Deborah Margaret Bell (South African, Born 1957) World'S Body
Provenance : [Propriété non datée]
- A private collection
- Exhibited Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in association with the Zabalaza Festival in London, Art from South Africa (June-September 1990) London, Atkinson Gallery, Millfield School, Cross Cross Currents: Contemporary Art practice in South Africa, (September 2000) Literature David Elliot, art from South Arica, Museum of Oxford, Exhibition catalogue (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and Thames & Hudson, 1990), p. 46
- (illustrated) John Picton and Jennifer Law, Cross Cross Currents: Contemporary Art practice in South Africa, (Somerset: Atkinson Gallery, 2000), p. 63
- (illustrated)
- Extracted from Deborah Bell's Desert/Expulsion series that spanned between 1989-1991, World's Body holds stark similarities to World on Fire whilst taking a dominant position in the artists oeuvre
- The work depicts a strong stoic female figure making eye contact with the viewer
- The male figure is turned away, gazing at the landscape and either rising or setting sun
- Pippa Stein says of the compositional choice in World on Fire that the two figures 'are in a point-counterpoint relationship: connected, yet apart, opposite yet the same; one dark, one light; looking forward, looking back; animus, anima.' The present work holds a very similar dichotomy; the woman is the dominant figure in the eyes of Bell and for the viewers gaze
- The figures stand separately, the woman empowered in her stoisicsm: I used to stand in the pose of the woman I was painting, and consciously feel what it was like to be that leg, that arm, the particular expression of the face
- She was I and not I
- She is no longer caught off balance, in impossible high-heeled shoes or twisted into compromised positions
- In these paintings, there was a change in embodiment, a new sense of resolve and inner strength, of 'standing solidly on the earth', bare feet rooted to the ground
- The woman looks out of these paintings, holding the viewer in gaze, while the man is usually turned away
- It was as if in painting her, I was saying, 'Here I am', an yet once I became the observer of the final painting, she stood there quite separate and self-contained and we looked at each other
- (p.18) Born in Johannesburg in 1957, Deborah Bell is a leading South African painter, sculptor and printmaker who received her Masters degree in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand
- Bell has collaborated with Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge on numerous projects such as Hogarth in Johannesburg (1987-8), Memo (1994) and UBU 101 (1997)
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