Cecil Skotnes put the finishing touches to his untitled mural at the entrance of Hyde Park Corner shopping centre 32 years ago.
At the time he intended the work for its commissioned position: 100m in the air. But then the work was placed at ground level leaving its rough contours, planned with a certain distance in mind, to close scrutiny.
That was not the end of the world, but Skotnes “lost interest” a couple of years later when the 40m-plus mural was “shortened” by more than a third to make way for doors to the shoppers’ paradise.
Hyde Park Corner is one of the most expensive square kilometres of mixed residential and commercial real estate on the continent. It claims to be a “timeless recreation of modern elegance”. Completed in 1969, it was the first fully enclosed decentralised shopping centre to be developed in South Africa.
For the next three decades the mural, situated next to an open air car park, would be shrouded in petrol fumes — its rough yet delicate figurines to be eventually blocked by luxury 4×4 vehicles of the super rich shopping crowd.
All the while, through sunshine and rain, the characteristic ochre yellow and matte burgundy colours of Skotnes would fade away while inside the shopping centre the Edoardo Villa reclining bronze sculpture and the Guiseppe Cattaneo mural would do a disappearing act of another kind.
The Villa work very recently got a new owner — a private collector who apparently got fed-up with the constant moving around of the sculpture to make space for “other” exhibitions in the centre. Just last weekend this took the shape of motorcycles and a cigarette manufacturer of the cowboy variety who now markets itself as a clothing design label.
The Cattaneo work has disappeared behind a wall in a restaurant somewhere under the Apollo Café and the Baldinelli mural has become a feast for the eyes only of cinema goers whose bladders edge them to the toilets. And that’s only the part not blocked by a life-size movie-poster.
The Skotnes mural, even though it bears no title, is, like his wooden engravings, decidedly African — a reminder that, together with Villa and Cattaneo, Sydney Kumalo and Cecily Sash, he was part of a group of artists called Amadlozi, or Spirit of the Forefathers.
Together and separately these artists works have been seen in countless exhibitions of note around the globe, among them bienalle held from São Paulo to Florence.
Speaking from his home in Cape Town, the 77-year-old artist and acclaimed pioneer of modern art in South Africa was philosophical and took a “sober” view of the imminent demise of his only work not to be treated with tender love and care.
He merely describes the work as decorative. Its original theme was that of a procession, alluded to by the shapes of people, but that was lost once the mural was broken up.
“I’m not looking back with any anger,” he mused, adding that he was having a bit of fun with the “status” conferred on the mural by having the discussion with the Mail & Guardian and others, such as his dealer Linda Givon (owner of the Linda Goodman Gallery).
Until last week Givon and the developers of the shopping centre were contemplating ways to save the mural. Bram Joynt, the architect involved in the development, was adamant that a way would be found to preserve the work, although some scepticism seeped through during the discussion.
Removing the sculptured plaster would be out of the question since its thickness never stretches beyond a mere centimetre or two while, at close inspection, the brick work underneath actually makes its appearance in places.
That leaves a cast as a possibility, but neither the artist nor his dealer is happy with that. In fact, last weekend Givon changed her mind completely, sharing Skotnes’s unwillingness to have anything to do with saving the work and adding that the battered old wall and destruction by pollution has turned it into an insult to the artist.
Perhaps something could still be done. It is a significant piece of work, even if it was “pruned”, said celebrated art historian Esmé Berman, who has just returned from the United States where she has lived for the past 16 years.
She recalls how a forgotten Diego Riviera mural on a patio of a private home in Los Angeles was recently discovered. The whole wall plus encasement was moved.
Skotnes was the most prominent of his artistic generation, his work had an African quality and his working method of sgrafitto dates back to the renaissance, Berman noted.
Derived from the Italian word sgraffiare or “scratched away”, sgrafitto adds a pattern by carving through or scraping off the uppermost layer of plaster to reveal inlayed portions of coloured cement. (Very finely graded cement was also applied during the day, which was then painted on while it was wet. The plastered section would then be cut with a knife to reveal the figures.)
Skotnes is equally adept in the political arena where he played a leading role in opposing apartheid.
Perhaps the artist should have the last word in what could be dubbed the politics of the mall: Skotnes said he would be willing to do a new mural.