implicit art

^{Robert Hodgins. Gentlemen conversing quietly. 2006. Monotype. 320X515mm}

35 years of printmaking @ Art on Paper gallery in Johannesburg, opening this Saturday, 8 July @ 15h00
44 Stanley Avenue  Braamfontein Werf  (Milpark) 2092

From press release by Wilhelm van Rensburg:

Robert Hodgins and Jan Neethling first met as lecturer and student at the School of Art of the Pretoria Technical College in 1958. Robert’s first tongue-in-cheek, sly ironic comment about Jan was to enquire what a young man was doing at the Tech wearing ‘garage trousers’ or denim jeans where the dress code was strictly ‘suit and tie’ for both lecturers and students. This irreverent and defiant attitude towards convention has become the hallmark of both artists throughout their artistic careers.

Their first endeavors at printmaking in the early 1970s exhibit an assuredly classic figurative style, drawing on figurative studies of the nude that has been an integral part of the visual repertoire of many such British Pop artists as Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Anthony Donaldson, Peter Blake and New York Pop artists such as Tom Wesselmann, Larry Rivers and Mel Ramos. Jan Neethling’s Bikini and Stockings screenprint series are perfect foils for the iconic nudes of these artists.

Equally innovative was the printmaking technique of clichés-verre that Robert and Jan employed as early as 1971, resulting in a two person exhibition at the Lidchi Gallery, Johannesburg. At the time, screen printing was favoured in South Africa, probably as a reflection of the growing status of printmaking internationally, following in particular the high profile screen printing had assumed during the 1960s with Pop artists such as Andy Warhol in America and etching with David Hockney and Joe Tilson in England.

In 1980 Robert and Jan mounted the fourth of their two-man exhibitions, this time at the Market Theatre Gallery. Their printmaking experiments centred on a series of one-off screenprints using as subject matter one very notorious 1930s Depression era robber, Pretty Boy Floyd. They found a newspaper photo of this villain and used his image over the Easter weekend of that year, as basis for numerous explorations of visual possibilities. The Pretty Boy Floyd exhibition subtly referenced the controversial 1964 Andy Warhol exhibition, Thirteen Most Wanted Men momentarily installed on the façade of the State Pavilion at the World’s fair in New York. In some tangential way, Hodgins and Neethling also ‘valorize the villain’ by the forthright gaze of their Pretty Boy Floyd portraits.

Twenty-one years later they recreated this collaborative experience, again over Easter, this time using photographs of each other. These collaborative works culminated in the One-off exhibition at Art on Paper Gallery in 2001. The result was not unlike that of the collaboration between Gilbert and George, but unlike these two ‘living sculptures’ Hodgins and Neethling rejected the formality and respectability of ‘the suits of art’, Gilbert and George’s pseudonym, and donned the more daring attire of the urban hip hop cowboy.

Their sixth two-man exhibition, also at Art on Paper-gallery, in 2005, was entitled, Two weeks in the country. For this exhibition Hodgins used his favourite medium on paper, monotype, and Neethling worked in polymer photogravure which he handcoloured. Looking at such Hodgins titles as Generals, Toff, A little tiff, and Fat mama sings, and such Neethling titles as Baldy, Ol’con, and Prof, a veritable Rogue’s Gallery – one is taken through an intimate portrait gallery. Neither Hodgins nor Neethling is interested in portraying any ‘likeliness’ of the sitter, if there was any model at all. Both are artists of the imagination, both paint/print attitude, not interior angst. But the emphasis in the prints of both artists is not only on the sheer joy of art making; it is also on moving the boundaries of the medium, battling familiarity and challenging convention.

Their latest exhibition at Art on Paper Gallery gives a good overview of Robert and Jan’s working relationship over the past 35 years. It includes Hodgins’ series of nine digital prints Officers and Gentlemen, his famous Ubu series of prints and a series of new etchings, which include a very new subject matter, that of the crucifixion. Neethling, in turn, adds to his Rogue’s Gallery series of prints, depicting outcasts and eccentrics, started in the 2005 exhibition at Art on Paper Gallery.

Hodgins and Neethling’s printmaking partnership ceaselessly extends and augments their visual repertoire and their technical virtuosity as artists. Of their working relationship and of the prints that are produced Robert once said “Jan’s are very pop and jubilant. Mine are more Dr Jekyll and Mr Hodgins”.

Shortened version of exhibition brochure essay by Wilhelm van Rensburg for Art on Paper Gallery, 2006
© Art on Paper Gallery