TRIBUTES
Erik Laubscher passed away in 2013, these are the images that his friends kept of him:
«His lesson, by personal example, was twofold. Firstly if you have or believe you have a ‘gift’ as a writer or with any other form of creative endeavor, commit yourself to it totally, let it and it alone be the master of your time and your energy».
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Extract from Athol Fugard’s speech.
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None of us today can move with the same agility than when we met Erik. In my case that was 40 years ago at Cheviot Place of course which he and Claude shared with *Jan & Marjorie, and it is almost impossible to recall one of them without the other three making their appearance in one’s memory and in one’s mind.
So many beautiful and above all, colourful memories accumulated over so many years.
I think we’ve all been privileged having someone like Erik and with him, Claude, in our midst, to be able, after so many years, not just to say goodbye, but to celebrate, to be thankful, for what we are saying goodbye to. I say ‘what’ because it is not just the person or the couple, it is the whole legacy, it is the whole world of art which they kept vibrant and which they kept alive in our minds through all these years. And that makes the memory a very and incredibly special one which cannot be supplanted by anything else, which cannot be replaced by anything else.
And we can only really say ‘thank you‘ again as one has said many times over many years, for a life or two lives, that have been spent so productively, so creatively, and with such visionary strength that it goes with every single one of us every time we leave Cape Town. But to drive along the West Coast, to drive along that wonderful part of South Africa that finds itself just after the Sir Lowry’s Pass.
It has been imprinted to such an extent on my mind, and I think on the minds of everybody else that has made the experience, that we cannot drive through South Africa without thinking of the landscapes in terms of Erik Laubscher paintings. Just as we cannot look at one of his paintings without remembering the landscapes from which they came from in South Africa.
They can never be to me, and I know to many others, be what it has become without the particular colour, the shapes, the lines, the openess, the depth which Erik has given to this landscape by painting it.
And in that respect, whether we have Laubschers’ in our homes or not, Erik will always be an interpreter of the ‘South African’ and the ‘South Africa’ which has happened to us thanks to Erik. Through all the years that we have been able to interpret the landscape, to see it, to evaluate it and to say thank you for it,
because of the transformation which Erik has brought to it. That is what an artist is there for, but seldom so richly, so eloquently and with so much depth and feeling as Erik has brought through his work which is now collectively ours.
Erik has not always been only a painter, or he has shown that only being a painter does not only mean applying paint to a specific surface at a specific time.
He’s always been, as it already has been said, a ’mensch’ (a person of integrity and honour), he has lived on so many different levels, he has opened so many new layers of experience of possibility of imagining to us that one will constantly live in the gratitude of having knowing or having someone walking a little way of the long long road that he has travelled, with him.
Even at a time when he was very active in Cheviot Place, as he was in many other places, the Ruth Prowse School of Art probably above all was the place where he was the busiest. That is where you observed him occupying the multiple dimensions which he occupied through the years. And at the same time I remember the two story house in Cheviot Place that they shared with Jan and Marjorie :
Erik would never come up the stairs without stopping halfway and swinging on the bannister like a child, not even a teenager, but like a small child with the exuberance, dedication and the passion of a child.
He didn’t do it just for recreation or because it had become a habit, but because he immensely liked that and the way in which it made him aware of his body and the way in which his body attached him to the world in which and on which he lived and moved with us.
Next to his bed for a very long time, if not for most of his life, I know that he had some of those huge drums of paint which with my then father-in-law, James Miller, had brought back from his travels. They were originally full of paint and gradually, he would empty them. And then he would use them full of sand or pebbles or something, as weights which he could lift.
It was part of his ‘busyness’ the activities of his whole life, that he couldn’t even just go to lie on his bed, he had to have these weights next to his bed, weights made of paint fille paint tins , so that he could quickly make a series od push-ups and feel proud of what he had achieved, not just as an artist, but as somebody preparing from day to day, from hour to hour in his life, to be the full bodied artist he wanted to be and which he became.
