I have met many great artists over the years, in fact some of the names that light up the 20th Century. Few however have affected me as deeply as the South African artist Peter Clarke. On Sunday I heard he had died and my sadness was not only for a whole generation of artists for whom he was a mentor and guide, but for my own loss in someone who taught me about Contemporary Art in South Africa. What I remember most is a discussion that hardship had not changed for an artist even if power had. There is no government support for art in South Africa. There are few Foundations. It is hard for artists to survive between exhibitions and there is little acknowledgment for the daily reality of a young artist’s life.
“You know,” he said “for many young artists at the end of the day they turn round and say ‘why even bother’.”
Peter was a man whose life had been about exploring. During his life he explored the world around him chronicling the whole era of apartheid and the movement of people forcibly from one place to another. He explored the world outside traveling to London and Europe, absorbing other artistic styles. He was a writer, a poet, a painter and a humanist. His belief reflected in his work is the dignity of man. His canvasses show his interest in expressionism but also the impact of artists such as Diego Rivera who commented on his own social environment in Mexico. The people and the landscapes that inhabit Peter Clarke’s work could be anywhere and everywhere. The broad planes, the two dimensional flattened images and people could as easily be of Mexico, South America, Haiti or South Africa.
They are stories of people who suffer but the paintings nevertheless still sing. The vivid colors, the broad landscapes are filled with hope. The figures are always upright, or in a quirky pose such as in the painting that hung on his wall of a boy walking with his mother and grandmother.
Most likely this is Peter. The polka dots on his mother’s dress dance with gaiety. The grandmother is a solid flattened piece of blue – something that can’t bend no matter the wind. That is exactly how I found Peter. He had climbed over all the obstacles of his life and the little books he showed me when I visited were about the new ideas that came daily to him. Chasing the ideas, putting them down, capturing his thoughts and commenting on his world had been what his life was about and if fame had found him that was just something else to bring glee to his face.
The current has changed. Unlike Peter’s time, now Africa is hot. The interest in a new richly fertile art carries its own dangers. Artists eager to exhibit overseas do not know the shark tank. They do not know that art is not just a thing of beauty but it is a commodity and the artist himself worth little outside the ability of his works to perform. And performance is not always about great art, it is the hype that may go along with it. I think there is much more to a Peter Clarke painting than a Jeff Koons inflated puppy dog but Peter hails from Africa and Koons from America and there is a wide ocean in between.
artstolife 