‘Ben Day’ dots derived from
enlarging an image which is ultimately derived from a printed source.
In Hitch hiker (1968), simplified image-fragments of a highway, a human
face, a windscreen and a vehicle are composed into an abstract whole,
distilling space and time. Images from inside and outside the vehicle
are presented simultaneously. Hitch hiker also initiates Starcke’s use of
the ‘space frame’. This is the device of an image-within-an-image which
presents two aspects, or two related images, simultaneously. It can create
ambiguous effects of a smaller image inserted within a larger one; of dif- Caprivi of my Mind #1. Acrylic on canvas, Private collection
ferent or related pictorial realities presented at the same time. The quest
for flatcolour effects in acrylic on canvas also led Starcke to the employ-
ment of serigraph (silkscreen) printing techniques. In a series of prints
commissioned for the Elizabeth Hotel in Port Elizabeth in 1971, where
he worked jointly with Neville Dubow and Kevin Atkinson, he produced a
series of symmetrical, iconic images (all serially Untitled, 1971) which are
redolent of the Rorschach ink-blot test. Neither fully ‘Op’ nor ‘Pop’, they are
perhaps the closest approximation of the spirit of both in his work. To define
Starcke’s work as ‘Pop” in these years is simplistic, but there is no doubt
that his responses to these movements and his training can easily lead
viewers to this assumption. ‘I’ve
never regarded myself as a Pop
artist’, he once stated. ‘If one is
receptive to a general atmosphere,
similar things are bound to happen.
And with my advertising background
in consumer art, the connection was
inevitable’. Caprivi of my Mind #10 (1976). Acrylic on canvas.
Untitled (1971). Serigraph on paper Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth
 STARCKE’S NOT-SO-STILL LIFES
Still Life with Bananas and Mangoes (1990) Acrylic on canvas
I n the period 1988 to 1990, Starcke produced a series of still-life paint-
ings that explored the grid as a compositional and structural device.
With still-life as his focus, he defined his project as ‘imposing a “superior”
order on symbolic subject matter in illusionistic space’. A series of grids in-
visibly laid over each other operates in these paintings. Starcke regards the
grid as an ‘emblem of modernity’, that was consciously used by the Cubists
and the Futurists in ways that generated both a sense of stasis – in Cubism
- as well as dynamic diagonals – in Futurism. As Starcke has stated: ‘ the
grid also provides a formal structure, adequate to convey the content (lack
of confidence in man, looking for hope in nature) of my recent work, replac-
ing pictorial ‘gravity’ with a strong but disturbing order, contradicting the har-
mony established by the familiarity of the subject matter and, surprisingly
and paradoxically for an ordering device, creating acute instability’.
A high degree of stasis was achieved by the use of grids in Piet Mondrian’s
abstract art. Starcke pays homage to Mondrian in his Time for Myself
(1990), taking the artist’s well-known painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie
(1942-43) and tilting it on its side. He unsettles the stasis of Mondrian’s
composition by tilting the painting diagonally. The Mondrian within Starcke’s
painting becomes yet another object among other objects in a
world where gravity has been suspended. Objects adhere to established,
yet invisible planes in illusionistic space. In Still Life with Bananas and Man-
goes (1990), the objects are suspended in front of, rather than resting on,
an exotic carpet. Such carpets were often present in 17th-century Dutch
still life paintings. The mangoes are arranged on a vertical invisible plane in
space. They suggest an underlying grid-pattern that is perhaps
incomplete; still engaged in a process of becoming.
There is no repose in Starcke’s still-lifes, and their underlying energy and
layered dynamism holds in suspense a diversity of objects that speak of
different and contesting cultural identities as well as the tensions between
them. Neville Dubow has commented that these images seem to represent
‘new claimants closing in on an embattled laager of eurocentrism … a
mix of cultural liquors in the cocktail shaker of realpolitik’. This is evidently
the case in Still Life with Lilies, porcelain and hardwood (1988), where a
totemic African sculpture of a female fetish seems to have won the contest
for prime position in the foreground over a Rococo-style porcelain maiden.
In such works Starcke has energized and revitalized the still-life genre,
making it speak volubly to the cultural issues and conflicts confronting us
at present.
Still Life with Lilies, porcelain Time for Myself (1990)
and hardwood (1988) Acrylic on canvas Private Collection
Acrylic on canvas Private Collection
Still Life with Poppies and objets
d’Art (1988)
Acrylic on canvas, Private Collection
THE ‘SUBLIME’ IN NATURE ICONS FOR THE INTERREGNUM
The Burning Bush (Strelitzias) (1983) Acrylic on canvas, Sasol Art Collection
N ature and nature’s forms are a major interest in many of Starcke’s
canvases. In 1989 he once stated: ‘The more I learn about man’s
tireless abuse of nature, the less I am interested in “the human condition”
Hollow Triumph (1985) Lithograph
T
as subject matter’. The device of the ‘space frame’ was used with greater he trauma of South Africa moving towards political transformation in
subtlety on one hand (and even greater emphasis on the other) in some
