Lot 234, the Preller, Space Angel, signed and dated ’71, oil and gesso on canvas.
“I have three million one hundred thousand. Three two, thank you. Three four, three five, six, seven, eight, nine, four million. Four million two hundred thousand with you, four million four, four six, yes, I saw that nod, go ahead, five. Now five two, five four, five six, I’m at the back of the room now, she’s got it at five eight, it is with you madam, at five million eight hundred thousand rand, at five eight, all done? This is fair warning, I’m going to sell it …”
Bang, goes his gavel on the desk. “Your number please?” asks auctioneer Dendy Easton in his plummy British accent. We are at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg on November 7, 2016.
It has taken one minute, 40 seconds for somebody to spend R5.8 million ($440,000) for Alexis Preller’s painting. There is scattered applause.
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“Lot 235, the Edoardo Villa …”
Bidding continues for nearly 300 lots until the final one, Lot 293, a Keith Alexander painting, goes for R360,000 ($27,000).
There is a lot of money in art, and a lot of it in this particular room. Here in Johannesburg, among these bidders, the South African economy looks pretty robust. Apartheid  marginalized South African artists, which means that collectors from China to New Zealand, America to Britain, South America to Europe, are now greedy for South African art. Greediest of all, it seems, are South Africans themselves. While the country’s economy may be stressed, the wealthy have cash for pretty things to hang on their walls. A lot of it.
Of course there are good artists in Africa. Some of the best from the continent are South African.
“The fact that there is so much money for art now is to some extent because we were marginalized. And our artists are good. Very good,” says Emma Bedford, Senior Art Specialist and a Director of Aspire Art Auctions.
“We have a history of good art schools in this country. The rest of Africa doesn’t,” interrupts Ruarc Peffers, the tall, suave and experienced auctioneer of Aspire, a brand new South African auction house that on Halloween night in Johannesburg sold over $2.2-million’s worth of South African art, at an auction a week before the big Strauss one. Discovery boss Adrian Gore is a major Aspire investor, as is Brian Joffe of Bidvest.
It’s a funny business, art collection and auctions.
Frank Kilbourn, Executive Chairman of the biggest and oldest South African auction house, Strauss &amp; Co, which sold the Preller mentioned above, tells me he is reluctant to tell people art is an investment. “But it is,” he adds. “If you bought South African art a decade or two or three ago, you have made a lot of money, or could make if you sell now.”
“The whole world is waking up to our art. It is reaching record prices. If you did invest, you made money. But that’s not what art is all about.”
It is about appreciation, culture, civilization, aesthetics, collecting, pride, knowledge, historicity, philosophy.
To show just how the market is booming, Kilbourn, who has separate degrees in law, commerce and philosophy, explains that three huge new galleries are being built in South Africa.
In Cape Town there is Zeitz MOCAA (Museum for Contemporary Art in Africa) at the Waterfront – old grain silos with a five-star hotel on top of an eight-story gallery; Javett is being built in Pretoria, in collaboration with the University of Pretoria, and the third is a private one being built at Steenberg in the Cape.
“This is a wonderful thing for the country, and for art,” Kilbourn, a collector himself, says with a happy smile. His team tell me I mustn’t fail to mention that their auction in Cape Town earlier this year realized $4.2 million, the second highest ever for an art auction. “And that’s in Cape Town!”
At the Strauss auction in Johannesburg exactly a week after Aspire’s auction, Kilbourn buys two paintings himself. One is an Erik Laubscher Still Life with Pumpkin Slice which was expected to reach R300,000 ($22,000) to R400,000 ($30,000).
At R400,000 the auctioneer pauses, Kilburn just nods, “420?” Easton looks around the room … “430!” he says triumphantly. There is another bidder, bidding against Kilburn. Now it is rapid fire from the auctioneer, finger pointing left then right, like watching tennis at Wimbledon: “440, 480; 500, 520; 550, 580; 600, 620; 650, 680; 700, 720; 750, 780; 800… 820. Fair warning… R820,000, I’m going to sell it, here in the second row.”
Bang goes Easton’s gavel. In half a minute, the price doubled.
While interviewing Kilbourn after the auction he greets somebody mischievously, giving him a big smile, asking “Were you the bastard pushing me up on the Laubscher? I thought you were my friend?”
Small auction rival Aspire has been in business since July this year. They are a chip off the older Strauss house, for which most of them worked. The four Aspire art specialists have qualifications in fine art, art history, art theory, criticism and curating.
Aspire Auctioneer Ruarc Peffers, a graduate of the famous Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town, tells me he has done “Oh, over 100 auctions” in his career, but the Johannesburg one was his first for Aspire. He describes how it is “left foot, right foot” stuff: the auctioneer must ensure he has the momentum on his side, as he goes up in about ten percent increases.
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In South African law the auction house is allowed to bid, so one of the auctioneer’s tasks is to get the bid to a real bidder, not the house. There are a bunch of bidders on phones from New York, Australia, even New Zealand – and they are not ex-South Africans, he says. Plus there are internet bids being controlled by Aspire staff member Rafael Powell. Hunched over his computer, every now and then he lifts his bidding number to bid for somebody on the net, who is bidding from somewhere on the planet to get South African art.
If the reserve price is in the millions, the auctioneer goes up in hundreds of thousands.
Estimates in the catalogue usually have the reserve price as the bottom estimate. If that’s not reached, the item is not sold. Although the auctioneer ‘closes’ at say R450,000, if the ‘estimate’ was R500,000 to R1 million, the item is probably going to remain with its owner.
After the auction a lot of buying and selling activity takes place, people making offers, bringing down reserve prices, offering to buy an already bought item. Frenetic stuff for staff for the 24 hours after the final hammer falls.
I went to both auctions, a week apart, one by Strauss and one by Aspire.
Emma Bedford says: “Modernist artists on our sale who performed best included JH Pierneef, Hugo Naudé, Alexis Preller, Edoardo Villa, Erik Laubscher and Douglas Portway. But what really excited us was how well the contemporary artists did, many breaking records. Like photographers David Goldblatt and Pieter Hugo, as well as artists Peter Schütz, William Kentridge, Diane Victor and Athi-Patra Ruga.”
The top Preller on Aspire’s sale Profiled figures (Mirrored Images) reached $468,000 on the auction.
I ask the Aspire auctioneer: “Why don’t you say something about the painting during the auction? You only say ‘Lot 14, the Irma Stern. I have a bid of 500 (thousand)’ but nothing about the work?”
He says: “Bidders know the works, there were three days of viewing, they have the catalogue. And you only have about three minutes for each lot, otherwise ‘bidders’ fatigue’ sets in, and you don’t want that. We did 121 lots in two hours.”
At the Strauss auction, I realize how right he is. I find myself nodding off when we get to lots 260, 270, 280.
Lot 249, a Preller Woman with Red Hair goes for R2 million ($150,000) although it was expected to only reach R200,000 ($15000), and Lot 248, another Preller, Revelation which was expected to get R400,000 ($30,000) goes for R2.4 million ($180,000) to a telephone bidder. A tiny Preller painting, Ritual Bull, only 7.5cmx9cm, goes for R550,000 ($41,000).
Strangely enough, the real star of the Strauss auction, the so-called lost Preller Adam – a heavy piece of art the size of a big coffin, absolutely exquisite in my untutored opinion, goes for a bid of only R6 million ($450,000), a huge bargain. (Commission of about  $59,000 will be added to the price the bidder will actually pay.)
“This was the wrong audience for that work. It is a museum piece, not really for a public auction,” Kilburn shrugs and says. It was expected to reach $490,000 to $680,000.
This is a world of wealthy people, who acquire art to enjoy it on their walls, invest in it, and show it off. Their disposable income is serious money. Strange then, after watching these folk jump up bidding in hundreds of thousands of rands without blinking an eye, to hear them in the Wanderers’ parking lot debating whether to give the car guard a R5 coin or a R10 note.

