Unique memoir honours late Jack Lugg
THE memory of Eastern Cape artist Jack Lugg – who died in 2013 at the age of 89 – is being honoured this week with a retrospective exhibition at which a book on his life and work will be launched. “As an artist myself, I think of the father I adored as well as the artist I respected and admired,” said Lugg’s daughter, Pippa Lugg Verster, who lives in Port Elizabeth and was instrumental in getting the book published.
The biographical coffee-table book, The House that Jack Built, will be launched at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum on Wednesday.
“In 2002, My parents, Jack and Rosemary, approached me with their idea to publish a book to showcase my father’s extensive body of artwork,” Lugg Verster said. That year, she gave her father a blank sketchbook as a gift.
“The cover of the sketchbook was decorated with a collage of his paintings and sculptures, and I titled it: ‘Jack Lugg Memoirs’. On the first page I wrote a note inviting my dad to record his life’s memories as only he could tell them,” Lugg Verster said.
Late in 2014, after both her parents had died, the sketchbook resurfaced in a box in the garage.
“It was a gem!” Lugg Verster said. “My father had created a little masterpiece – handwriting his entire life story and illustrating every page.
“That was the actual moment of conception of this publication, The House that Jack Built,” she said.
It took Lugg Verster three years, “working with a wonderful team”, to complete the book. She and her husband, Etienne, have lived in Port Elizabeth for 17 years and it is a city with which her late father had a longstanding relationship.
“My father first held a solo exhibition in Port Elizabeth in 1967. In 1989, and for a couple of years following, he frequently visited the city as the national moderator for art at all technical colleges in South Africa,” Lugg Verster said.
Pretoria Art Museum director Dirk Oegema will open the exhibition, at which bass player Joe van der Linden and jazz pianist John Edwards will perform.
Lugg was head of the East London Technical College Art School for 35 years, where he mentored hundreds of art students.
“Art is almost like a religion for me. I’m merely the vehicle through which this strong spirit drives,” he was quoted as saying in his long and prolific career which stretched over more than 70 years.
After retiring, Lugg had his own art gallery in Knysna for 18 years which later continued to run in Plettenberg Bay through a website and with studio appointments until he died.
The book covers aspects of his life, ranging from his teens in Pretoria, where he studied under renowned South African artist Walter Battiss, to his service in World War 2, through his studies in Durban to Camberwell, London and Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, where he studied under Henri Matisse.
The House that Jack Built is on sale at Fogarty’s Bookshop. It will be launched in East London in April, with copies of the book on sale at the Vincent Art Gallery.
The Jack Lugg Retrospective Exhibition opens at 5.30 for 6pm on Wednesday. For RSVPs, and further information, call (041) 506-2000 ore-mail: art museum@ mandela metro. gov.za. The exhibition closes on April 6.