“A SPACE
FOR LANDSCAPE”
8 july to 12 september 2015
“For the last two decades of his life, Pierneef (13
August 1886 – 4 October 1957) was one of South Africa’s most prominent
artists. After his death, as his public
art works became entrenched in the country’s visual consciousness, as
individual paintings sold for ever-higher numbers at auction, as he was studied
by school pupils and art historians alike, Pierneef indeed became iconic. This status would ultimately prove detrimental
to his reputation; associated (whether fairly or not) with the apartheid state
and with Afrikaner nationalism, Pierneef’s famous landscapes have been
increasingly appropriated, subverted, parodied and denigrated since the 1980’s.”
~ Curator Wilhelm van Rensburg
Van Rensburg states that Pierneef can’t be “pinned down” in terms of style and that as we discuss and debate other icons of the troubled South African past, the time is ripe to revisit the work of JH Pierneef.
It should be noted that JH Pierneef’s paintings fetch very high prices at local and international auction houses off an original base of institutional recognition and investment this value has given way to private appreciation and collection.
standard bank Curator wilhelm Van Rensburg asks “Is it possible to
redeem Pierneef and his work?”
The answer must be yes, most certainly. Having viewed the exhibition I am of the opinion that there is an over emphasis on the politicization of his work. Was it not merely the fact that it was the era or time that he lived in which resulted in his being awarded (for his talent) projects which have been labelled as “colonialism and Afrikaner nationalism” which was the order of the day for every person who lived and worked in South Africa at that time. In fact was Pierneef not ahead of his time. Pierneef was fascinated by South African rock paintings and was roundly derided for promoting this so-called “Bushman art”. He undertook a commission in 1920 entitled “Rock art study”. In addition to which five years later his wife May Pierneef showed tapestries at the South African Academy in 1925, woven to his designs based on San rock art motifs. Subsequent scholarly attention to rock art has demonstrated both its aesthetic and symbolic complexity.
There is a criticism that his landscapes are problematic because they depict the land as empty and unoccupied – reproducing the colonial gaze, implying that the land was or is “there for the taking” and ignoring the violent conquest or displacement of indigenous peoples.
This argument would seem to be strengthened by the observation that, while Pierneef experimented with varying degrees of realism, and while the titles of his paintings may suggest that they are faithful representations of particular places, the subjects themselves are not “real”.
IMAGE – fact or FICTION?
I disagree on the following that Pierneef’s work “contains many fictions and that within simple image, he often combined different perspectives and different times of day and that one might conclude that this fabrication and invention (common enough in landscape painting – and, after all, an artist’s prerogative) allowed Pierneef to idealise the landscape and thus to indulge the romantic-colonial or nostalgic impulses.”
Why do I disagree? The answer is that I, as a hobby photographer have delighted in capturing without knowing almost the very same images on my digital camera that Pierneef has painted. I am quite sure that I am not alone in having done so. They may well be several hundred hobby and professional photographers who have also done so. Refer to photographs I have taken of trees in the South African bushveld, and willow trees and clouds in Mpumalanga. The resemblance of my amateur photography is almost identical in the composition of JH Pierneef's work thus Pierneef's work was very real!
Artists and photographers are not politicians. They are craftsmen and women who have a vision to inspire others in capturing a scene, a landscape, the architecture of a building through the eye of the lens or by paint brush and canvas. Artists and photographers often prefer not to have any evidence of mankind on the canvas. It is in this aesthetic simplicity that brings a calming effect to many both in its creation and in the pleasure of viewing, pausing and being mindful about the interpretation of a scene with may well be empty except for nature's influence, without the influence of humankind. There is beauty in the sheer simplicity of this art form.
INTERPRETATION OF ART
Do we as critics read far too much into what an artist was trying to convey when in fact all he is doing is recording nature as nature conveyed itself on a particular day.
In reminding us that Pierneef was very much an “outsider” at the start of his career we too need to recognize that it could not have been easy for Pierneef to secure a living from his art work. His father was Dutch, and the Pierneef family moved to Holland in 1900, soon after the South African war broke out. They returned a few years later, but Pierneef never quite lost his Dutch accent, and his early work received the patronage of a small Dutch circle of collectors in Pretoria. He “struggled on his own to come to terms with the South African landscape”, and it is appropriate that he joined a group called “The Individualists” (with whom he exhibited work in 1912 and 1913). Yet it would be overstating the case to present Pierneef as a dissident and rebellious etranger; he was, rather, a “loner seeking admission into the world of the ever increasingly power house that became Afrikaner Nationalism”.
WHO WAS JH PIERNEEF?
It appears like most today, Pierneef was merely an individual who loved his craft and like all artists or entrepreneurs needed to live from his craft. No different from any other artist today. It also appears that he did remain true to himself creating several nature inspired landscapes.
EMPTY LANDSCAPES
Page through any auction catalogue and there is an abundance of landscapes with empty land. Drive through Mpumalanga on the N4 highway and a photographer will snap away at the most magnificent empty landscapes.
This is a calming exhibition of JH Pierneef’s work. It calms the senses in the sheer beauty of his work, the oil on canvas in perfect condition in every piece of art work. The colours rich and soothing in their interpretation of nature and architecture. Let’s hope it calms the critics who read too much into the politics of the day rather than the sheer beauty and finite detail of the art.
Standard Bank Gallery curator Wilhelm Van Rensburg identifies three periods in Pierneef’s stylistic development: his early style was “sombre and realistic”, the middle period was broadly Impressionist and “quasi-geometric”, and the late style was “characterised by a synthetic approach”. Cubist abstraction would give way to more “simplified abstraction” in the mode of Gauguin, only to return again. No absolute or distinct progression from one mode to another is discernable; instead, Pierneef can be seen as experimenting with various forms “under the broad rubric of modernism”.
JH pierneef ART WORK ON EXHIBITION loaned FROM:
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