Art For Art’s Sake – but give us your Cash

There is a new avant-garde edifice in the heart of Lagos’ swanky Victoria Island. It is no mere edifice. Typically, it is where you would find Nigeria’s art, design and fashion fraternity converge under one roof.
You could call this edifice, a multi-level design gallery and retail haven named the ALARA concept store, a library of pan-African luxury.
Its founder Reni Folawiyo’s ambitions can be likened to the monumental edifice she has built. An art and design aficionado who worked as a lawyer for a decade, Folawiyo describes her store as a celebration of who we are as Africans today, a sign of our cultural awakening and a statement of where we are going as a continent.
It is clear Africa is developing a noteworthy appetite for luxury design.
When we meet at the store, we sit on contemporary carved wooden stools, with subtle Angolan Kizomba and Pasada music playing in the background. Folawiyo exudes a simple sophistication just like the surroundings we are in.
“I believe we need iconic platforms to project Africa and celebrate the different Africans doing great things all over the world,” she begins.
For this, she started from the bottom.
“I started to grow my passion by seeking to understand the creativity of the artists and designers on the ground. My association with them was important just for my own interest but it also began to grow into a curiosity for their functionality, growth and how they earned a living.”
Folawiyo left her career in law to chase her interests, one that saw her collaborating with young artistes in the design schools and the College of Arts and Technology in Lagos. She held weekend brainstorming sessions to help them monetize their creations.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30812 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mrs-F11.jpg 682w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
“We had fashion designers, painters, sculptors and I thought to connect them to our world would be to create contemporary objects that would be useful to people in their everyday lives. That way, they were utilizing their creativity and for me as an entrepreneur, it was viable,” says Folawiyo.
From organic wooden seats to hand-embroidered cushions created by fashion designers, the functional items were presented at exhibitions for sale. A variety of materials were also showcased, including leather and indigenous raffia fiber.
With demand for more pieces, Folawiyo soon decided to set up her own studio.
“I looked at the numbers and gaps in the market and realized there is nobody doing contemporary doors and joinery… I wanted to keep it local and tool it to perfection so that, if anyone looked at the piece, would recognize that it is African but also very contemporary.”
This led to the launch of Folawiyo’s joinery and doors company, a one-stop shop for all interior design requirements. As she began to travel more on the continent, she began to have a better appreciation for traditional artisans and designers.
“I realized there were many people like me who were trying to use old skills to do contemporary pieces. I became curious and started to inform myself about them, to see how they got to where they were and what they were doing to operate.”
Folawiyo speaks about a lack of exposure and appreciation for Nigeria’s artistes and designers.
“It is difficult for the artistes to break through as there is an aesthetic that people relate to which is different from what contemporary artistes are doing and if with this space [ALARA], we can encourage people and support artistes to produce collections that can be put in stores, then that will be a great feat.”
She highlights the need for design schools, technological support and encouragement in preserving artisanship.
“It’s important to find a way to preserve what we are doing locally and elevate it. This brought me to a point where I felt I needed to celebrate what I had found. Africa has not been seen as sophisticated and I wanted to show people that this is not the case.”
At ALARA, Folawiyo currently stocks names such as Loza Maleombho, Jewel by Lisa, Tiffany Amber, Maki Oh and a host of others.
“I also decided that in fashion especially, it was important to put both African and international designers in the same space because I feel that in order for our designers to grow and be respected, we need to place them side by side with the best of the world,” she says.
And to Folawiyo, every creation she lays her hands on has a touching story.
“A woman weaving a basket tells a story of her life. Her final product may be aesthetically pleasing but it is stronger for me because of the story behind it.”
Art. Design. Fashion. Folawiyo is on to the next chapter of her African success story.

Mrs-F14

‘We Need Iconic Platforms To Project Africa’

Whilst Africa is embracing all things Chinese – trade, infrastructure and ideas, here is a guaranteed conversation-starter for Africans visiting China.
Just ask about Liu Bolin, the ‘invisible’ Chinese artist whose exhibitions are touring the world – and wowing it.
Bolin has perfected the art of urban camouflage, painting himself from head to toe, blending himself into the background he is in so seamlessly that you will not notice him until he moves. The idea is to make a silent statement and prompt the question: what lies beneath our public realms?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30208 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2-600x450.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Graffiti-in-Beijing-No.2.jpg 1023w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Bolin has exhibited his work in some of the world’s biggest galleries, triggering intrigue and introspection.
