Lizza Littlewort and Wilhelm Saayman at whatiftheworld/gallery
by Linda Stupart
Lizza Littlewort's I don't get why there's no guitar is a high-definition video of a hardcore long-haired metal kid (played by Tim Leibbrandt) playing air-guitar. Thrashing his locks to a non-existent soundtrack, the bows on his feet and ruffle on his collar certainly don't make him any less cool. Dressed as Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy, this kid is angry; presumably playing along to a complex, genius, 18th century melody that no-one else can hear. He rocks out next to Gainsborough's painting, playing an invisible instrument with the text 'making art jokes about art is like playing air guitar, only nobody gets why there's no guitar' painted in faux naïve blue block letters. The work serves as a good introduction to 'How the Troubles Started', an exhibition of work by two artists who take their jokes very seriously.
Littlewort's oil paintings are succinct yet deliberately messy pastiches of great masterpieces from 'the past' (that grand old ideal of a time long ago when art really meant something), literally transforming the sublime into the ridiculous. The highlight of this series, Vincent overdosing in Tahiti in 1789, shows a beautifully dead young boy in a parody of Henry Wallis' 1856 The Death of Chatterton, which documented the suicide of the tragic young poet (and alleged plagiarist) Thomas Chatterton - arguably the original icon of the Romantic cliché of The Suffering Artist. The painting also references Fuseli's The Nightmare of 1781, a melodramatic leap into the subconscious where a wild-eyed mare glares through the window, nostrils flaring at a scene in which a demon sits on the expansive chest of a sleeping woman.
In Littlewort's piece, however, the mare is transformed into a grinning green pony and the demon a smiling skeleton reminiscent of Mexican Day of the Dead kitsch. The title continues this game, referring both to Van Gogh's well-known demise, as well as the date ingrained in the minds of schoolchildren the world over: the beginning of the French Revolution (which precedes Van Gogh's death by over a century).
There is certainly a lot happening here, and one might criticise Littlewort for expecting her audience to be art-historically savvy enough to understand all of these layered references - a criticism the artist has often levelled at others in her satirical cartoons. Vincent overdosing in Tahiti in 1789, however, like Littlewort's other Gainsborough and Friedrich reprises, presents clichés of genius, suffering and the wonders of nature that are so deeply embedded in the popular understanding of art history that the pieces resonate soundly outside of their specific painted references. It also helps that the artist's book Let's Buy Some Art for Christmas further explicates the jokes in her oil paintings, along with her witty cartoons and text pieces laid out in the shape of a fallen Christmas tree across the gallery's main wall. One of these, a tragic scrawled ink letter to Damien Hirst about the South African contemporary art market, declares:
'Dear Damian
Me and my friends Are all so excited about your Sotheby's auction. We love how it was Really an artwork, and it commented so Eloquently on the massive global boom in the market for contemporary Art.
We've also been affected by the Boom here in South Africa. We sold a Pierneef.
Love from, Lizza'
Directly opposite this is a text piece by Wilhelm Saayman, whose work is as filled with bathos as Littlewort's, though his subject is not art itself, but rather the tragedy of human emotion and relationships. My favourite piece (possibly more to do with my own particular experience of relationships) is a painting that states, in big, David Shrigley-esque letters: 'You're a Blowjob Waiting to Happen'.
Like this piece, much of Saayman's work is cynical, violent, tragic and disturbing in a way that translates his purposefully bad pencil crayon, pen and watercolour drawing into something painfully sad and affectingly schizophrenic. A couple boxes, faces bleeding under the banner, 'You're my Baby'. A girl with bloodied hands stares out below the text, 'she never talked about what happened'. Red pencil oozes from the head of a dead girl lying next to her Nikes illustrating, 'the girl who always ignored me was knocked down by a bus'. There is a lot of blood, a lot of death and a lot of dirty sexual references. Combined with the text pieces like You're Just a Blowjob Waiting to Happen and I Liked You More When I didn't Know You, his work is really, honestly funny. Except not really.
Despite all this, however, there are works that I feel undermine the sincerity and intensity of his oeuvre. Text pieces like I deleted you from my Facebook because I'm a petty being with too much time on my hands and you had it coming (written, of course, in messy block letters) and They Don't Make Sperm Like they Used To fall squarely into the overused cool-kid vernacular, which is a great pity considering the real depth and darkness of the other works on show.
Generally, both Saayman and Littlewort transcend this language. Even as their paintings drip and their texts run off the page, both retain integrity through their content, with witty, sad and intelligent commentary throughout. Most of all, like the boy in Littlewort's video, they are both very angry; and the sense of humour retained through their angst makes 'How the Troubles Started' an enjoyable and fascinating show.
Opens: November 5
Closes: November 29
Whatiftheworld / Gallery
1st Floor Albert Hall, 208 Albert Road, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 448 1438
Email: info@whatiftheworld.com
www.whatiftheworld.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 4pm, Sat 10am - 3pm
