THE SOUTH AFRICAN
ART TIMES
www.arttimes.co.za • June 2008 • Issue 6 Vol 3 • Subscription RSA 180 p.a • June Print & Distrib. 7 000 copies • RSA Free. available in Namibia & Zimbabwe
Goodman Gallery sold By Michael Coulson In the biggest development in the gallery world since Rand Merchant Bank tycoon Paul Harris bought into the Everard Read Gallery, control of Johannesburg’s other biggest and longest-established gallery has changed hands. Linda Givon, who founded the Goodman Gallery 40 years ago, has sold out to film producer (her credits include Oscar winner Tsotsi), art consultant and serial entrepreneur Liza Essers. The sale was finally completed, with money changing hands, in the last week of May, after prolonged negotiations that are believed by insiders to have been so fraught at times as to have come close to being called off – which those who have known Givon for decades will have no difficulty in believing. The sale also includes the offshoot Givon established in Cape Town last year. The price has not been disclosed, but Neil Dundas, senior curator in the Johannesburg gallery, says market talk of a figure between R50m-R100m is way off the mark. He points out that while the Goodman has accumulated a huge and valuable inventory over the years, most of the works are held on consignment and remain the property of the artists. When Givon (nee Finger, formerly Goodman) started out in the 1960s, she had an inestimable advantage: a wealthy family background. Her father owned most of Johannesburg’s leading private hospitals. But she was no dilettante: the gallery was never run on less than totally professional lines, and from the outset she set out to find and encourage black artists at a time when most galleries stuck to the tried and true. The Goodman’s 1960s Sunday night openings were legendary, not least because black artists who later found international
renown were on occasion forced to pose as waiters when the apartheid police came to sniff out Communists and other subversive elements who, by Calvinist definition, made up the bulk of the audience. As the gallery’s Web site alliteratively says, its policy was to foster the culture of the country despite despotic duress. Post-1994, this has widened to embrace the promotion of SA artists internationally. The Goodman is a private company (to be precise, it’s a closed corporation that is now converting into a Pty company) so doesn’t publish results, but Givon indicated to me some years ago that more than half her sales were to foreign buyers. Artists fostered by Givon in those early days include Judith Mason Dumile Feni, Sydney Khumalo and Ezrom Legae. More recently she’s brought the likes of David Goldblatt, Moshekwa Langa, Kagiso Pat Mautloa, Mikhael Subotzky and Nontsikelelo Veleko to international attention. And though she didn’t “discover” William Kentridge – that honour belongs to Nadine Gordimer’s husband, the late Reinhold Cassirer – his international éclat owes much to her. Others who currently show there include Deborah Bell, Robert Hodgins, Penny Siopis, David Koloane (whose current exhibition contains some of his best work in years), Sam Nhlengethwa, Tracy Rose, Walter Oltmann, Diane Victor, Jeremy Wafer, Sue Williamson, Clive van den Berg and Minette Vari. Essers plans to meet all these, and the rest of the stable, to assure them that it’ll be business as usual. At the time of writing, Essers and Givon are in Switzerland for Art 39 Basel, the prestigious art fair at which Goodman is the only SA gallery invited. Continued on Page 2
One beautiful lady: from R 350K to R 3.74M in one night Tretchikoff joins the Blue Chip old South African Masters Club as The Fruits of Bali sells for 10 x pre- sale estimate for a staggering R 3. 74 M The South African art fraternity gasped in amazement as a Tretchikoff put on reserve for R300 000 sold for R 3. 740 M at a Sothebys auction in Cape Town on 26th May. Everyone has their own version for the reason for this extraordinary auction result, which brings Russian born so-called “King of Kitsch” into line with icons of the local art canon such as Irma Stern and Maggie Laubser. Story on Page 3