of his paintings of the late 1970s and early 1980s where nature is the sole
subject. Commenting further he said: ‘for some time I have felt more and
the late 1980s and early 1990s was visualized by Starcke in the form
of an ominous clutter of detritus, charred, burnt and smouldering wooden
elements, skulls and traditional ‘cultural weapons’ which were the subject
more compelled to create images celebrating the life force, as well as order of a series of lithographic prints published in 1995. Using the expressive
in nature, speaking of such things as fresh air, clear water, cool grass and potential of black and reflective gold ink on white paper, they seemed a
white clouds etc, but also of the mystery as well as the logic – all of which sombre shift when compared to his earlier works which show an interest in
we perceive as beauty’. bright, flat colour. These prints were exhibited together with a series of re-
lated paintings that also used a new form of gold acrylic paint and textured
These sentiments and intentions are clearly evident in his For Cherylle surfaces at the SA Association of Arts. . Critic Benita Munitz commented
series. In For Cherylle No. 3 (1977), for example, a centralised square that ‘this was a show of illuminating
image of rushing water and stones echoes the proportions and edges of paradoxes ... surfaces gleam with
the canvas format while suspended against a cloudy sky. Symmetry and gold – and smoulder with dying
an underlying geometry create a sense of a ‘divine order’ in nature by embers; flowers bloom amid a
employing a structure or a repetitive motif that is established either by an carnage suggested by multiple
underlying grid or by a superimposed one. This is clearly seen in North skulls; elements of the secular and
Coast no. 1 (1982), where an invisible grid dictates the placing of repeated the spiritual combine in disaster
flower motifs. A sense of sublime and architectonic symmetry underpins scenarios gilded like religious icons’.
the fluid and random forms of water and rocks seen in Prayer No. 3 (1983), Paintings such as By the Waterfall
where, again, an array of prismatic light forms is held in place by another (1994) also introduced ‘living’
invisible, structural grid. elements into these gravity-free
visions of nature morte. Legend
Dispensing with the grid entirely, Starcke is also able to evoke the spiritual (1995) is a triptych using the image
in nature simply by according his image an iconic centrality on a square for- of the Zulu King Cetshwayo’s
mat, as in his Burning Bush (Strelitzias) (1983). In art historical precedent, carved wooden throne, which is By the Waterfall (1994)
painted light effects or sources of light often allude to the spiritual and the shown in different stages of creation,
divine, to the awesome sense of God-in-nature, which we call ‘the sublime’. destruction and rebirth. The rebirth panel shows the charred throne with a
A well-known literary image is that of the ‘burning bush’ in the book of budding flower as a sign of renewed life amid the destruction.
Exodus, where God appeared to Moses as a ‘mystery’, taking the form of a
fire that burned but which did not consume. According to Starcke, his own
painting, Burning Bush (Strelitzias), ‘takes an almost nostalgic backward
look ... at what we have lost’. The work, he says, ‘might even look forwards
to a time after man ... in this frame of mind the emotive biblical symbol
became inevitable, and with the strelizia “flames” in “superior order”, [they
become] an image of mystery, [of] supernature triumphant.’
Legend (1995) Acrylic on canvas Iziko SA National Gallery
THE MUSE OF HISTORY
I n 2004, the Old Town House, the home of Cape Town’s well-known
Michaelis Collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Old Masters,
became the perfect site for Starcke’s exhibition of canvases entitled The
Muse of History. The interiors provided an ideal setting for contextualising
a series of nine works which, shown alongside 17th-century originals,
reflected deeply on the Golden Age of Netherlandish art. In these paintings
Starcke meditated and speculated, in a celebratory as well as a critical
spirit, on well-loved images from this period. The history of the Dutch
colonisation of Cape in 1652 was also brought to bear upon these images
in surprising ways. A Dutch still life, for example, was recreated and
reinvented on a large, square canvas as a charred version of the original.
Entitled In the Beginning (1999), with the date 1652 emblazoned across
the top, it is a wry comment on the ravages of colonialism. The Muse of
History (2000), a reworking of Vermeer’s masterly allegorical work entitled
The Art of Painting (1666) was the centrepiece of the exhibition and, like
the Vermeer original in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, it was
displayed on an artist’s easel. In the original painting, Vermeer portrayed
For Cherylle #3 (1983) Acrylic on canvas, Iziko SA National Gallery
an artist at work in a sumptuous
studio. This mysterious figure -
possibly Vermeer himself - is
shown from behind, painting from
his model. The model is a young
woman illuminated by a hidden light
source and costumed with the
attributes of Clio, the classical
Muse of History. While art
historians have long speculated on
the meaning of this highly-complex
picture, Starcke used it as the basis In the Beginning (1999),
North Coast no 1 (1982) Prayer # 3 (1983) for his own speculations on the Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas

