Couple, A Pair ,1976
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Notes : David Brown was born in Johannesburg in 1951, but spent his working life in Cape Town, suffering an untimely death last year while surfing in Muizenberg. He studied design and photography at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, and was introduced to sculpture in 1975 by Cecil Skotnes, who subsequently became his father-in-law.Brown has become known as a sculptor associated with a particular time in South African history. His characteristically brutalist – but off kilter – and satirical large scale works in wood and metal, are reflective of a certain type of subtle and allegorical oppositional political discourse against the apartheid government of the time.The interest in the current piece therefore resides in its singular historical and artistic circumstances. Largely uncharacteristic of Brown’s later sculptural work, these door panels owe much to the influence of Skotnes on the then-fledgling sculptor. Skotnes’ door panels for his great work Shaka were at the time fresh in the imagination and the South African art zeitgeist, representing, as they did, at the time an oppositional political gesture. Brown’s door panels are much more muted and generic in their subject matter. They depict an Adam and Eve-type pair of gendered figures. Produced for a domestic commission, the work speaks clearly of the same Africanised avant-gardist influences that shaped the contemporaneous work of Skotnes. The stylised figuration of the panels came at a time when the artist was also deeply interested in photography. While these panels might well be understood as an anomaly in the context of his later work, they are a fascinating study in Brown’s own artistic development and in the lineage of creative influence.
James Sey
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