Born in China’s Shandong province, before becoming an artist, Bolin did the odd job as art teacher and assistant. It was not ideal.
“I lived at the bottom of society,” he says. “Those years, I felt redundant.”
That is when he often receded to the background, hiding. In October 2005, the Suojia Village International Art Camp in Beijing was demolished, “forcefully”, he tells us.
That was the starting point of Bolin’s celebrated Hiding In The City series, which began as a brand of ‘performance art’ that he is best known for.
“[The demolition] was a shock for me. I created the Hiding In The City series to express my protest. I try to use the series to express my inner world and my understanding of the world around me,” says Bolin.
The artistic process he uses is trompel’oeil (translated from French as ‘trick the eye’). In his work, there is no touching-up by a computer.
Every effect is painted on to his body, slowly, step by step, using it as a canvas to deliver a social message.
That is why his works are moving; he is the front and center of his art.
The Mandarin-speaking artist shares more details about his fascinating work in this interview:
Why do you do what you do?
Many people understand the meaning of my work and the power it has. My work spreads widely on the internet which indicates people know what I want to express. I think the most important thing [about] art is it [can] connect to people’s inner worlds.
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What statement are you making?
When I started the Hiding In The City series, I hid myself in the studio [that had] been demolished. That work represents my protest [against] urban demolition.
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Describe the work you have done around the world…
In the beginning, I had done work in France and Italy. I was disappearing in front of graffiti, bookshelves etc. I hid myself in various time [zones], languages, backgrounds and events. I thought different things happening at different times [can influence] the way humans think. At the same time, social problems such as the strikes in Paris, [poverty] in India, the financial crises and crash of the World Trade Center in New York, have all influenced my work.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30207 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-198x300.jpg" alt="" width="198" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-198x300.jpg 198w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-300x455.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-600x909.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-768x1164.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1-676x1024.jpg 676w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Door-God-No.1.jpg 675w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px" />
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Which is your most recent work?
I had my solo show in Paris in March, and another solo show at a museum in Argentina in April. I recently did new work in Paris, influenced by the Charlie Hebdo shooting. I found 17 local people in Paris and made them disappear in order to question the problems in society. I thought this the modern version of religious war. I will participate in the Biennale of Performance Art in Argentina in June and also work on a new [art] influenced by transgenic food in Argentina.
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How does the government in China view your work?
To be frank, the government has never censored my work so far. My work has never gotten any support from anyone but no one has been against it [either]. I have been doing my work quite freely…A lot of people from around the world like what I do and have resonance with my work. This is what I cherish the most.
How much time does it take to prepare for each work and how much does each ‘performance’ cost?
The time [taken to] paint the body depends on the complexity of the background. Like the Supermarket, Magazine…such work needs a lot of time to grasp details. The longest I have taken is almost four days. Actually, it is really hard work. Generally speaking, for a simple background, a day is enough, especially outdoor scenes.
Actually, standing there, being painted on, is a painful process. For several hours, you cannot move, the body aches all over. However, I enjoy such a process which is a sacrifice to the art and a striving for my [artistic] dream. I have never calculated how much it costs for finishing each performance.
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What materials do you work with?
I’ve been using cloth designed for Chinese military men. Because in the beginning, I wanted to imitate how a sniper is hidden from his environment, by painting on his face, hands and body. For the paint, we usually use acrylic as it is simple.
How do you fund your work?
I have galleries who are in charge of the commercial part of my work.
What have you planned for the year ahead?
I will work on a new Target series in Italy and an art performance from the series Security Check. I plan [similar] performances next year in both Paris and New York. I would like to find famous buildings and invite people to be a part of it. Last year, there were many plane accidents. I would like people to pay more attention to matters of flight security.
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Do you have any plans to visit Africa?
African culture has always been my fascination. When I was in college, I specifically researched Africa’s traditional art. Unfortunately, I have never been to Africa, but I believe I will have a chance to visit it someday in the future. I really look forward to it.