Dreams and Nightmares of M. de la Q. #4 (2001),
Acrylic on canvas, Standard Bank Collection
A MASTER PAINTER IN ACRYLIC
Helmut Starcke at work in his studio at UCT, c. 1979
S tarcke has worked with acrylic almost exclusively through his paint-
ing career, although in his early Ben Shahn-inspired works he used
ready-prepared tempera that came in tubes. He has always been open to
INFLUENCES
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
The screenprints on canvas and
paper by this iconic figure of Pop
Art, according to Starcke, ‘opened
many doors’ for him in terms of
his own work. Warhol’s creative
use of the colour-separations of
commercial printing processes, so
easily achieved nowadays with
computers, separated out various
Andy Warhol: Skull (1976) , aspects of an image. It also
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas opened up the option of apparent
arbitrariness of colour usage in
photo-based imagery. Such images could be altered, adapted, trans-
formed or combined with other effects, such as abstract interventions of a
hard-edged or painterly nature.
LARRY POONS (born 1937)
Larry Poons: Han- San Cadence (1963), Acrylic and fabric dye on canvas
Starcke has always been captivated by the underlying organisation of the
abstract colour-field paintings of the Japanese-born American artist Larry
Poons. In Poons’s work optical effects are created by repetitive, elliptical
discs suspended against a dominant colour field. Like Poons, Starcke
often uses an underlying grid as an organisational and compositional
device, even in his figurative paintings, especially those where an image
is repeated. As in the case of Poons’s work, these grids can also be su-
perimposed in layers to add complexity. These grids are devices of pure
design and colour that, according to Starcke, ‘lie within the geometric
tradition of picture-making’ and ‘ give you depth and the potential to cre-
ate surprises and unexpected juxtapositions’.
unwritten histories and experiences
of the Dutch colonial ‘adventure’
here at the southern tip of Africa
.In Starcke’s rendition, the
opulence and literary associations
of Vermeer’s masterwork are
contrasted, by inference, with the
sparsity of the Dutch visual record
of the original inhabitants of their
colony at the Cape. His surreal
replacement of Clio with an image
of a //Kau//en woman and child,
The Muse of History (2000)
based on a black and white pho
Acrylic on canvas, Iziko
tograph taken by Alfred Duggan-
SA National Gallery
Cronin in 1936, raises issues that
were seen in his paintings before, but never with such resonance. These
reflect his concerns with the interactions and reactions that took place
- and continue to take place - at the interface of the African and Western
European cultural traditions. Dreams and Nightmares of M. de la Q. #4
(2003), one of a series of speculative works using the name of Jan van Rie-
beeck’s wife, is a superb example of this. Starcke articulated his rationale
behind this series as follows: ‘I have to say that I could not have produced
these works anywhere else but at the Cape. I also believe that part of that
vivid art history, which I used to see as my European heritage, also belongs
to the Cape. This realisation has charged me with a sense of retribution and
redemption, a taking but also a giving back of the rightful share, a claiming
of part of that same vividness for the Cape. Somewhere between the glory
of the art and the shame of the reality lies my justification for what I have
been doing’.
the idea of working in oils, but acrylic seems to have been his first choice.
In his initial training as a graphic designer, the use of water-based design-
er gouache colours allowed the immediate articulation of advertising ideas
in a fast-drying medium that tended to dry flat and matt. Something of this
quality is approximated in acrylics, which he first used in 1962. Acrylics
are water-based paints that first appeared commercially in the 1950s as
an alternative to traditional oil paint. Oil paint consists of pigment ground
in linseed or poppy oil as a binder, while with acrylics the pigment is
ground in a synthetic medium that has high water content. Oil colour dries
and forms a tough film through the oxidation of the linseed oil binder when
it is exposed to the air. Acrylics dry through evaporation. In the acrylic
medium the molecules are kept separate from each other by molecules of
