Michael Godby

Home Truths Domestic Interiors in Michael Godby South African Collections 03 HomeDomestic Interiors in SouthTruths African Collections Front Cover: Eduard Vuillard (1868-1940), Interior with Figures under a Lamp, 1909, gouache on paper, 44.5 x 64.7cm, Johannesburg Art Gallery 409. Back Cover: George Pemba (1912-2001), Untitled (Woman Expelling a Man from a House), 1988, oil on board, 57.1 x 71.5cm, Tatham Art Gallery 1702. Catalogue published by PRIMAVERA PUBLISHING, Cape Town, 2016, to accompany the exhibition ‘Home Truths: Domestic Interiors in South African Collections’ at Iziko South African National Gallery and the Sanlam Gallery, Bellville. [email protected]. All images: Copyright the artists and collections. Text: copyright Michael Godby. Design: Carlos Marzia and Michael Godby. Production and co-ordination: Carlos Marzia. Printing and binding: ISBN 978-0-620-70624-7 HomeDomestic Interiors in SouthTruths African Collections Michael Godby 1. Lisa Brice (b1968), Make your Home your Castle, 1995, mixed media, dimensions variable, Iziko South African National Gallery 96/3. Contents Home Truths: Welcome 01 I. Interior Worlds 01 II. Behind Closed Doors 01 III. The World Outside 01 IV. Inside Out 01 Conclusion 01 Acknowledgements and Thanks 01 Select Further Reading 01 Author Biography 01 8 Unlike Landscape, Still Life and their own studios, and landscapes, to background of other pictorial subjects. Portraiture, the Domestic Interior has convert three-dimensional spaces in Madonna and Child compositions, for never been a recognized category in the same way. For the same reason, example, were frequently set in a domestic European academic artistic practice: no Domestic Interiors, as well as Still Life and interior, in part, of course, to underline exhibitions were arranged under this Landscape subjects, were the starting point the human aspect of the Holy Family. But subject and no theory developed around for many abstract compositions later in the in many Biblical narratives – the Birth the representation of domestic space, century. of the Virgin and the Feast at Cana, for whether empty or inhabited. example – and countless stories from the In spite of this lack of academic lives of the saints, the domestic setting is As a matter of fact, with the exception recognition, the Domestic Interior an essential part of the story and could, on of a few camera obscura experiments in appears frequently in modern Western occasion, lead to extraordinary elaboration perspective in Holland in the seventeenth Art. Following Cubism and its formal of still life details and interior decoration century and private albums of interior experimentation, Expressionism, in styles: a prime example is Ghirlandaio’s views that flourished for a short time in painting as well as in film, found Life of the Virgin fresco cycle in Santa the early nineteenth century, the subject interior spaces to be powerful vehicles Maria Novella, Florence. However, while of the domestic interior with no human to communicate the lineaments of the Landscape that developed in a similar way presence did not appear until the early human condition. For Surrealism, the in religious painting could call on classical twentieth century. Significantly, it emerged domestic interior provided stage sets for a literature for both precedent and theory as part of that movement in which artists whole range of associations and imagery. that would allow it to make the leap into a experimented with familiar settings to And Pop Art used the domestic interior subject in its own right, no such precedent explore the formal problems of converting as a complex matrix for contemporary existed for the Domestic Interior: on a three-dimensional subject onto the two- lifestyle and consumer culture. These the contrary, the classical theory that dimensional picture plane. The Cubists movements, and other modern trends, are did address domestic subject-matter – and their followers treated Still Life all represented in this collection. under the heading of ‘rhopography’: the subjects in their environment – bottles, description of the banal, the base, that glasses, guitars, etc. – to render volumes Historically, the Domestic Interior, like which was literally beneath one’s notice - and masses on the flat picture surface; and Landscape, emerged as a genre in the tended to stress its very unworthiness as they addressed domestic spaces, especially fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the a subject for art. Thus, while Landscape 9 emerged as an autonomous subject as early entirely on the depiction of everyday physical context for the moral to be as the seventeenth century, the Domestic objects and the domestic settings in which effective. Obviously recognizing a certain Interior, as we have seen, only became an they were located. anxiety in a new class of patron, artists independent subject of painting in the very produced a large number of works by different conditions of art in the early years Thus before it became autonomous, the which this class could distinguish itself of the twentieth century. Domestic Interior developed as a subject morally from others such as capricious within the two categories of Portraiture militia men and boorish peasants. In The distinctions between Landscape and and Genre. And both these subjects many of these works, the domestic setting the Domestic Interior in classical theory – (as well as Still Life) flourished in the exceeds the requirements of simple with the one tending to the abstract and seventeenth-century Dutch School which appropriate context and assumes an active poetic and the other towards the specific itself, not surprisingly, was held in low role in the drama – the well-ordered and the banal – had lasting impact on esteem in the art theory of the eighteenth space that is the sign of good (female) European art and theory. Within the and nineteenth centuries. While some management, the dingy chaotic space academic categories of high art from the Dutch seventeenth-century portraiture of the alchemist wasting his life in futile seventeenth into the nineteenth centuries would aspire to heroic status through the pursuit of gold, the book-lined space of that included Biblical subject-matter, use of abstract landscape backgrounds the scholar or the divine: in each of these as well as Historical and Mythological and other generalizing devices, most settings the artist has invented a physical themes, the domestic setting tended to be maintained the inherently lowly quality of context that fully represents the moral generalized and obscured even when the the genre by celebrating either the specific identity of their human subject. narrative appeared to call attention to it. property of the portrait subject – in the So it was in the less noble categories of form of personal collections in a domestic Moving into the eighteenth and painting, specifically Portraiture and Genre interior – or his or her taste – with the nineteenth centuries, in France and in that the Domestic Interior (and Still Life) same material – or some form of moral England, Genre subjects changed gradually flourished. Portraiture, of course, could virtue that invariably was expressed in from statements on morality – how one encompass both the heroic – in which domestic terms: all these interpretations of should live – to the genre of sentiment – the specificities of daily life gave way to the portrait subject are represented in the how one should feel: and, in some ways, poetic and noble aspirations of one kind Michaelis Collection of Dutch art and are our own time is still governed by this or another – and the precise record of in evidence in this exhibition. concern. Artists discovered a huge number lived experience in which the mundane of such subjects, both within the everyday was obviously celebrated. Grouped at the Dutch Genre scenes drew from domestic world of affections and, particularly in bottom of the academic hierarchy with situations to illustrate such ideas as the Victorian England, in anecdotes from Still Life (and what was considered the well-managed household, the proper history – interestingly, often from the lower kind of portraiture), the category education of children, marital relations, seventeenth-century history of the British of Genre painting that extracted moral the treatment of servants, etc., which all Civil War. In these scenes also, the lessons from everyday experience depended depended on an appropriately realized domestic setting became an active part of 10 the narrative – the Englishman’s home as not only feature interesting versions of written a history of interior decoration. his castle, defining, expressing, protecting the Domestic Interior in their own right The project is an invitation to read into and advertising his family values: in point but also, as a school, they may be thought paintings guided both by this single, most of fact, the Domestic Interior was more to underpin the figurative tradition in resonant theme, and by the groups in often represented as the English woman at twentieth-century South African art which the works are presented. A simple home in her castle! On this basis, in this that has always run alongside the more chronological arrangement of works from era of sentiment, the Domestic Interior favoured international Modernist school the seventeenth-century Dutch School to became capable of expressing an infinite in this country. Women artists especially contemporary South African work would subtlety of fine feeling. have represented

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