Villa-dei-Misteri-Pompei

The Artist Who Resides In His Paintings

It’s a simple sculpture of a woman and a blue dress. Phila Ndwandwe was a general in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – South Africa’s African National Congress’ armed wing – who was held captive during the height of apartheid. She was tortured for ten days and left naked in her own blood. But one day, in captivity, she comes across a blue plastic packet. By the time her torturers returned, the general donned the packet as a pair of panties to reclaim her dignity. Ndwandwe’s body was found naked in a shallow grave, with the thin piece of plastic still covering her private parts.
The artwork by artist Judith Mason, hangs from the rafters of the Constitutional Court gallery.
“The powerful thing was that the men remembered it, among the many people they may have put to death on behalf of the apartheid government… I think many women can relate to Ndwandwe’s plight,” says Stacey Vorster, curator of South Africa’s Constitutional Court Art Collection.
Telling the stories behind art is all in a day’s work for Vorster. It’s not all glamor and gala events. In between working for the court, Vorster is also a full-time associate lecturer in history of art at the University of the Witwatersrand. On any day she can be giving tours to princes (Prince Edward visited last year), to climbing a ladder and patching walls. She keeps two pairs of shoes handy, one flat, the other heeled, for such emergencies. She also carries tissues.
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“As I was telling the [blue dress] story to some visiting judges from Germany, one man started crying, and I burst out crying in response. I am an emotional person, and I sometimes get tripped up by these moments. Most women don’t want to seem emotional, especially in the workplace. I often get overwhelmed by this collection, I can’t help but cry.”
It’s not easy to preserve and maintain the 404 pieces in the collection worth over R50 million (almost $5 million), but Vorster does what she can on a tight budget. One of her big headaches is money. She has to fundraise internationally, as no local donations can be accepted. The rule of the Constitutional Court is that South Africans can’t sponsor the art collection for fear that it will be seen as a potential conflict of interest. Apart from its first artwork which was bought for R10,000 ($1,000) by Justices Albie Sachs and Yvonne Mokgoro, every other artwork has been donated. Vorster hopes to preserve and let it interact more with the public, if new funders can be found.
It hasn’t stopped Vorster from trying to shake things up.
“I am the only curator on the project. Most collections this size, in terms of international standards, would have at least two full time people looking after them… One of my concerns about the collection is that we don’t have enough artworks made by women. We also don’t have enough artworks that speak of women’s issues. As a collection that speaks to the identity of a nation and its journey to a nascent democracy, it’s important to me that it is representative of a variety of views… Little did everyone know that I am here to cause trouble; a curator as a trouble-maker is an idea that interests me. It’s not a job of simply putting objects into a room. We are here to ask questions and stimulate dialogue. Art is a powerful tool for change,” she says.
By the time we leave the gallery, it’s dark outside. Vorster prepares to meet a group of American tourists, here to see the collection, after hours.
“I see the collection through other people’s eyes and I feed off of it.”

FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-034-035-Stacey-Vorster-001

The Curator Who Made Them Cry

It wasn’t your ordinary art theft. Whoever stole South African artist Conor Mccreedy’s painting of Nelson Mandela had a strange way of doing it.
Mccreedy was on his way to fetch the painting from a vault in New York. As he entered the vault he noticed a four-foot hole in the ceiling. He thought it was strange considering the ceiling was one meter thick concrete. He guessed that the company must be doing maintenance on the building. He then found a broken lock. What he saw inside stunned him.
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“There in my storage room, in place of my painting, was a pile of original photographs of Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Mick Jagger from the sixties on the Hampton River… It was like a scene out of a movie.”
Mccreedy’s painting of Mandela, along with a sketchbook of 30 drawings, were gone. A few hours later, his storage room was ringed with yellow tape.
“We had the CIA, CSI, FBI and Interpol all there. It was the first time meeting Frank Shea, my private investigator; he literally could have walked out of a movie. Shea had this comb over and perfect hair, with a perfect red tie and a pinstripe suit complete with Mont Blanc pen, like Donnie Brasco or 007. Then I thought to myself this must be a joke,” he says.
It wasn’t. No one could answer the riddle of Lennon and Jagger either. It was June and at the time Mandela was sick. Mccreedy thought the heist had something to do with hate mail, most of it from South Africa, claiming his portrait was merely jumping on the band wagon.
“People were running me down, saying I was a con. It was sad. But every time I get a negative comment my art goes up in value. Why do it if you hate my art? If you hate my childlike blue splash? It took me 27 years to do that blue splash,” he says.
The next day; it got worse. At 6AM, New York time, Mccreedy’s insurance company phoned him. The painting was insured in Africa, not New York. The only thing to do was for Mccreedy to fly back to South Africa, knock on the door of the art collector who bought the painting and buy it back with an envelope containing R100,000 ($9,280).
“It wasn’t even my favorite piece. I did it in Europe in 2008… The painting was in my trademark MccreedyBlue on a A4 canvas board, but that was it,” he says.
The robbery made headlines around the world and the story was just beginning. Interpol, the international criminal police organization, declared the missing artwork was priceless; it gave Mccreedy a claim to be the only living artist to have a painting declared priceless.
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Almost a year later, clues are as elusive as the painting itself. The artist has found a way to recoup the loss. Mccreedy is now selling 46664 replica prints, the same as Mandela’s prison number, for $100 each. Five percent goes to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
It’s just one of the bizarre stops along the way for Mccreedy, who was born and bred in Johannesburg and making a name for himself in New York. At school he was a talented footballer whose trademark was scoring from corner kicks. There he had a chance meeting with Mandela that changed his life.
“When I was eleven I had the opportunity to meet Mandela personally. Out of a hall filled with 600 school boys he chose to speak to me. I’ll never forget it. He said to me ‘you have powerful eyes, use them’. Mandela and Picasso are my greatest inspirations,” Mccreedy says.
New York didn’t start well for Mccreedy. He was broke and dropped out of Art College when blind chance landed his first solo exhibition.
“I bought an old third-hand Iranian carpet at a store and I needed someone to help me move it. So we went to my studio, a four-flight walk up the stairs, and the man helping me comes up and sees all this art that I’m working on, adorned on my walls, and he’s like: ‘This stuff is crazy! You know what? You’ve got to meet someone.’”
The carpet carrier knew the curator at the National Arts Club, in Manhattan, just down the road. It resulted in Mccreedy’s first ever exhibition sold out two days before the opening. What’s more his former lecturers from art school, who had written him off, came to the opening and were impressed, Mccreedy says.
These days Mccreedy is no longer a struggling artist. His art is selling from Africa to Asia. On the morning of meeting FORBES AFRICA in March, he sold a painting for $33,000.
“Art is an investment and can bring in big business. Art auctions in South Africa sell for R450 million ($42 million) a year, but I’ve seen auctions in New York sell for that in one night. People haven’t realized the opportunities art can bring,” he says.
Clearly Mccreedy has.