water. When the water molecules evaporate, the acrylic molecules bond
permanently to form a tough plastic film. Once bonded, they cannot be
separated and the paint remains insoluble. Acrylics dry much faster than
oils and they demand deft and accurate application. A closer study of
Starcke’s work reveals that he uses the possibilities of acrylic paint to the
full, ranging from thin, translucent watercolour effects to thickly-applied
and opaque textural effects. Acrylic can also, when applied correctly, give
flat texture-free colour effects that conceal any expressive brushwork. For
this reason it was used by many Hard Edge abstractionists, as well the
Op and Pop artists of the 1960s whom Starcke admires.
BEN SHAHN (1898-1969)
In his first years of working in
South African, Starcke exhibited
a number of socio-critical paintings,
such as Government Avenue (Iziko
Sang Collection) that were
heavily influenced by the American
social-realist painter and
photographer Ben Shahn. Shahn
resisted the dominant trend
towards abstraction in American
art and insisted that ‘known forms’
allow the artist “to discover
new truths about man and to reaf
firm that his life is significant.” One
of Shahn’s best-known series of
paintings were those that
Ben Shahn: The Passion of commemorated the infamous case
Sacco and Vanzetti (1932) of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian
Gouache on paper immigrants to the US who were
sent to the electric chair as scape-
goats in a murder case that had more to do with American xenophobia
than real justice.
THE DUTCH MASTERS OF THE 17TH CENTURY
Starcke has been fascinated in
more recent years by the optical
devices and levels of reality
that occur in Dutch Old Master
paintings, which despite their
deceptive naturalism are actually
complex, artificial pictorial
constructs. This is a fundamental
idea underlying much of Starcke’s
own work in recent times. Revisit
ing some of the most cherished
images of the Dutch Golden Age,
such as Vermeer’s The Art of
Painting (1666), Starcke never
loses sight of his position as
an artist working in Africa,
Johannes Vermeer: reinterpreting this tradition in terms
The Art of Painting, that have relevance to our own
Oil on canvas (1666) South African post-colonial
condition.
1973: A SIGNIFICANT YEAR IN THE
LIFE OF THE ARTIST
S tarcke, who has now retired from UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art to
continue painting, recalls 1973 as being the most significant year for him in
his career. His rationale for selecting this year over any other says much about
his humility as an artist and his determination to continue expanding his creative
explorations. 1973 was the year in which Professor Neville Dubow offered him a
permanent lectureship at UCT after his having served there on a part-time basis for
some years. It completely transformed his career. No longer having to rely heavily
on advertising work to earn an income, he was able to teach and yet have the
luxury of a private studio close to his Graphic Design students. Not having had the
privilege of art school training in Germany, he was, as a lecturer, able to access
the University’s art library, which he regarded as an intellectual, artistic and visual
gold-mine. The Michaelis School of Fine Art at that time was also an exceptional
centre of avantgarde experiment and debate. Starcke recalls: ‘not having been to
art school, and not having been taught, I remain in a state of epiphany … I made
and still make my own discoveries … there is excitement all of the time’. At the age
of 73, the voyage of discovery of this remarkable and accomplished autodidact
continues, regardless of official retirement.
BIOGRAPHY: HELMUT STARCKE
1935: Born in Offenbach-am-Main, West Germany.
1950: Apprenticed at the Werbekunst Publicity Studio, Frankfurt.
1955: Joined J. Walter Thompson, Frankfurt, as a graphic designer,
becoming Art Director.
1958: Moved to Cape Town and worked with P.N. Barrett advertising
1962: Joined Lindsay Smithers Advertising, Cape Town
1963: First solo exhibition of paintings held in Cape Town.
1964: Joined Marketing Promotions Inc; Selected for inclusion on the Venice
Biennale ‘64; Second solo exhibition at the Lidchi Gallery, Johannesburg
1965: ‘Contrasts ‘ exhibition of drawings opposite paintings by Stanley Pinker in
Cape Town; founder member of the Artists’ Gallery, Cape Town
1966: Selected for the Venice Biennale ’66; featured on SA Breweries Exhibition,
