CLAUDETTE SCHREUDERSGREAT EXPECTATIONS

CLAUDETTE SCHREUDERSGREAT EXPECTATIONS

28 FEBRUARY – 6 APRIL 2013

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3LVDW: Great Expectations is the title of both a group of figures and an individual

sculpture. Where was the idea for this exhibition born?

CS: The sculpture Great Expectations was made before the rest of the group, to be

part of the exhibition what we talk about when we talk about love at Stevenson at the

end of 2011. My idea for this group show was to look at love from the perspective

of anticipation rather than experience.

Earlier that year, when I was in New York for the opening of my exhibition Close,

Close at Jack Shainman Gallery, I visited The Cloisters, a museum with a wonderful

collection of medieval art. There I was really taken with a very beautiful medieval

wooden sculpture of a woman and a baby lying together on a bed – a Madonna and

child figure – in a reclining position, and painted very decoratively. As a sculptor I

have always been drawn to the image of the Madonna and child, and in fact I have

returned to the mother and child again and again in my work.

The group Close, Close consisted almost entirely of double figures, figures that

‘IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL’

CLAUDETTE SCHREUDERS INTERVIEWED BY LIESE VAN DER WATT

Close, Close, from the series Close, Close, 2013, lithograph, 38 x 51cm

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are physically connected in some way, and was born out of my experience of new

motherhood and the intense and inescapable physical proximity that comes with it.

After Close, Close I wanted to move away from the mother and child iconography and

make a single, reclining figure that was inspired by the sculpture at The Cloisters.

Was this a thematic or a technical fascination?

Both. On a thematic level I knew I wanted to move away from the family images that

dominated Close, Close. Often a certain critical reading or reception of an exhibition

seems to dominate and I find that I feel boxed in by interpretations that stress one

aspect, sometimes to the detriment of other concerns. Having said that, it is also a box

I build for myself, not something that comes only from outside. I recently read a quote

by JM Coetzee that I enjoyed: ‘To write a novel you have to be like Atlas, holding up a

whole world on your shoulders and supporting it there for months and years while its

affairs work themselves out.’ So the box is both a positive thing and possibly negative if

you get trapped there. I create a group of characters that then interact with each other

within a space. Their meanings are derived from this interaction, among other things.

I have to flatten one side of this ‘box’ in order to move on to a new narrative.

Two Hands, from the series Close, Close, 2013, lithograph, 51 x 38cm

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On a technical level, reclining figures present challenges that excite me. I have to

rethink how the body connects with the head when it is in a horizontal position, how to

lift the head so that it is not flat yet doesn’t appear strained. The relationships between

all the different parts of the body change.

Did the title Great Expectations arrive with the figure? In other words, what

comes first, process or concept?

It varies. As I was working on this figure I started drawing thumbnails of possible

sculptures that would make the group whole. To some extent this idea of expectations had

as much to do with observing my own daughter, and realising how often children imagine

themselves in the future, as with my looking back and seeing that childhood imaginings

are just that: dreams that can, by definition, never be fulfilled. Yet they exist – but perhaps

in what New York outsider artist Henry Darger termed ‘the realms of the unreal’.

This seemed to me an apt way to think about art as well – an unreal realm is

created in which everything seems possible. A world is created that is both real and

unreal. That is one way of looking at the sculpture Song – the figure literally sings a

new world into existence.

Song is based on an old Japanese sculpture that I once saw of a prophet figure

who sings nine deities into being, all balancing on a wire that comes out of his mouth.

It’s about the creative act; about artists, writers, musicians thinking something into

existence and setting up other worlds. It also references some Venda sculptures which

I saw in the Johannesburg Art Gallery of seated figures with little figurines on their

heads, as if these are the embodiments of ideas or dreams.

You’ve said before that you often look at Balthus’ work, and in fact your sculpture

Mirror is based on Balthus’ 1955 Nude before a Mirror. What attracts you to his work?

I find I can look at Balthus’ paintings again and again and never be sure what his intention

was, yet there is no end to the pleasure I derive from his works. For this exhibition I

responded to the many young girls in Balthus’ work that simply lie around, languidly

admiring themselves, as young girls do. Every work hints at many different narratives.

Interpretations of Balthus’ work seem to me to reveal more about the viewer than

about his intentions – he almost traps the viewer into making certain deductions which

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are not necessarily supported by the paintings. This is partly what interests me about

reclining figures – the power relation shifts when a sculpture is lying in front of the

viewer. The viewer stands over the girl on the bed, can read meaning into her, and yet

she is evasive, her ‘great expectations’ will always escape the viewer. I like the idea that

artworks have an internal world that we as viewers can never quite access, that they

exist without the viewer, or even the artist.