And now for those of us who had the joy and privilege of the relation of knowing him, will always be the artist Erik Laubscher.
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I believe I had intimations of this great and deeply felt loss several times in the past few months when I was in South Africa and kept on saying to myself « Find out where Erik is so that you can thank him personally for what you now realize was his great gift to you so many, many years ago ».
I even went to Cheviot Place in Green Point in the vain hope that he might still be living there. What an extraordinary house and time that was ! Erik and Claude in the ground floor appartment with Jan Rabie and Marjorie Wallace above them. A clearing house and meeting place for writers and artists who were all trying to understand their rôles during those darkening years of our beloved country. And beloved it was by all of us where men and women like Breyten Breytenbach, Richard Rive, Ingrid Jonker, Jack Cope, Uys Krige – to mention just a few of the writers who I met and learnt from – would meet and talk, and laugh and love.
But for me personally the most important lesson and example of the loving we all had in our hearts came from that giant of a man and artist on the ground floor appartment. It took me a long time to realize that it was Erik, through the magnificent canvasses he worked on so passionately, who had influenced me most profoundly and continues to do so to this day.
How ? He didn’t need the coinage of ‘words’ which we writers were spending so prodigiously above his head. He had his canvasses and the love he felt so passionately for his country was there in every brushstroke he made. His lesson, by personal example, was twofold. Firstly if you have or believe you have a ‘gift’ as a writer or with any other form of créative endeavor, commit yourself to it totally, let it and it alone be the master of your time and your energy.
His second gift came directly from his pictures which taught me how to look at, how to love the fierce and often cruel beauty of our country. One of his pictures hangs above the fireplace in my Nieu Bethesda home – it is one of the early drafts for his tapestry for the Nico Malan Theatre in Cape Town – I believe iit was rejected because of the explicit message in it to all South Africans – and at the bottom of it he wrote a personal message to me about my responsbility to the medium of my choice – Theatre. I read that message again a few months ago when I was back in the village and with I the urges me now , as he did then nearly fifty years ago, to keep on working.
Good friends I think this a moment for us – most certainly for me ! – to put my grieving on hold and to thank the Gods that I was blessed with the opportunity to let this man into my life. I invite you all to join me in celebrating Erik Laubscher and his work.
Athol FUGARD - playwright
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There is a wonderful South African expression ’Ou you big time my bru’.(I am indebted to you).
his is the way I feel about Erik. I had just finished art school in that rather desperate period when young artists cannot pay the bills. Erik gave me a teaching job. I taught 3 days a week and worked in my studio for 4. The bills were paid, for this I am eternally thankful.
There were two sides to this coin, in the grip of the Apartheid nightmare, young men were forced to do military camps, the terror of receiving those registered brown envelopes in the mail still haunts me. Teaching got one deferments so not only did the job put bread on the table, it also saved me from the military nightmare.
Many Young artists were helped by Erik in this way. To think of a few, Paul Emsley now a succesful portrait painter in London, André van Zyl, Bridget Simons.
The Ruth Prowse School of Art was a great place to work, run in a free and informal way by Erik and Edwine Simon, the vice-principal.
Erik never interfered with his staff, he gave us free reign to teach in the way we wanted to. His only bugbear was drawing art a time when many Art Schools had almost abandonned the formal tuition of drawing, Erik believed passionately in the discipline of drawing, and he rigourously enforced it.
The students loved him, his easy going, friendly nature made him a friend of all of them, he knew them all by name and was never an aloof director of the vital little art school.
He courageously refused to bend to the ségrégation of the time and all races were admitted to the school. We even had a student whe had spent many years on Robben Island (prison where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned).
As he ran, taught and administered this important community art school, Erik continued to paint, producing a huge body of important work. How he achieved this was quite remarkable, he had enormous energy and flair..Viva Erik !
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David BROWN - Sculptor and teacher at the Ruth Prowse School of Art
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……. Erik Laubscher’s legacy is an amazing oeuvre of artworks.
