A record was set when a rare early pastel by celebrated former Grahamstown artist Penny Siopis, who recently had a retrospective at the National Gallery in Cape Town, sold for R1 136 800 at Strauss & Co's auction in Cape Town.
A record was set when a rare early pastel by celebrated former Grahamstown artist Penny Siopis, who recently had a retrospective at the National Gallery in Cape Town, sold for R1 136 800 at Strauss & Co's auction in Cape Town.
The work, Hunting and Nature Scene, is regarded as one of the artist's most important works ever to be sold at auction.
The auction was marked by a startling amount reached for a rare item of furniture. A chest of drawers sold for close on R2.6m, drawing gasps from the packed saleroom. This important 18th century chest of drawers, which was formerly part of the collection at Vergelegen estate in Somerset West, was hotly contested between two international buyers on the telephone.
Several other auction records were set, the most important being for Erik Laubscher 's Women Arranging Flowers which sold for just over R2m and was executed in the early 1950s while the artist was living in Paris.
Two other exceptional prices were R193 256 for a 19th century Transvaal rusbank and R261 464 for a Cape silver sugar bowl.
An Art Deco diamond and emerald brooch by the celebrated jewellers Van Cleef and Arpels sold for R400 000.
A spokesman for the company commented after the sale: "The auction attracted worldwide interest and confirmed the strength of quality items which invariably attract global attention and record prices."
How Paris influenced Siopis's art
Hunting and Nature Scene is one of the finest pastel drawings that Penny Siopis made in the 1980s. The triptych was selected for the Standard Bank National Drawing Competition in 1987, was exhibited at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and toured major museums.
Siopis began working in pastels during her sojourn in Paris in 1986 after being awarded the inaugural Volkskas Atelier Award for her major opus Melancholia1 which allowed her to live and work at the Cité Internationale des Arts. Paris offered Siopis the opportunity to immerse herself in the art of Europe through visits to museums and deepen her longstanding interest in women’s subjectivity and the type of art historical representations referenced in Melancholia.
Siopis found it impossible to work in the impasto technique of oil paint in Paris, and shifted her medium to pastel. She was attracted to the vibrant colours and distinctive materiality of her new medium which she had never used before. As Colin Richards notes, these pastel drawings are "imbued with the pleasure of an artist taking liberties with the restricted art materials available in an unfamiliar context".
The title Hunting and Nature Scene reflects her interest in the conventions of representation in art historical paintings where women are unproblematically depicted as nature alongside animals and plants. Siopis challenged these ideas by subtly disrupting the naturalistic form of their depiction through an emphasis on artifice; exaggerated Baroque perspective with strong diagonals, highly charged colour and a theatrical staging of figures and objects.
Commenting on her pastels from this period Sue Williamson remarks on their play with high art conventions. "Many of her pieces are set in an artificial interior world … everything is artfully arranged to create a certain effect, and each object and piece of flesh has its own place and significance. Empty frames, statues, lavishly draped curtains emphasise the artifice of the setting."
Although Siopis challenges these representations she also recognises her own part in them and reflects this through the inclusion of two self-portraits set in the middle ground of the highly complex composition. In the panel on the left she stands and gestures towards a strong light that is broken by the presence of an easel.
In the last panel she reclines holding a baby. It is not uncommon for Siopis to include her own image as one of the "actors" in her artwork. Her self-portrait in a mirror in Melancholia is a well-known example.
