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拍品专文
Religion, sex, creation and destruction, and the duality of good and evil are some of the philosophical subjects that Francis Newton Souza grappled with in the extraordinary body of work he created over the course of his almost six decade long artistic career. Souza’s work challenged everything that may have formally been thought of as art at the time of its creation. Breaking then accepted constructs of painting, the artist revealed his subjects in their most dehumanized forms. Finding beauty in this destruction, Souza believed his work offered its subjects a new life and true freedom. As the artist noted, “I started using more than two eyes, numerous eyes and fingers on my paintings and drawings of human figures when I realised what it meant to have the superfluous and so not need the necessary. Why should I be sparse and parsimonious when not only this world, but worlds in space are open to me? I have everything to use at my disposal” (Artist statement, FN SOUZA, exhibition catalogue, London, 1961).
In Souza’s paintings from the early 1960s like the present lot, the bold portraits of religious, social and political leaders he created the previous decade are distorted even further than they were, resulting in complex and mutated forms. “If he was creating monsters, probably no one would be troubled; but because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead… why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. Souza’s imagery is not a surrealist vision – a self-conscious aesthetic shock – so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations” (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 39).
The present lot, a portrait of a bearded man painted in 1961, exemplifies this period of Souza’s work, when the artist augmented and honed the critical disfiguration that had always informed his creative practice. Rather than drawing from African tribal masks as he did in other works from the time, here Souza seems to have been inspired by the sculpted portraits of rulers of Assyria he would also have encountered on his frequent visits to institutions like the British Museum in London. In the ancient Assyrian reliefs housed in these museums, kings like Ashurbanipal are portrayed with long, thick beards, frequently braided or curled into ringlets, clearly indicating their royal identity and high status. Like these figures, Souza’s subject has a long beard made up of rows of ringlets and wears a richly patterned tunic. He also appears to be wearing a helmet and jewels like the men depicted in these panels created for temples and palaces in Assyria. However, this is not a regal portrait celebrating a ruler’s brave accomplishments. On the contrary, Souza’s disfigured subject points to the greed, hypocrisy and corruption of the ruling classes, who were beyond redemption in the artist’s eyes.
In Souza’s paintings from the early 1960s like the present lot, the bold portraits of religious, social and political leaders he created the previous decade are distorted even further than they were, resulting in complex and mutated forms. “If he was creating monsters, probably no one would be troubled; but because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead… why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. Souza’s imagery is not a surrealist vision – a self-conscious aesthetic shock – so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations” (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 39).
The present lot, a portrait of a bearded man painted in 1961, exemplifies this period of Souza’s work, when the artist augmented and honed the critical disfiguration that had always informed his creative practice. Rather than drawing from African tribal masks as he did in other works from the time, here Souza seems to have been inspired by the sculpted portraits of rulers of Assyria he would also have encountered on his frequent visits to institutions like the British Museum in London. In the ancient Assyrian reliefs housed in these museums, kings like Ashurbanipal are portrayed with long, thick beards, frequently braided or curled into ringlets, clearly indicating their royal identity and high status. Like these figures, Souza’s subject has a long beard made up of rows of ringlets and wears a richly patterned tunic. He also appears to be wearing a helmet and jewels like the men depicted in these panels created for temples and palaces in Assyria. However, this is not a regal portrait celebrating a ruler’s brave accomplishments. On the contrary, Souza’s disfigured subject points to the greed, hypocrisy and corruption of the ruling classes, who were beyond redemption in the artist’s eyes.