Zavick & Ulric's washline fire burns brightly - South African Art Times

Gouws’s fascination of
Steve Kretzmann
Slowing down the viewer’s gaze is
the aim of self-described “Dutch-
South African Buddhist-Calvinist
bourgeois artist-philosopher”
Andries Gouws’s meditative
paintings.
“Any worthwhile art demands a
meditative or contemplative eye; a
pace of looking that is many orders
of magnitude slower than what is
typical for our age.”
This view on his work gives us
an idea as to why Gouws also
teaches philosophy at the University
of KwaZulu-Natal’s Durban
campus.
But while academia pays the bills
now, he “hopes” to be a full-time
artist within a year or two.
And with the first three of his new
series of paintings of feet being accepted
for the 2001 Spier Contemporary,
and his fourth winning the
prize for painting at the Ekurhuleni
Awards earlier this year, his hopes
are well on the way to becoming
reality.
His ‘feet’ painting, which he started
on around the beginning of last
year, hold the same pathos as a
good portrait, in fact one might
argue they are portraits in terms of
the depth of the sitter’s character
they portray.
His focus on feet came about
unexpectedly – as many good or
interesting things do - born out of
a need to “move beyond the confines”
of what he had been doing
for the previous 15 years.
“I had in the past occasionally
drawn feet, and once even made a
silkscreen to go with Ritsos’s two
line poem:
The nights go by with big strides
That’s why the loveliest statues
stand with their feet together.
But I had never expected that I’d
ever focus on feet the way I’ve
been doing,” he says.
It seems the subject matter Gouws
has concentrated on over the
years has always been rather
surprising to him.
Living in Holland for 16 years
after studying art in Cape Town
(at Michaelis), Italy, Düsseldorf
and finally Amsterdam, he said
he “pined” for the South African
landscape and climate and started
off painting “big, colourful, gestural
abstract” paintings in acrylics
before moving on to graphics.
Back in South Africa, having sold
his treasured 500 kg Artel etching
press and returned to oils, he
said he imagined he would paint
the landscape and nudes, things
which “grabbed my gut most
directly”.
But he soon ended painting interiors
and still lifes, unexpectedly
connecting with a Dutch tradition
that while in Holland he had felt he
did not belong to.
Arguably, his feet paintings remain
in the tradition of interiors and still
lifes, although with a twist that puts
them in a new realm.
“These feet do not have the same
meditative quality of my still
lifes and interiors. They are more
confrontational; engaging with feet
disconcerts me – they look back at
me in a way objects in a still life or
interior don’t.”
He says his wife has commented
that the paintings of feet are “unexpectedly
religious”.
Though Gouws’s wife is “as much
of an unbeliever” as he says he is,
the religiosity of the work shouldn’t
be that surprising taking into account
his expressed admiration for
Velasquez and Rubens, although
he suggests his current paintings
“suggest other triggers: El Greco;
Grünewald, Caravaggio even”.
His earlier work, he says, “often
suggested that Vermeer and Piero
were the artists I had looked at
more closely”.
But returning to the religiosity
of feet, it is interesting to note
that he started concentrating on
people’s pedal extremities in “late
2006/early 2007”, shortly after
former apartheid minister Adriaan
Vlok’s famous washing of Director
General in the Presidency Rev
Frank Chikane’s feet.
Asked whether there was any
connection to that highly publicised
action and his choice of subject
matter, Gouws says: “One never
knows! I hadn’t thought about it.
Feet perhaps reflect some more
elemental aspect of our being
- more closely linked to violence,
vulnerability, and then I suppose
the aspect of asking for, and giving
forgiveness, isn’t such a big step
from there.”
Pretty feet are also few and far between,
and Gouws does not hide
the battering that his subject
dirty pretty feet
matter has endured. A clue to
his choice of rendering the most
abused parts of the body in the
rich texture of oils lies in his description
of his immediate Durban
environment as an area comprising
“attractive ugly industrial
areas”.
“Durban to me is like one big workshop,
in which there is nothing
inclining one to preciousness – the
opposite of Stellenbosch, where I
lived for a few years before coming
here.”
However, for all the pretty dirtiness
of Gouws’s Durban, he describes
his studio as 150 square metres
of “wonderful, airy” space lit by
“huge” south-facing windows.
It is a working space he does
not have any plans on leaving
although he admits he wouldn’t
mind being nearer something like
the Louvre, the Prado or the Met,
as there are very few art buyers
in Durbs.
A travelling exhibition is on the
cards though, for those who don’t
get to enjoy the KZN art scene.
Gouws is planning on taking his
work to the Pretoria Art Museum,
Oliewenhuis Museum in Bloemfontein,
the University of Stellenbosch
Art Gallery and other venues
which are being negotiated.
And while waiting for the real thing
to come to a town near you, you
can see digital images of his paintings
at www.andriesgouws.com.
Anton Gouws