The Eishman cometh again

Possibly no other concept is so loaded with significance and semantics as “farm” in SA. Its Afrikaans equivalent, “plaas”, is embedded in almost all indigenous languages: polase, polasi, iplasi, ipulazi. The compelling thing, though, is that the Dutch origin of the word is “plaats” (place), while “farm” translates as boerderij, (so reverted back to English it would be more a “farmery” than a place). “Plaas” as the local iteration of “farm” is inextricably wound into the very fabric of SA geography everywhere.

Etienne de Villiers tackles this “placeness” of the SA farm in his first solo exhibition at the Is Art Gallery on the Blaauwklippen wine estate outside Stellenbosch, this busy commercial enterprise itself a living demonstration of how layered with divergent endeavours agriculture has become these past 300 years or so.

Titled “Landmark”, the artist — in his notes to the catalogue — starts off with spatial measurements, pointing out that on the ground level, the horizon is 5km away, and with no obstructions, one would be surrounded by a circle 10km in diameter. So the title refers to the horizon as the mark of the boundedness of the place you are in, but also to the land itself, and the many marks left from the activities of the past.

De Villiers and his family and mine have been close for 40 years now, give or take, and with both of us being “stadsjapies” it came as a mild surprise to learn that he came from farming stock. A mild one, because hardly anyone growing up as an Afrikaner, and to a lesser extent any white person for that matter, does not have some connection somewhere with a “plaas”.

Within two generations of urban life one branch of De Villiers farming stock delivered the unusual situation of three brothers studying art or art design at the University of Pretoria, with a fourth enrolled at the school of architecture. Izak de Villiers went on to become a full-time artist, one of the most underrated in SA, and Frans de Villiers went into advertising, coming up with such iconic ads as the “Yebo Gogo” series.

Etienne became a filmmaker and directed the TV series Simon en Sandra and Deafening Silence, before going on to produce and direct adverts such as the hugely popular “Eish!” Klipdrift series, which became part of SA folklore. He made wine from his vineyard on the slopes of Muizenberg and ran his own karate school.

When he retired from filmmaking, he wasted no time in picking up pencil and pastel. At 69, it was as if he had simply swept aside 40-odd years when he last participated in a group exhibition with, among others, his wife, Willemien, herself an accomplished artist, John Clarke and Keith Dietrich, who were then just setting off on their own stellar international careers.

In his new work the pastel strokes and pencilling look like they have not changed at all, nor a certain kind of transparency in the subject matter. The work so impressed Is Art owner Ilse Schermers that she offered him a solo exhibition — his first, as it turned out.

At the opening Dietrich, now emeritus professor at Stellenbosch University, brought up that transparency as a “hauntology”, the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept for spectres of the past shading any attempt to devise an ontology, or theory of existence. Spectral figures in pencil are drawn over a basic background of pastel strokes, but these strokes themselves, while alluding to the impoverished shrubbery or grasses of a typical Karoo landscape, are permeable, like memory.

The figures are from the past, carrying decorative modes perhaps to be found in an antique shop. Pride of place is given to a relatively ornate chair and its woodturned and velvet back — the real piece is to be found in the De Villiers’ lounge in Cape Town. But there are also the outlines of a simple house; this too is a personal emblem, based on a painting done by De Villiers’ grandmother of the family’s farmstead Wildfontein, near Colesberg.

This and other outlines, as well as the gridlines of a planning project, suggest the hauntings of a future too, or of past futures. De Villiers further draws from a set of symbols based on items typical of the farming life: gate posts, chains, wrenches, knots, wire, and looming like a cold and implacable menace over another ghostly rendition of the chair in Seat of Power/Troon, an almost lovingly rendered handgun.

This is the most forceful piece in the exhibition, along with Bloedlyn/Bloodline. In the latter, one is told that it is De Villiers’ grandfather who is sitting on a horse holding his father as a baby in front of him in the saddle. There is a look of astonishment on the baby’s face as he looks directly at the viewer — in other words, to his future. It could easily be one of horror too, over all the bloodletting and suffering to come.

Most intriguing to me, however, was the lack of any expression on the rider’s face, in fact, its features are shaded out. Technically this helps to keep the focus on the child’s face, but one could also read into it some sort of satisfaction — as if to say, “Look what I have done, and it is good that you realise that your future is based on it.”

Knowing De Villiers as well as I do, the latter interpretation would fit with his acknowledgment that his position as artist/filmmaker/viticulturist is due to his white privilege, which is based on a spatialisation of SA on the basis of the “plaas” as commercial enterprise. But Dietrich, in his response to the exhibition and the idea of the farm behind it, recalled the devastation caused by the scorched earth policies of the British colonisers during the Anglo-Boer War.

Placing both interpretations next to each other, what emerges is the toil and exertion that still characterises any plaas, whether the posh Blaauwklippen where the efficient workers produce its delicious beef-and-mushroom pizza even after closing time, or a barren, sunblasted expanse where even memories struggle to survive.

The spectral knots to be found in almost all the paintings gain extra heft in such juxtaposed interpretations; land and plaas and farm and all that, and don’t forget colonialism, but in the final analysis the battle with the soil itself to make it yield either farm tale or farm produce will remain a knotty thing whoever reigns over it.

That is what really good art does: it becomes interactive by passing the looking glass over to the viewer to elicit their own emotional reactions and to try to untie the knots of what they might mean or might provide for the sustenance of our minds.