winning bronze medal for a painting entitled Social Page; third solo exhibition
at Lidchi Gallery, Johannesburg
1967: Fourth solo exhibition at the Artist’s Gallery, Cape Town; collaboration with
Kevin Atkinson and Richard Wake on an environmental project.
1968: Started his own Graphic Design studio; second SA Breweries Exhibition;
awarded silver medal for his painting entitled Firebird; participated in metal
sculpture exhibition, Greenmarket Square, Cape Town
1969: Selected for the Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil; invited to teach Graphic Design
at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT.
1973: Appointed a full-time staff member at the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
1976: Published a portfolio of 5 screenprints entitled Haystacks
1989: Promoted to a Senior Lectureship at UCT.
2000: Retired from teaching at UCT.
2005: Moved to live and work on the Cape South Coast.
1973 IN HISTORY
1 Jan.: Britain becomes a fully-fledged member of the
European Economic Community.
15 Jan.: US President Richard Nixon orders a halt to American bombing in North
Vietnam following peace talks in Paris.
21 Feb.: Israeli fighter aircraft shoot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the
Sinai Desert killing 108.
24 March: Rock band Pink Floyd releases Dark Side of the Moon, which will go on to
become one of the most influential and successful record albums ever.
3 April: Dr Martin Cooper of the Systems Division of Motorola invents the first
cellular telephone and makes the first-ever call using one that weighs over
two pounds.
4 April: New York’s World Trade Centre, the highest building in the world, is
officially opened and dedicated.
8 April: Pablo Picasso dies of a heart attack in his chateau near Cannes.
25 May: Mike Oldfield releases Tubular Bells.
4 June: The patent for the ATM (Auto Teller Machine) is granted to Don Wetzel,
Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
26 Sept.: The Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic from
Washington to Paris in record-breaking time.
6 Oct.: War erupts between Israel and the surrounding Arab states.
17 Oct.: Arab members of OPEC announce they will restrict flow of crude oil to
countries supporting Israel, causing the price of oil to increase by 200%,
causing an economic recession in the West.
21 Oct.: The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, wins seven
Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
28 Dec.: Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lucy Alexander and Evelyn Cohen. 1989. 150 South African Paintings, Past and Present.
Peter Struik: Cape Town.
Esmé Berman. 1983. Art and Artists of South Africa. A.A. Balkema: Cape Town and Amsterdam.
Esmé Berman. 1993. Painting in South Africa. Southern Book Publishers: Halfway House.
P. 251; pp. 286-7.
Neville Dubow. (not dated, unpublished) ‘Helmut Starcke: A Memoir’.
Hazel Friedman. 2007. ‘Helmut Starcke: Wrestling with Angels’ in Reflections: an exhibition of new
work by Helmut Starcke. Everard Read Gallery: Johannesburg.
Stephen Inggs. 1994-5. ‘A Collaborative Printmaking Project: Icons for the Interregnum by Helmut
Starcke’, in Artworks in Progress: The yearbook of the staff of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT,
Vol. 4, pp. 20-23.
Pat Kaplan. 1980. ‘Helmut Starcke’, in SA Arts Calendar, vol.5, no. 2 and 3, p. 13 – 16.
SA Association of Arts: Pretoria.
Dale Lautenbach.1984. ‘Cerebral invitations’. Argus Tonight section, March 13, p. 6.
Dale Lautenbach. 1988. ‘Sensual and cerebral appeal from Starcke’, Tonight section,
Cape Argus, September 20.
Benita Munitz. 1995. ‘Show of illuminating paradoxes’. Cape Times, March 20, p. 15.
Leoni Schmidt. 1989. ‘The Sasol Collection’ in Lantern, May, p. 43.
Helmut Starcke. 1992-93. ‘Homage to the Unswept Floor’, in Artworks in Progress:
The yearbook of the staff of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT, Vol. 3, pp. 48-49.
Helmut Starcke. 1989. ‘An investigation of the grid as structural device in pictorial space: a series of
paintings’. Artworks in Progress: The yearbook of the staff of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT, Vol.
1, pp. 20-21.
Helmut Starcke. 1998. ‘ Speculations’ in Artworks in Progress: The yearbook of the staff of the
Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT, Vol. 5, pp. 36-37.
Researched and written by Hayden Proud
 WOMAN
photographs by chris jansen
5 – 30 NOVEMBER 2009