The Case Of  The Missing Mandela

Giovanni Schiuma is relatively thin, with a sharp face framed by wavy hair that jiggles and jounces when he gesticulates. He speaks in a hoarse whisper, his Italian enunciation crisp. He is director of the Innovation Insights Hub at the University of the Arts in London, has penned close to 180 essays, articles and books, and is regarded by many to be the guru on art’s interesting relationship with business.
I first heard about Schiuma when scratching around for information on African innovation, coming across one of his 2011 blog posts, which referred to the arts-based renaissance of organizations: “As organizations are challenged to cope with complexity… their survival and prosperity will depend from the capacity of transforming themselves into… creative organizations, where the rational and engineering dimensions are merged with the emotive and artistic characteristics.” Some might read that and grin in wonder: how can anyone be this committed to a cause so intangible? Schumia is committed, for sure, but he is also an encyclopedia on the topic. His theories on art and its permanent place in the strategy and operations of any company can be gruelling to those uninterested in the idea, but he has a point. Thanks to the global economic meltdown companies need to shift their paradigm. Schumia believes that business needs to develop the capacity to be imaginative. Innovation is the key to survival. Courage, not caution, leads to creativity.
We sat down with him to get some quick pointers on why business needs art to survive the future.
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<ol>
<li>Let’s get right to it. Why does business need creativity to survive?</li>
</ol>
Business needs to absorb change better, to also generate change and keep that competitive edge. But to do that it needs to pay attention to a new dimension: emotion. It is now, more than ever, important that management engage with the emotions of employees, learn what will make them more passionate about what they do. Managing people’s emotions and passions correctly teaches org-
anizations to get creative, absorb stress better and cultivate resilience. To have people emotionally engaged in what they do will bring about excellence.
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<ol start="2">
<li>Creativity leads to innovation. But how do you go about instilling better creativity in linear-minded individuals?</li>
</ol>
Art is there to get people out of their comfort zone. In any organization people create comfort zones – use the same practices, processes and technologies. People don’t like change. But, art is a good way to experiment with change inside an organization, to provoke creativity and critical thinking, this helps individuals change their approach, their paradigm, in a way, and remove them from linear-thinking toward a lateral approach.
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<ol start="3">
<li>What about management?</li>
</ol>
Good point. Art in business also helps change management mindset. Executives are somehow stuck in the old, scientific approach to management. They believe that they can manage an organization like a machine, but an organization is a living system, and needs to be managed accordingly. Art introduces management innovation – more imagination and creativity generates new ideas and a whole new innovation process.
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<ol start="4">
<li>‘Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.’ What does that quote mean to you in relation to art driving business innovation?</li>
</ol>
Yes, for creativity to be an operating dimension, individuals need to be in touch with themselves, with their ‘inner creative’. When employees are not in touch with their emotions; distanced from their feelings, they don’t put the best of themselves into what they do. Individuals need support in giving their best, only then will they be able to reach into themselves and find the ideas. By letting them experiment, they’ll innovate.
<ol start="5">
<li>And does having varied artwork in business surroundings help keep the innovative juices flowing?</li>
</ol>
Yes, most certainly. Installing art, or hosting exhibitions on the premises, can work on the number of levels. Sometimes art can be seen as a metaphor or an analogy for stimulating lateral thinking concerning internal company situations, such as, change management. The other way is to use art to create experiences, to build a new atmosphere to release innovative behavior in employees. Companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft like to transform their organizations into art galleries, to create artistic experiences, bringing in artists – in the form of residents, whose work rotate through their offices a few times a year – or hiring artists as creative directors to lead ‘innovation teams’.
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<ol start="6">
<li>But not everyone is creative. How do you get minds to come around to the idea?</li>
</ol>
I believe that everyone is potentially creative. We become creative when we’re put into the right environment. In order to be creative we need to get involved. That is where art becomes the tool for organizations, because the traditional managerial models learned at business school don’t help executives create that creative atmosphere, art does.
Think about it, art can move business and its people to another level – by offering up new skill sets, opening minds to new avenues of business that companies may not have seen before. Art helps boost creative self-confidence.
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<ol start="7">
<li>What does that creative self-confidence lead to?</li>
</ol>
It leads to an open view. What I mean is, work pressure leads to employees and managers sticking to tunnel vision in time of crisis. Creativity teaches us to step back – look at the whole picture. That is the power of a stimulating environment, and artwork helps open these avenues of thought.

Does business need art? Yes (More Than You Realize)

