Lovers ,1966
Note : Peter Clarke did not shy away from sensitive or daring subject matter during the restrictive apartheid years and frequently painted embracinglovers. In the present lots, his figures are not only nude and of indeterminate race and gender, but are openly having sex outdoors. These pictures would have been viewed as outrageously provocative, shocking, pornographic, and illegal to boot, given that, at the time the works were created, the Immorality Act of 1927 was firmly entrenched. The Act prohibited sex between whites and people of other races, and between people of the same gender. The ‘petty apartheid’ clauses even prohibited people of colour from bathing on the same beaches as whites. For Clarke there is no hiding in dark corners for these sensual couples since in lot 151 the figures are presented as if spot lit on a stage but with drapes rendered in bands of an ominous dark grey. Lot 152 has the passionate pair dominating the picture plane in what appears to be a garden as they are surrounded by idyllic verdant foliage. The way in which Clarke ingeniously plays with the ambivalence of gender and race in these works is as masterful as it is subversive, and at the same time he is making a statement of defiance, of seeking – and finding – pleasure in the face of the reality of segregation.
