I keep forgetting Joburg Art Fair is about art, Dr. Myer Taub (BA. Drama MA. Drama Queen PhD. Treasure Hunt) said ‘look around you, this is a food fair if anything’. It had truth, poetry and sadness. Everything in this space will be consumed by Sunday evening, and if not, it will be neatly packed away and left for later consumption.
So the art.
The Joburg Art Fair is filled with everything that’s been, and garnered any attention seen over the past two years, like an almanac for the currently popular: high production, sleekness, smoothness and pristineness. But then there’s Graham’s Fine Art Gallery, the clothed spanner in the works, which looks like an offshoot of a South African National Gallery retrospective of South African modern art housed in a camera obscura.
I had this line planned: “In his Alfa Romeo Talk, Graham said:” I was set on writing about Graham Britz, it was going to have truth, poetry and sadness, but he didn’t follow the schedule rules and he didn’t talk at all, and now I’m stuck on writing about the little about him I know.
I saw Graham in Graham’s Fine Art Gallery on Friday evening, he was wearing a bow tie and pointy shoes and he was kissing lots of women on their cheeks. Graham looks like Peter Stormbare who looks like a crook, but Graham is doing very well for himself, and I haven’t seen Peter Strombare on TV in ages.
I think Graham is doing well because he provides a staple diet for art buyers, he provides accessible art, like Ayn Rand in a bookstore, the kind of conservative stability that becomes the most saleable items in the fair.
We’re at a point where the majority of those who keep the South African art world in motion through the funding and purchasing of works also know very little about what they’re actually doing. Admittedly, it’s difficult to tell what’s good or bad art outside of the PR system and the Gallery names acting as aficionados.
Basically, the biggest names sell the most art based on reputation alone. They are those reputable older brothers that tell you what’s in your best interest to like and own. There’s always the paranoia that they’re bullshitting you and laughing at you behind your back. And in an age where the quality of the work is not solely dependant on the aesthetic production, certain buyers undoubtedly want greater stability.
Graham seems to cater to those who are unsure about what they should be buying, there’s no question of whether or not it’s art or whether or not it’s good. They’re the South African classics, they’re safe and investable bets, buying a Sekoto, Pierneef or a Stern, is buying a piece of South African art history. It’s like Graham is selling off past fossils, while everyone else is selling contemporary mud.
Man, that guy is like an art viper.