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Pauline Gutter
UITSTALLING / EXHIBITION • OPSLAG

‘n solo-uitstalling van skilderye en tekeninge / a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings

19 November 2009 - 18:30
openingspreker / opening address: Saartjie Botha, dramaturg / playwright
die uistalling eindig op 9 Januarie 2010 / the exhibition ends on 9 January 2010
US KUNSGALERY / ART GALLERY Ma - Vry / Mo - Fri: 09:00 - 17:00, Sat: 09:00 - 13:00
h/v Dorp & Birdstraat / cnr Dorp & Bird Street Telefoon / Telephone: 021 808-3524 / 3489
www.paulinegutter.com art@paulinegutter.com
Left: Uit Die Blou Van Onse Hemel, oil on canvas, 138 x 178.5 cm (Collection of Oliewenhuis Art Museum)

Rust-en-Vrede Gallery Until 10 November

REFLECTIONS
by Vasti Wilkinson, Ruhan Janse
van Vuuren and Lionel Smit

Opening 15 November until

12 December
10 Wellington Rd, Durbanville
Hours:
Ceramics SA
Mon – Fri 9:00 to 17:00 Regional 2009
Sat 9:00 to 13:00
021-976 4691 An exhibition of ceramic works by
www.rust-en-vrede.com various ceramicists
 South African Art Times.
Corporate award to benifit creativity
SA artist, Willie Bester, whose
controversial works of art from
recycled scrap have made him one
of SA’s most prominent contempo-
rary creative forces, has donated
his R100 000 ‘People’s Choice’
prize in the Johnnie Walker
Celebrating Strides Awards 2009
into a mentorship bursary at a
Woodstock Art Studio.
Bester was honored earlier this
year after garnering the most
public votes for his most inspiring
story of success.
The other five winners are FIFA
2010 Local Organising Committee
chairman Danny Jordaan, novelist
Zakes Mda, industrial designer
Gregor Jenkin, private equity
entrepreneur Ndaba Ntsele and
environmental activist and teacher,
Lindela Mjenxane. All the winners’
prizes will be used to help others
achieve their dreams through
scholarships and endowments in
the winners’ names.
Bester’s mentorship bursary is at
Greatmore Studios in Woodstock,
a project which brings together art-
November 2009
ists from diverse cultural and na
Artist Willie Bester
tional backgrounds to encourage
new ideas, stimulate professional-
ism, creativity and productivity.
Nominated in the Arts Category
of the Johnnie Walker Celebrat-
ing Strides Awards 2009, the
52-year-old artist who was born in
the Cape winelands at Montagu, is
mostly self-taught.
His work – which has appeared in
many exhibitions and fetched top
prices in international art circles
- portrays objects seen in the
everyday lives of township dwell-
ers. Many of his pieces are made
from industrial waste and recycled
scrap cut and welded together.
During a career spanning 20
years, Bester said his proudest
moment was when he sold his first
piece to the illustrious Rembrandt
Collection in 1991. “It was a col-
lage piece called Cross Roads,
featuring a broken truck which
served as a mobile shop. This
piece won me the Cape Town Tri-
ennial art prize and was a catalyst
for my career.”
The highest price fetched for one
of his works was the Trojan Horse,
which was bought by a private col-
lector in London for R550 000.
“Much of my work is overseas.
