| Bushman paintings as documentary |
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| Written by Lucille Davie | ||
| Wednesday, 22 October 2008 | ||
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The works on show at the Origins Centre at Wits University are Bushman paintings like you have never seen before. The artist spent 18 years recreating the ancient works exactly.
THERE were no Bushmen about to ask how to create the paintings, so artist Stephen Townley Bassett learned how to recreate Bushman paintings the hard way - by trial and error. His dedication to the task over the past 18 years has led to the first major exhibition of his Bushman works - 30 extraordinary paintings assembled at the Origins Centre in an exhibition entitled Reservoirs of Potency, which opened this week. It consists of 19 artworks from private collectors around the world, and 11 from his own collection. "I threw away my penknife," he says, together with plastic containers and metal tins. And went out into the bush discovering. He learned how to use animal blood, saliva, ochre, cobra venom and ostrich egg shells to create pigment to paint the images, precise copies of Bushmen paintings from around the country. 
Stephen Townley Bassett describing the process involved in producing his artworks
He learned too how to use porcupine quills, buck horns, rocks, animal hairs, bird droppings, feathers and animal skins that would become his stock in trade. He made mistakes along the way but got it right. "I learned that fat is a good binder. I would make a paste which was easy to carry. I learned to liquefy it again with gall, saliva and blood." He also learned about the different quality of hair of different animals, giving him fine hair for a paintbrush, or thicker hair for a bushier brush. He even made his own stone tools to skin spring hares and foxes he'd shot, to use the skin as a pouch in which to carry his painting implements. The animals and people in his works, which he calls "documentary paintings", are the precise size of the originals. The works are done on 100 percent cotton sheets. Each piece, he says, is a one-off. "So much has gone into each painting," he explains. He would spend days at a site, deciphering the original, with a miner's lamp on his forehead. "The first thing is to document as accurately as possible, doing it with pigments available to them, absolutely life size. I would only record what I saw, making it a little darker, to take account of dust," he recounts. Then back at home a painting would take between six and eight weeks to complete. "The work is very exacting, very demanding. There is no debate, the work has to be right - everything exactly there. It is a blend of science, art and craft," he says, referring to the tool-making as craft.
Endorsements 
Details include blotches to the animals, meticulously recorded by the artist
"Often I return to the site with my half-completed painting to compare colours and overall appearance of my rendition to the original on the rock," says Bassett. "All paint marks on the rock that are within the frame of reference of the chosen scene must be recorded. All marks must be acknowledged and recorded. The final product must be the next best thing to the original on the rock, a kind of historical document of what has been deciphered from the rock face." His paintings have brief notes or paint blotches around the edges which don't distract from the work, but help to guide him as to colour and markings on the original. And he has the full endorsement of Dr Benjamin Smith, the director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Lewis-Williams, who describes the work as "wonderful" and "very special". "You must either do the work accurately or not at all," says Lewis-Williams. Smith says: "This is an artist like no other; he bleeds for his art," referring to the fact that Bassett has used his own blood in his paint mixes. The exhibition has a case displaying his tools, the first time they have been on show.
Apprentice to uncle 
Paint-making implements created and used by the artist
Bassett graduated from the University of Cape Town in the late 1970s with a degree in economics and psychology and went to work in the corporate world in Johannesburg. But by 1990 he'd left his job to pursue his career as an artist, in a "leap of faith, to start from scratch", he says. He discarded his uncle's modern paints and brushes, knowing that he had to use what the Bushmen would have used. And while he established himself in the art world, he had to take on jobs in restaurants and building sites, even one designing mobile toilets, to keep himself going. "It's been a long road," he says. In 2002, he moved to a farm in the Eastern Cape, from where he could study the paintings around him more intensely. "The pull was too strong." He still lives there.
Landscapes and commissions 
Townley Bassett reproduces the Bushmen art in rich colour, showing what they would have looked like originally
When asked to paint their prize sheep and bulls, he has to be careful to depict them as fat and healthy, although they might not be quite so large in real life. They don't want pictures of their wives, he says, just their animals. His latest venture is his Dreamline paintings. "I decided to listen to my inner voice and tell my own story. These paintings follow my footsteps and journey through the landscape." A book has been produced to accompany the exhibition - Reservoirs of potency - the documentary paintings of Stephen Townley Bassett. In 2002, he published another book, Rock paintings of South Africa - revealing a legacy. "It has been an extraordinary journey," he exclaims. Bassett is keen for the exhibition to travel, around South Africa and overseas, on perhaps an equally extraordinary journey. Related stories: |
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