Art can pull you in deeply. Expressive and raw, it can be believably real, and not. Just like life, it has a fascination; it shows us that it goes on all the time, in straight lines, or abstract.
For all our over-civilized attitudes toward art, our relationship with it is still primal. We are consumed by its emotional involvement with us, constantly wanting to understand its intuitive physical movement in all that stillness, captured on canvas, paper or stone. No wonder it is known as an ‘investment of passion’.
But art is turning out to be more than an unthinking love affair with the aesthetic. It is a tangible investment, and the numbers do not lie. In 2011, the European Fine Art Foundation estimated the global art market was worth $60 billion, a six-fold increase over the past two decades. In 2012, sales at Christie’s auction house were more than $10 billion, up 10% from 2011. And the Citadel Art Price Index, which looks specifically at the South African art industry finished 2012 on a high, at 12.2%.
True, in the past, art was considered a high-end collectable, available only to extremely wealthy individuals. But thanks to the emerging market, trends are finally changing and art acquisition is far more transparent, less guarded and opaque.
Like most investments, buying art requires thought and consideration – it is not only about what is pleasing to the eye. FORBES WOMAN AFRICA spoke to the CEO of Business and Arts South Africa, Michelle Constant, to get a clearer understanding of what you need to get started.
“Let’s face it. Investing in art is a dual investment – both emotional and
financial. Once you invest, you’re stuck with the work as a long-term investment. So first and foremost you must love it. It’s an incredible relationship, owning but also loving the piece of work you’ve bought,” Constant says.
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<h4>WHERE TO BEGIN</h4>
Art is not that much of an enigma. Sometimes it is best to keep it simple. According to Constant, it is useful to visit “galleries, auctions and art fairs, they are good places to get a feel for art and the type of artwork you might want to buy”.
It is also about being informed; you have to learn how the market operates. Sometimes it is best to take at least a year to wrap your head around the ins and outs of the creative space of the industry, before you set out to choose your first artwork. Most importantly, you need to understand your aesthetic, Constant advises. What kind of art do you like? Do you lean more toward painting, sculpture or print, to name just a few?
“Read art magazines and websites (The SA Artist Magazine or www.arttimes.co.za) to find out about openings,” she explains. If you are inte-rested in learning the basics or the history of art by studying a formal course, there are several on offer in South Africa. A good place to start is probably the online directory: www.art.co.za/training.htm. “A great book to read, which will give you wonderful insight, is Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton,” Constant suggests.
Once you have a feel for what you want to buy, engage.
“Go to galleries, auctions, talk to curators and collectors, the market’s expert consultants, so that when you buy your first piece, you are competent in the subject matter.” Try to attend the annual FNB Joburg Art Fair in South Africa, or the Affordable Art Fairs, which take place in America, Asia, Europe and the UK.
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<h4>WHAT TO BUY</h4>
“When it’s time to buy, buy according to what you love, because the return on investment is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that you’re going to have to wait at least 10 years, so you really should love it,” Constant advises.
“Remember, once you’ve bought your first work you need to grow your knowledge and become informed in your participation. The more you know, the more you like or don’t like, the more astute you will be in your buying.”
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<h4>WHERE TO GET ADVICE</h4>
You are looking for the kind of company that can offer a range of services – from helping you choose your art, to helping you avoid buying fakes, or stolen goods. Remember that even with all the advice that comes your way, there is no guarantee that you will make queenly profits on any work that you acquire.It is best to book an appointment with auction houses.
Some of the most well known in South Africa are:
Stephan Welz &amp; Co. (<a href="http://www.stephanwelzandco.co.za">www.stephanwelzandco.co.za</a>) Strauss &amp; Co. (www.straussart.co.za)
Artinsure (www.artinsure.co.za) Russell Kaplan Auctioneers  (www.rkauctioneers.co.za)
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<h4>HOW BEST TO INVEST</h4>
Consortiums, an art fund, or as a lone buyer? “As far as I know, there are no real art funds active in South Africa, so you would have to invest in one primarily in the UK or North Ame-rica. The problem with art funds is that they’re set up like private equity funds… but that doesn’t align with the 10-year plan. Their track record is apparently not that brilliant, in general. There are successful consortiums in South Africa. It’s a bit like a ‘stokvel’ (rotating credit unions) and it also provides excellent opportunity for emerging buyers. Importantly, though, all the individuals in the consortium must have the same long-term view.
“For me, lone ownership has been the best way to go. It has meant I can go out and buy smaller works and build my collection. It’s a much more personal process and ties into the concept of a dual investment – emotional and financial,” Constant says.
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<h4>HIDDEN COSTS</h4>
“If you buy from a gallery they will be sharing 40 to 50 percent of the sales price. The work then takes a long time to sell at that or a higher price in the secondary market (auctions, etc). In essence, you need to account for dealer costs, maintenance costs – such as archival and framing – insurance and security. This is why you need at least 10 years. In that time your artist is also building his or her brand, thus growing the value.”
Keep in mind that your artwork must remain in perfect condition. Many experts will advise you to rent proper storage facilities. South Africa is not known for major natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados or floods, but if your pieces are stored under suitable conditions, they will not deteriorate.
For those storing art at home and on the wall, specialist insurance is key. Barrington Insurance Brokers in Johannesburg is a good place to start:
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<h4>HOW LONG TO HOLD ON</h4>
“A common argument is that for contemporary art you hold on for 10 to 12 years, whilst with modernist art  (a Pierneef or an Irma Stern) it’s around five to seven years. My personal opinion? If you love the work you hold on forever.”