A lot of people came to see what
was happening during Apartheid,
and collectors bought art to see a
part of our history. Work from that
period is uncomfortable to look at,
especially for South Africans.”
When not at work in his studio,
Bester’s unique art expression can
be seen in his house in Kuilsriver
outside Cape Town which is self-
decorated unique blue-and-purple
building featuring a colourful
windmill in Ndebele design and
a welded sculpture of an armed
canon.
Greatmore Studios, which was
established nearly 10 years ago
in response to a critical need for
studio space and art-making facili-
ties by a cross-section of the city’s
artists, will benefit fully from his
R100 000 prize.
It currently houses 12 artists each
Catch Bester’s work at: WATER – Solo exhibition by Willie Bester.
34Long Gallery, Cape Town 15 December 2009 – 16 January 2010.
34 Long Street, Cape Town T. 021 426 4594 www.34long.com
Page 5
artists and the committee assess
who should be in the studios for
the following year. Applications
come from a wide range of artists
including new graduates from
the different local institutions and
established artists.
One of the studios will now
become the ‘Willie Bester Studio’
and it will provide residency for a
selected artist for 2 years.
Kate Tarratt Cross, a director of
Greatmore Studios says influential
artists such as Willie Bester have
been an asset to their organiza-
tion.
“Artists like him and generous
donations like this have allowed
Greatmore Studios to function as
a platform to aid in the develop-
ment of Art in South Africa. It is
very encouraging and exciting for
ourselves and the many artists
we work with to benefit from the
‘Celebrating Strides’ initiative set
up by Johnnie Walker.”
 in•fin•arT
Custom Picture Framers & Art Gallery

Wolfe Street • Chelsea • Wynberg • Tel: 021 761 2816 + Buitengracht Street • Cape Town • Tel: 021 423 2090
E-mail: gallery@infinart.co.za • web www.infinart.co.za

Cape Town’s largest contemporary art gallery

exhibiting works by leading South African artists

Exclusive

Carmel Art distributors of

Pieter
66 Vineyard Road, Claremont van der Westhuizen
Ph: 021 671 6601
etchings
Email: carmel@global.co.za
Website: www.carmelart.co.za full selection on website
 MAGGIE LAUBSER, BIRDS AND BOATS, OIL, 44.5 X 55, ESTIMATE: R 650 000—R 900 000

AUCTION
28 NOVEMBER 2009 AT 10AM
HERMANUS, WESTERN CAPE
www.whalerockauctioneers.co.za
We specialize in South African Old Masters and Antiques, Collectibles

Viewing Date: 23 to 27 November 2009 at 10am—6pm & 28 November 2009 at 9—10am

Venue: Whalerock Auctioneers, Unit 4,5,6, Adam Street, Hermanus Business Park
(Behind CTM)
Irma Stern, Magnolias in an Earthenware Pot, Sold R7 241 000
A world record for a still life by the artist

Forthcoming Auctions 2010

Cape Town, Monday 15 March
Entries close on 15 December 2009

Johannesburg, Monday 24 May

Entries close on 26 March 2010

We are currently inviting consignments for 2010

Emma Bedford Vanessa Phillips Ann Palmer Stephan Welz Mary-Jane Darroll Bina Genovese Mica Curitz
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