At the celebratory overview exhibition in Stellenbosch a few years ago, we had the pleasure of getting a broader glimpse of Laubscher, the painter, the artist. What a joy that show was.
His paintings are in splendid public and private collections – visual joys for many.And, of course, there are those intriguing mosaic murals. Just look up in Sea Point from the Promenade, the Aubusson tapestry in the Artscape building.
But, of course, the Laubscher legacy is much more than material – especially here, in Cape Town, where he and Claude have lived all their lives.
His art activism is embedded in the culture of the Cape. When we start the fight for a decent memorial for Nelson Mandela in the precincts of parliament right now, we recall Erik’s outspoken comments about the two Smuts sculptures around the corner from that institution. Erik Laubscher, single among many, sincerely believed in the power, position and value of the artist in society. He made art politics.
His biography tells it all: the art schools, committees, commissions and Artist Guild. News clippings record – like those about the Smuts statues- his fight for aesthetic truth.In his own work, his many wonderful paintings, it was a personal quest.
There were times when he anguished about what he was making on those canvases. Instead of ‘supplying the market’ – an easy opt-out for an established artist, he worried about the how, why and result of the images he was busy constructing on his easel. Of course, not all work by individual artists, are equal and equally significant.
But, and I believe this is his great achievement, Erik Laubscher dramatically changed our vision of the glorious and expansive South African landscape. Landscape is at the very heart of southern African culture – in many, many senses of the word. Laubscher constructed, in his heyday, the way we see the geography and topography of our country. He turned the lay of the land into a metaphor for beauty itself. Through his painter’s eyes we consider our own world in other ways. In all art that is an ultimate achievement.
My involvement with local visual arts and association with Erik Laubscher date back to those heady days in the late 1970s when he was the hot-headed leader of the art pack in Cape Town. His enthusiasm, energy and dedication were inspiring. The main thing I learnt from him, and keep, is that, in matters of art and the like, compromise is never possible.
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Melvyn MINAAR – Art critic
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As art students in the late 50’s we all knew who Erik Laubscher was-a demi-god who presided over the Olympian halls of the Association of Arts – also known to paint.
I got to know Erik the painter in 1962 – when I joined the SA National Gallery as a Professional Officer, and was delegated to interview him (amongst other things) about a travelling exhibition of South African landscape paintings destined for outlying districts. Artists
« Erik is very particuliar » the Director told me «, »but also very charming ». there it was in a nuttshell. I had no difficulty with Erik, and that meeting was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Of course Erik was always keen to show his art to friendly farmers in the ‘platteland’ – but I remember that we had to remove some of the travelling pictures from the hall in Oudtshoorn to save them from the flying fat of a ‘koeksuster’ (plaited doughnut soaked in honey) contest – but all in all i twas a successful and propitious initiative.
In 1962 the South African National Gallery acquired two important paintings by Erik, properly acknowledged as an artist of great talent – the bold Boland Winter of 1957, and a non representational Composition of 1962. In Cape Town, in those days, the admissibility of abstraction in art was a critical issue. Erik’s paintings stimulated much debate, and were seen to draw a line between Neo-Impressionists in the Society of Artists and putative Moderns in the Association of Arts.
The Cape Town branch of the Association was remarkably active Under Erik’s infuence, with an exellent répertoire of individual and group exhibitions in the Burg Street gallery. The governing National Committee of the Association of Arts (on which Erik served with distinction) was responsable for organizing South african participation in the Sao Paulo and Venice Biennal exhibitions – at the sharp end of the International art calender.
Erik was not only responsable for establishing the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Woodstock, and the co-operatve Artist ‘s Gallery in lower Strand Street, both of which were notably succesful, but he played a pivotal rôle in launching the Artist’s Guild (encouraged by Raymund van Niekerk) as an umbrella body to protect and enhance the professional interests of practising artists in cape Town. Erik was the Guild’s first chair.
