Walter Battiss (South African 1906 - 1982) EARTHLY DELIGHT

Estimate

R70,000 - R100,000

Hammer

R70,000

Walter Battiss (South African 1906 - 1982) EARTHLY DELIGHT

More Information

signed and dated 14.12.81
white ink on paper
70 by 99cm

Resonant of the artist’s ‘Orgy Works’, Walter Battiss’s Earthly Delights depicts a whirl of humanity in white ink on black paper. From afar, the work gives the impression of a map of space, or a photograph of the Milky Way. However, as the viewer moves in closer, the details of the self-contained, intertwined figures and marks are revealed. These figures represent Battiss’s concepts of ideal existence, engaged in age old pursuits of dancing, drinking and eating. These figures are represented with a splendid calm, yet a vivid sense of excitement, where human existence and nature meet.

There is a subtle sense of implicit voyeurism in Battiss’s work, as the artist presents something that interests the viewer at first glance, but also forces the viewer to look at the finer details and step into the work; to be immediately immersed by nude figures, at their most vulnerable state. However, rather than presenting as erotica, the figures are to a large extent naïve.

Even the unformed abstract ‘squiggles’ have been humanised, and characteristic of the artist’s works, there is animism in every stroke applied. The artist’s line language is entirely his own and is a recognised element picked up from his life-long fascination with African rock paintings and their rhythmic storytelling qualities. Battiss’s emphasis on genitalia and human anatomy was not only a playful fascination with a generation of free-love, without cynicism, but was also a political gesture. At the height of nationalist campaigns to censor art in the sixties, seventies and eighties, Battiss included erotic symbols and motifs in many of his pieces in an attempt to oppose the damaging effects that censorship had on creativity and free thinking. –AC


Scully, L. Walter Battiss (Pretoria: University of Pretoria, 1963) pp. 4-20.

Siebrits, W. “The Five Lives of Walter Battiss: “My art celebrates Life, Love, Freedom”” in Walter Battiss: “I Invented Myself” (Johannesburg: Ampersand Foundation) pp. 80-81.