Robert Griffiths Hodgins
Note : Bad Man with Great Threads brings an involuntary smile to one’s face, not least because we all know someone like this. But closer inspection reveals how much more Hodgins, in his brilliance, uncovers. The canvas is bisected horizontally into two large areas of colour, the lower half washed in peach tones and the top half iridescent in bright yellow, echoing the way in which Abstract Expressionist, Mark Rothko, divided his canvases. Across each top corner are dribbles of primary colour, akin to Morris Louis’ Colour Field canvases of the 1950s. As South African artists and fine art lecturers sought to come to terms with the impact of Clement Greenberg’s single-minded insistence on the flatness of the canvas, Hodgins refused to sacrifice figuration and instead found ingenious ways to challenge such narrow orthodoxies and to make abstraction serve his painterly needs. Not only does Hodgins quote the leading abstractionists of the 50s and 60s but he is able to paint in such a way that his areas of colour may be interpreted in terms of both abstraction and figuration. Louis’ dribbles also read as curtains that part to reveal Rothko’s floating squares which, in turn, provide a well-lit stage on which our Bad Man may be seen to act out his nefarious deeds.