Guild meetings were held at the Ruth Prowse , and the after parties were always lively. Some good missionary work was also done – on intellectual property and copyright, contracts, taxes, ehibitions and other aspects of profesional practise in the Fine Art ; accompanied by an exellent series of member’s shows.
Unfortunately with the uncertainties of political change at the time, the Guild started to present stretch marks and underwent a loss of cohésion, soi t was decided to suspend business (for the time being) until the broader position became clear – we are still waiting , and Erik’s charismatic leadership is no longer to hand.
Then there was another side to things. Apart from being prominent artists, Erik and Claude were leaders of society in their own right. Their house in Green Point, with Marjorie Wallace and Jan Rabie upstairs, was a meeting place for a very wide circle of Cape Tow artists, architects, writers and other luminaries.
To Erik, social interaction during the week meant parties, and at the weekends it meant picnics. The Laubscher’s (with Mivhèle, Pierre and Francesca in tow), and a particular circle of friends (the Arnott’s, Atinson’s, Miros, Pinker, Pols,and Wake families) congregated regularly on the beaches and dunes of Hout Bay and Kommetjie, to consume robust cuts (or mussels and prawns when Volker was around) ; washed down with blend of red infinitely less sophisticated than what we are accustomed to today.
Some random memories :
For many years Erik and I used to meet for a tinned lunch at the Fireman’s Arms on Fridays, and enjoy the gossip of the advertising fraternity at play ;
In 1964 I made a sculpture titled Heroic Head, a covert portrait of Erik, later acquired by the National Gallery ;
Erik and I exchanged works of Art, and I have a naughtily abstracted Boland landscape at home ;
In 1977 I wrote a monograph on Claude and her work, for the South African Art Library series edited by Charles Du Ry. We also have a fine painting by Claude.
The Laubscher’s brought qualities of sophistication, confidence and nuance to the Cape Town art world, that reflected Erik’s studies in London, Paris and the US, and Claude’s in Geneva, Paris and New York.
Erik was a man of immense generosity. He contributed unstintingly over many years, to the teaching, practise and administration of the Fine Arts in Cape Town. His dedication ot the art of painting, particularly his célébration of the Southern landscape, was truly remarkable.
Erik was larger than life. He did not see the world through a glass darkly, but with passionate intensity - and in vibrant colour.
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As first speaker, will try to leave something for others to say. But as friends of Erik, there are so many things that we cannot say often enough.
I have known Erik since the early seventies. Though still working as a travelling paint salesman, he was then Chairman of the SA Association of Arts, and I was on his committee, together with old stalwarts like Lippy Lipshitz and Ben Jaffe. When Erik retired after his stint of six years, I took over as Chairman for another six years. Erik’s shoes were not easy to fill, I can assure you.
Later on, he was one of my Trustees at the Michaelis Collection. There, too, he always had a contribution to make. I remember an exhibition he initiated, where practising artists were invited to paint their own “take” on the Old Masters in the Collection. It worked very well.
And so one could go on and on – as I am sure his other friends will do this afternoon. For there was simply nothing in the Cape Town art world that wasn’t touched by Erik’s drive and talents. He helped in organising it; he helped in forming opinions, he and Claude became a social focus for other artists.
And he taught art. As someone once said: teaching the way Erik did, and also his friend Kevin Atkinson did, could become an art form in its own right.
Erik once told me he blamed his having to “teach down” for his inability to stay at the cutting edge of painting. This worried him considerably, although it never stopped him from turning out splendid landscapes. I reassured him that what he had done already would ensure him a life-membership of the Cape avant-garde.
We will all miss Erik tremendously. Thank you, Claude and the rest of the family, for giving him so much love. Cheerio, Erik Laubscher. Rest assured: the contributions you made during a lifetime in art will long outlive all of us here.
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Hans FRANSEN – Art historian, Curator of the Michaelis Art Collection. Co-author of biography ‘A life in Art’.
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