Advertisement

Naked woman steals the show

Friday September 19 2014
art

Seated Woman by Francis Nnaggenda. Right, Elephants by Jak Katarikawe. PHOTOS | FRANK WHALLEY

The best thing by far in the current exhibition by veteran artist Jak Katarikawe is by someone else entirely.

It is a carving of a seated woman by Francis Nnaggenda, his fellow Ugandan best known for the stone carving of a mother and child outside the National Museums of Kenya.

The sculpture in the Katarikawe show is only some 15cm high and could fit easily in your cupped hands, yet equally it could be 3m tall and command a hillside or a city square.

Made of polished wood and glowing richly in a perspex case, its monumentality arises from Nnaggenda’s careful exploration of form and volume in that most ancient of subjects, the female nude.

Shoved in a corner of the small room housing Katarikawe’s exhibition in the old PC’s office next to Nyayo House, it was like a polished gem that holds the eye. I kept returning to it again and again, marvelling at the way the sculptor had balanced his model’s billowing limbs against the hollows and intervals of her body.

It is, quite simply, a masterpiece. Its pose reminded me of the Blue Nude cut-outs by Henri Matisse, one arm arching seductively above the head.

Advertisement

The curators of this exhibition must have realised its power. Why else stick it in the corner where it could not compete, they may have thought, with our Main Man?

The trouble is our curators were on a hiding to nothing because, unfortunately, almost anything could compete with the work on the walls, which shows an original and talented artist desperately trying to recapture past glories.

This is not really Katarikawe’s fault. Many artists improve with age — they develop the insouciance that comes with a final throw of the dice — but some do not. And when that happens, through diminished talent, poor eyesight or (I suspect in this case) failing health, it is perhaps better to focus on the artist’s heyday rather than encourage an embarrassing last hurrah.

This is an exhibition in the Pioneers’ Gallery at the back of the building, tucked away behind the spears and stools of the Murumbi Collection; reserved for those who have contributed much to East African art.

Katarikawe’s contribution is not in doubt. He is rightly regarded as one of the masters of the region’s painting, forging a style that led him to be hailed as the African Chagall.

Personally, I think that is pushing it a bit, but there is no doubt that with his complex dream narratives based largely on love triangles and realised with a shimmering palette and distinctive subjects — long horned cattle, elephants, big half-naked women — he cut a dash on the art scene from the Seventies through to the Nineties.

His painting of Princess Bagaya of Toro with her crazy dreads has become an icon, often reproduced. If only it had been left at that.

Unfortunately, his back story was too good. A man who had difficulty writing his own name and who worked as a dental assistant, a baker and then a taxi driver before becoming a full- time painter after selling his picture of the Beatles for enough money to help build a house for his mother, he was a marketing dream.

On hand to ensure the world knew all about him was Ruth Schaffner of the Watatu Gallery. He became a star with a huge reputation and prices to match.

The reputation may not be massively enhanced by his current show, but the high prices remain. In this exhibition, which lasts until December, there are seven oils on canvas (five of which are for sale), one oil and crayon on board, plus four prints.

These appear to be mechanical colour reproductions, as opposed to prints produced by the artist in limited editions in media specially tailored to the subjects — woodcuts, lithographs or etchings for example.

The larger prints have cockled beneath the glass, yet the asking prices range from Ksh20,000 ($235) to Ksh150,000 ($1,765) for the huge pipe-smoking woman waiting to entertain her lover.

The dearest painting is a brave Ksh2.5 million ($29,500), and is entitled Refugees All Over the World — a picture of some 25 faces. Most are around Ksh1,000,000 ($11,765). Two of the finer pictures (I am guessing from their strong colours and decisive drawing that they date from the 1980s) are on loan from the National Museum’s own collection.

Then the paint was lyrical; now it appears clogged and clumsy.

This is a small showing for an East African master holding a three-month exhibition, so the numbers have been made up with two small pictures by his son Lucas Sande and one by his wife Florence. The son is a determined follower of his dad’s style of painting cows, while the wife offers a charmingly naive study of zebras.

In addition there is a painting by Nnaggenda, of a man playing a flute. For an artist who has made such a breathtakingly fluid sculpture as the seated woman, his painting is surprisingly stiff.

The measure of this show can be taken by the large board near the entrance that outlines Katarikawe’s career and reproduces two of his earlier works — the Princess and a ravishing watercolour of Kigezi, near his birthplace in Uganda.

This landscape is more Derain or Vlaminck than Chagall — but either way it is brilliant.

Advertisement