the thinking eye photographs by Neville Dubow Marilyn Martin & Paul Weinberg the thinking eye photographs by Neville Dubow Marilyn Martin & Paul Weinberg with contributions by Saul and Jessica Dubow, Christopher Peter, Antonia Bamford and Daniël Geldenhuys Published in conjunction with the exhibition The Thinking Eye – photographs by Neville Dubow Irma Stern Museum 16 May to 27 June 2015 Publisher: Special Collections, University of Cape Town Libraries ISBN 978-0-7992-2520-4 CURATORS Marilyn Martin and Paul Weinberg IRMA STERN MUSEUM Christopher Peter and Mary van Blommestein CCA HONOURS IN CURATORSHIP INTERNS Contents Antonia Bamford and Daniël Geldenhuys CATALOGUE DESIGN Daniël Geldenhuys From the curators Marilyn Martin & Paul Weinberg 6 PROOF READING Josephine Higgins ‘Prof’ Dubow, the Museum Director from 1971 to 1998 PRINTING Christopher Peter 8 Hansa Printers Copyright © Images: Neville Dubow family Neville Dubow Copyright © Texts: the authors Saul and Jessica Dubow 11 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, Neville Dubow – for the sake of art, education and freedom of expression mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners. Marilyn Martin 16 First published 2015 Neville Dubow – Unframed Photograph on cover Paul Weinberg 27 Harpist 1-4 Paris 1989 Photograph on title page Teach on Landscape intervention Daniël Geldenhuys 30 New York 1975 Photographs on inside back page R. at Paul Forêt contemplating the Future, with all my love on her 60th Birthday. N. The Neville Dubow adventure May 1992 Antonia Bamford 31 Self portrait with sculpture by Duane Hanson New York 1976 Photograph on back cover Self portrait Kolmanskop, Namibia, 1986 .veryone who knew him was deeply shocked The title of the exhibition, ‘The Thinking .and saddened when Neville Dubow passed Eye – photographs by Neville Dubow’, is E.away suddenly in August 2008, only three inspired by an essay – ‘Constructs: Reflections months after opening the exhibition of friend on a Thinking Eye’ – that he wrote for David and colleague, the Portuguese architect Pancho Goldblatt’s book South Africa The Structure of Guedes, at the Iziko South African National Things Then (1988). As Weinberg’s essay in this Gallery (Iziko Sang). catalogue reveals, it is an entirely appropriate In the months and years that followed, Joe title for Dubow’s own approach to photography. Dolby, Hayden Proud, Lesley Hart and Paul Martin and Weinberg worked with Christopher Weinberg assisted Rhona Dubow in organising Peter and Mary van Blommestein on many the extensive archive of Dubow images, papers, aspects of the exhibition. We were joined by reviews, lectures, mobiles and other aspects of enthusiastic Honours in Curatorship interns his academic and creative output. This archive Antonia Bamford and Daniël Geldenhuys, who now resides at the University of Cape Town, assisted in so many ways, including the design of Manuscripts & Archives where Weinberg is the invitation and catalogue. senior curator, visual archives, UCT Libraries. In order to encourage Michaelis student Many of the thousands of slides taken by participation and engagement with Dubow’s Dubow, as photographic works or as tools for work, Josh Ginsburg – assisted by Jared teaching, public lectures and publications, have Ginsburg, Matthew King and Kyle Moreland been scanned. – ran a series of workshops with fourth-year Dubow was the 1992 Standard Bank Guest photography students. This resulted in a Artist and an exhibition of more than 100 publication, and the participating students’ From the curators works, entitled ‘Sequences, Series, Sites 1978- work is shown in a separate space at the ISM. 1992’, was held at the Grahamstown Festival Martin and Weinberg started the curatorial and travelled to art museums throughout South process by making preliminary selections from Marilyn Martin & Paul Weinberg Africa, including the South African National the UCT archive, the Iziko Sang collection Gallery. More than twenty years later, it was and Rhona Dubow’s collection. Generally time to again honour Dubow the photographer, speaking, the exhibition comprises an overview but also to produce a publication that would of Dubow’s photographic oeuvre from 1971- elaborate on his extraordinary contribution as 2001 and includes new images, never before a public intellectual, as well as to institutions exhibited. There is a vast body of colour slides such as the Michaelis School of Fine Art, the that reflects Dubow the traveller with an appetite South African National Gallery (Sang) and the to record and document the places he visited, Irma Stern Museum (ISM). and to absorb what the international art world It has taken many years to see the project to had to offer. Weinberg developed a rolling slide fruition. An appropriate venue and funding show of some of these images for