Investing: The New Art Form

Forty-six-year-old Dean Simon is a simple man. Wearing a printed t-shirt, jeans and black shoes, his house appears as normal as any family home. Well, at least until you turn into the dining area and see three giant Wurlitzer jukeboxes shining brightly at you in their green, red and yellow colours. If you take a closer look inside, you’ll see stacks of vinyl loaded with songs dating back to the blues of the 1950s. You can pick a track, push a button and watch as the selected record slides out and the needle glides on top, playing the tune, indeed a rare sight these days.
<div id="attachment_478" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478" class="wp-image-478 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/317-6_1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Artist Dean Simon at his home in Johannesburg; 19 January 2012 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
For an artist who has sold out his work before the opening of an exhibition and has clients in Africa, the Middle East and the United States, Simon shies away from the limelight. He has no website, no Twitter account or Facebook page. He says he tries his best not to associate himself with projects that require hype or media attention.
“Stay under the radar and let your work speak for itself,” he says.
Simon has done this so well that even those in the Johannesburg art world claim not to know him.
His work is confusing; one of his works on Mandela has hung for years, without drawing much comment, on the walls of the plush Saxon Boutique Hotel in Johannesburg.
By contrast, another of his works on Mandela drew fire from the media and art world. The work for a private client, called The Last Supper, depicts Mandela in the place of Jesus, with Ghandi to his right and Martin Luther King Junior to his left.
“It’s always been word of mouth and low key. I find that it is more peaceful not to stick your head out,” he says.
“The gallery scene is based on hype and ego and I’m not interested. By the time you are done with a gallery, they have taken a chunk of your salary. People come to me to buy my work.”
This explains why most of Simon’s clients are private collectors, so most of his best work is kept away from public eyes.
“It’s a double-edged sword, though, because collectors keep their stuff private, but for me it is about building a reputation with the people who are going to buy my stuff.”
Would that explain, to an extent, why he may not be a household name in his own country? Whether it does or not, Simon’s work has managed to land him an exhibition in a museum in Los Angeles in April. It is called From Hurt to Hope, a series of works he had initially compiled into a calendar. It is now to be exhibited at the Museum of Tolerance, a museum aimed at educating people about inequality and injustice.
“My theme is people who had a bad upbringing or hard backgrounds but despite that, not getting bitter, but becoming icons. It’s also based on racism; if these people had been murdered or assassinated, the world wouldn’t be the same,” says Simon.
The aim is to educate the world about people who are not necessarily famous, but who have had an impact on the way the world is today—people such as holocaust survivor Felix Zandman.
“He survived the war; he lived underground for 17 months with his uncle, who taught him maths to keep him from going mad. It’s not stuff people know about.”
Two of his subjects are genocide survivors.
The first is Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who survived the holocaust. He coined the term genocide (derived from the Greek word genos; meaning tribe or race, and the Latin word cide; meaning killing) in order to make such mass killings a crime against humanity. Lemkin died in 1959, aged 59.
Another of Simon’s subjects is Rwandan genocide survivor, Imaculee IIibagiza. Her entire family was wiped out during the war by the time she was 23, while she hid crammed in a church bathroom for 91 days. Since then, she has spread the message of reconciliation and forgiveness among victims and perpetrators, working for the United Nations, writing books and speaking on public platforms.
<div id="attachment_480" style="width: 221px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-480" class="wp-image-480 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Army-camo-Dean-Simon-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" />Camouflage</div>
“Had they been terminated, the world wouldn’t be the same. The exhibition says these people came from nothing and did something selfless that changed the world,” says Simon.
The amount of research and preparation for each work is crucial; the small details can make or break an image.
Talent without preparation is wasted, according to Simon; just doing research on a piece can take him anything from three to four months, excluding the actual time spent drawing. That, on its own, can take a month or more, with 13- to 16-hour days spent working on completing the image.
“You have to make sure the detail is really accurate; it’s like starting a jigsaw puzzle [in your head]. The work is very tiring, though.”
His arched back tells the tale of his labors on the floor of his office.
“I wish I had a more conventional mind, it would make life easier.”
Simon realised during his years at the School of Art and Design in Johannesburg that he could visualise three-dimensionality. Soon after graduating from school, he was conscripted into the army, as were most young white males in pre-democratic South Africa. This is where he realised he could make a comfortable living off his talent.
While being your own boss is something most people aspire to, he admits that it does not come easily.
“Working for yourself involves long hours because if you’re disciplined, it means you never take time off. You work seven days a week. My work starts at three in the morning and never ends before eight or eight thirty in the evening.”
The private client who commissioned him to do The Last Supper (and requested to remain anonymous) says he chose Simon after seeing his work in the Saxon. The original copy received a $2 million offer from a banker.
“Dean is very passionate. It’s what makes him different; he changes his topics. He always does all his work on topics he believes in. He’s a good man, but people were like, ‘How could he have done that?’ [But] when Madiba saw it for the first time, he said, ‘What a brilliant idea’, that it was important for people to learn about these people [in the picture].”
The message behind Simon’s most controversial piece to date was to highlight the good that has come out of Africa, and not to dwell on the ‘dark continent’ stereotype.
“The Last Supper was solely for the client, no one was meant to see it except [them]. We wanted to make a statement about Africa; the people [in it] represent tolerance and principles of peace. There are people in that drawing whom I don’t like. It is not about my own personal feelings, it’s about ideals, it was not meant to be blasphemous. I’m not making any apologies for it.”
<div id="attachment_481" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-481" class="size-large wp-image-481" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Final-RW-1024x696.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="322" />Imaculee Rwanda Lady</div>
His latest project, he says, is set to cause even more controversy than The Last Supper.
“I’m not looking forward to it. Next lifetime I’m coming back as an accountant.”
Surely, most people will look forward to it.

Tag: Gallery

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