In Loved Ones a young girl is depicted with bare breasts, which are as much the

focus of the sculpture as her face – her eyes and breasts both draw your eyes. I think

of her breasts as the ‘loved ones’ – for me the title refers to the intense relationship a

young girl has with her developing body and what it will signify one day. In Rivals that

intensity is present in close childhood friendships that are nevertheless always spiked

with competition and complexity.

Like Balthus, your work does not respond to contemporary trends. Do you ever

feel the need to work in different media?

Carving in wood remains a very challenging medium for me. I still often struggle to get

a figure right, sometimes to the point of regretting that I started it. That said, I hardly

ever abandon anything. The satisfaction in carving comes mostly from having finished

something I am happy with.

My technique has changed a lot over the years. For instance, the sculptures in Great

Expectations are all made from jelutong wood. Jelutong comes in thick planks that I

have to glue and dowel together before I can start carving. This means that I am no

longer limited by the shape of the log of wood, as I was when I worked in jacaranda (and

as the carvers of Colon figures in West Africa would be). While I enjoyed the challenge

of being restricted by a limited shape, I now appreciate the freedom of actually creating

a blank piece of wood through an additive process, and then carving the sculpture out

of that. It has meant that the dimensions of my figures can change. In Mirror, the girl’s

arms had to be much longer than I would normally sculpt them, in order for her to

reach up to her hair. It was quite a challenge to get the proportions right.

Jelutong is also softer, which means I am able to start using a chisel and mallet

earlier in the process and stop using power tools. I learn all the time. I worked with

blunt chisels for years until I learnt how to sharpen them properly. A lot of what I know

about woodcarving came from trial and error – it was not a technique that I was taught.

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What about the lithographs – how do they relate to the sculptures?

The lithographs are essentially records of my sculptures. At first I made drawings of the

sculptures, but I felt they were too interpretive. I started photographing the sculptures,

then tracing the enlarged photographs. In the lithographic process, the images get

their weight and sculptural quality through washes that are built up; the colours are

flat or patterns. In this way the outline remains simple and clean, and for me most truly

a record. This process was inspired by the work of Henry Darger, who traced found

images as elements of the worlds he constructed, and then painted them.

Finally, how do you know when you are finished with an exhibition? How do

you know when to stop?

Time is always a factor – I do need a deadline. I keep making sketches while I work until

I feel the whole group is there. It’s really a continuing balance of process and concept,

quite organic and intuitive.

Insider, from the series Close, Close, 2013, lithograph, 51 x 38cm

12 Lovebird2013Jelutong, enamel paint, lime wood15 x 30 x 14cm

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15Great Expectations2011

Jelutong, enamel and oil paint 28 x 46 x 125cm

16 Loved Ones2012Jelutong, enamel and oil paint85 x 38 x 22cm

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18 Romance2012Jelutong, enamel and oil paint54 x 22 x 78cm

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20 Mirror2013Jelutong, enamel and oil paint79 x 29 x 24cm

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22 Rivals2013Jelutong, enamel and oil paint78.5 x 27 x 18cm; 78 x 26 x 18cm

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24 Boy2013Jelutong, enamel and oil paint42 x 30 x 27cm

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26 Song2013Jelutong, enamel and oil paint, steel91.5 x 29 x 45cm

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info@stevenson.infowww.stevenson.info

Catalogue 70March 2013

© 2013 for works by Claudette Schreuders: the artist© 2013 for text: the authors

Front cover Romance (detail), 2012, jelutong, enamel and oil paint, 54 x 22 x 78cm

Editor Sophie PerryerDesign Gabrielle GuyPhotography Mario TodeschiniPrinting Hansa Print, Cape Town

Claudette Schreuders was born in 1973 in Pretoria and lives and works

in Cape Town. She graduated with a master’s degree from the Michaelis

School of Fine Art in 1997. In 2004/5 her first solo museum exhibition

toured the United States. Important group exhibitions include The

Rainbow Nation, three generations of sculpture from South Africa, at

Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2012); Impressions from South

Africa, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011);

Peekaboo: Current South Africa at the Tennis Palace Art Museum,

Helsinki (2010); and Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and

its Diasporas at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, and the

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,

DC, among other venues (2009-11). A sculpture from her Close, Close

series was recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

A major monograph on her work was published by Prestel in 2011.