the exhibition. proved to be major challenges. Christopher Display cases contain drawings that reveal other Peter, director of the ISM, embraced the idea. aspects of Dubow’s many talents and activities, In the end, this is the best museum, both for the e.g. architectural drawings from the archive of beauty and intimacy of the exhibition spaces and Revel Fox & Partners, drawings for projects and the fact that Dubow was the founding director mobiles, as well as memorabilia and publications. of the museum. Fritha Langerman, Director Jessica and Saul Dubow, Christopher Peter, of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, included Martin, Weinberg, interns Antonia Bamford and the exhibition in the Honours in Curatorship Daniël Geldenhuys have all made contributions to the catalogue, thereby adding depth and texture to programme, which secured some funding. For the extraordinary legacy of Neville Dubow. this we are enormously grateful. 6 7 Dubow’s singular voice on Stern developed Ah! I recall happy memories of Tuesday into two important publications over and above night openings, finding Prof. in the crowded his involvement with the Museum catalogue lounge, busy with last minute checks on names ‘Prof’ Dubow, the Museum Director published in 1971. and facts for his speech, and Rhona Dubow These included a monograph on Irma Stern, always serene, elegant and, as only she can be, published by Struik in 1974, now a collector’s totally at ease. In the early years especially, this from 1971 to 1998 item, and Paradise, The Journal and Letters (1917- social warmth was a great sense of comfort for 1933) of Irma Stern, edited with a commentary a young curator. Christopher Peter by Neville Dubow in 1991. Fortunately we A few of the early highlights were the celebratory have a healthy stock of this publication at the retrospective-type exhibitions, such as Irma in DIRECTOR, IRMA STERN MUSEUM Museum, the sales of which provide a positive Zanzibar, Irma in the Congo and Irma as a flower boost to our revenue. painter (all forming part of the seminal exhibition The latter publication required a greater strategy of the early 80s), and the exhibitions and engagement with the emotional and personal symposium around the authentication of the side of the complex nature of Irma Stern. This Buli stool and the great excitement regarding its .emote Control” defines the style of pulse of her work beats to many exotic publication formed the subject for a video, value. This show caused me great anxiety at the .Directorship which I happily discovered rhythms. But it was to this house that she Irma Stern. The Pursuit of the Other, which can last minute as South African customs would not R.to be the modus operandi when I assumed came back time and time again from her be seen at this exhibition. I remember that it release it, returning as it did, at the last minute my role as Resident Supervisor at the Irma wanderings; and it was to this house that was done in a surprisingly short space of time, from Sotheby’s in London. A kind acquaintance, Stern Museum in 1979. she brought back examples of work from a less than a day! Neville starring faultlessly. I burrowing away in a dusty office, down a long This term is not to be loosely interpreted as great spread of cultures – all of which are think no re-takes were required. There is one corridor in which I was frustratingly pacing up and uncaring, quite the opposite, as, his hand, in a linked to her own work by one overriding amusing reference to Stern “colonading” as down at the Customs office, subsequently released fatherly way, was always on the house and what factor. In all of them is to be seen the opposed to “colonising” that was left in for a one of South Africa’s greatest art treasures by the was happening there. One was quick to discover principle of uncompromising creative bit of a laugh! stroke of a ballpoint pen on an official form. this aspect over our tête-à-tête meetings around vitality. The same principle which was the Another amusing event, and a very happy And then there were some of senior greats, the low round table in his Michaelis office, in hallmark of her own output. This is the one for me, was that my title was changed in Cecil Skotnes, Hym Rabinowitz, Olivia Scholnik another world – in town. The Museum was, in stuff out of which we have endeavoured the early 80’s by historian, Edna Bradlow. In and Alice Goldin. Some of whom have exhibited a poetic sense another place, a leafy one. Town to fashion a Museum. A Museum that will her unofficial capacity as gracious hostess, at several times at the Museum. A groundbreaking was cutting edge. be a home for the creative spirit and not a a dinner celebrating a Charles Bell exhibition show by Sue Williamson on District Six was From the start of my duties it was clear that the mausoleum.