The ostensible reason for this interview is clear. Paul du Toit is one of the nominees for the 2002 DaimlerChrysler Sculpture Award.
He has a show — a sold-out show, I might add — that is currently running at the Bell-Roberts Contemporary gallery. He has just participated in the 70 over 2000 exhibition celebrating the life of Professor Richard Demarco, which is travelling to 14 countries, and he’s soon off to the Florence Biennale.
An impressive list and I could add to it by reeling off a string of overseas shows that Du Toit has featured in. But this is just success and we shouldn’t find success too interesting.
Oh, sure, it’s nice to see a local boy make good, to trace his route from a wheelchair-bound 12 -year-old suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, to an obsessive, incredibly well-selling, self-trained artist who produces 150 to 200 works a year, most of them colourful variations of the same contorted, grinning face, over and over again.
Nice, but not that interesting. And, of course, it’s instructive to hear how Du Toit has fashioned that trajectory, with his mantra that “the only way to determine your future is to try and create it yourself”.
The early, imaginative use of the Internet as a sales and gallery medium helped, as did Du Toit’s extensive research into the international market. We don’t really need this instruction, though, and frankly I’m tired of hearing it.
When I first interviewed Du Toit about four years ago I was told the same story — “This is how I got people interested in my art … this is how I used my experience as a computer programmer to push my stuff on the Net … this is how I turned my art into a business … “
Do we really care about that? Does Du Toit? No. He cares only about art, and we care only about his art. The focus on the marketing and dissemination is a mask, to avoid having to talk about the quality of his work — or the lack thereof.
Many people don’t like his paintings — many people hate his paintings — and, as Du Toit says, this is as it should be. They avoid saying so, however, and instead choose the oblique route of lauding his commercial success.
I don’t want to fall into that easy rhetorical gesture. I do like his paintings. I wrote the following in a catalogue essay: “Pleasure is the driving force behind Paul du Toit’s art, the very engine of its bright being. It’s impossible to look at his multicoloured portraits and not feel this. Happiness is worked into the texture of the canvas, slashed into it with a variety of homemade tools that remind one of a Faustian toymaker’s toolbox.”
This is what Du Toit talks about when I ask him that most irritating of questions: why do you create art?
He says he does it because he can’t imagine doing anything else and because he enjoys it.
Is that an obvious answer? Perhaps, but why should we expect any other? It’s clear that, for Du Toit, your only duty as an artist is to make art.
When I ask him what artists he admires, he names Robert Slingsby, because “he is the last true artist left in South Africa. That’s all he does, paints every single day of his life until he falls asleep. He’s a genius.”
So far, this all sounds very jolly and idyllic, but it’s not always like that. Du Toit’s work is often criticised and there’s a part of the art community who delight in writing him off as a hack. This seems to hurt him.
“It does affect me. It’s good to have criticism, but I just wish they’d put a bit more investigation into it before they label my work as decorative. It’s funny, in the beginning they used to say it was too different, now they say it’s too easy on the eye, too easy to sell. If I had to take seriously what people have said about my work — well, I’ve learned to be about as sensitive as a second-hand car salesman.”
It’s a minor mystery why Du Toit is vilified by some fellow artists. As with any artist, there are several salient weaknesses you could legitimately point to in Du Toit’s work, but it’s almost as if they’re irritated by his success, rather than impressed by his talent. Still, this is an uninteresting avenue to pursue. In truth, such robust criticism is not unusual in the local art world. Ironically, though, Du Toit seems to be the antithesis of this, a man who longs for artists to present a unified front.
“I want to be part of the art community, because they’ve all got so much to share. But they pull in so many directions and instead of building the industry up they attack each other. But if one artist does well, we all do well. It can be done, it’s been done everywhere else.”
It’s an appropriate note to end the interview on, a note echoed by the bright paintings on the gallery walls. If you look at them, you see pleasure, gaiety and colour. If you really look at them, you see torture, obsession and repression. Perhaps Du Toit’s work is more of a reflection of reality than most people imagine.