Mark Hipper: In Passing

On Thursday last, Mark Hipper was to present a seminar ‘View from the Tower’ on his long term project with patients at Tower Psychological Hospital in Fort Beaufort.  But Mark did not come, because Mark was gone.

It is always so difficult to write on the passing of a friend, firstly because to piece together one’s own feelings on the matter takes much time and secondly, because much of what one knows of the person is so deeply personal.  Hipper was a very...

Mark Hipper: In Passing

On Thursday last, Mark Hipper was to present a seminar ‘View from the Tower’ on his long term project with patients at Tower Psychological Hospital in Fort Beaufort.  But Mark did not come, because Mark was gone.

It is always so difficult to write on the passing of a friend, firstly because to piece together one’s own feelings on the matter takes much time and secondly, because much of what one knows of the person is so deeply personal.  Hipper was a very private individual and as such I feel very privileged to have been allowed a glimpse of how this intelligent, diversely creative and sensitive individual saw the world.
 
When I first met him, he was just short of rude to me outside a film screening on Rhodes campus, and it irritated me so that I went round to his studio the next day and said, ‘Hi, I’ve come with a big stick to dig the crab out of his hole.’
 
He laughed and gave me some muck in a cup masquerading as coffee; that seemed to form a bond as good as spitting and shaking hands.

Hipper was probably best known to most in his field as a painter, sculptor and draftsman whose subject matter of difficult emotional states and complex depiction of the human form often created controversy.

Drawing from an extract on Hipper's work Paul Wessels explains some of the artist's thinking process, ‘We live in a deeply conservative country, imbued, defined, interpolated with violence. When walls tumble outside, they re-assemble inside. Not only do we maintain the illusion of a consensual society, but we also maintain the illusion of stable, autonomous identity.’

Hipper was long fascinated by psychological states and the tensions of representation, not only in his own work but also in the works of others. Some time ago he sponsored studio space and materials for local Grahamstown artist Zola Toyi whose unexpected work he discusses in an article to be released in the September issue of Art South Africa. His most recent project involved the patients of Tower hospital, and aimed not only to provide support and occupational therapy for the their rehabilitation, but also hoped to offer, through public exhibition, a long-term means to change public perceptions of patients being treated in such facilities.  Hopefully, this project will be continued by the students involved as well as the departments of Fine Arts and Psychology at Rhodes.

Hipper’s occupational interest in liminal states and masks was in some senses such a natural extension of the being behind the work.  Ashraf Jamal wrote of his work, ‘Hipper’s sensuous abstraction demands the body. And yet, the body he depicts is never one given up whole to the perceiving eye.’

That was him.  In a crab shell.

A Memorial Service will be held in the Chapel of St Mary and All the Angels (Rhodes Chapel) on Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 15:00.

Mark Hipper (1960 -2010) RIP.