Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Gratrix’s ‘Cult of Ugliness’ questions taste and beauty
AS PART of the UCT Irma Stern Museum’s 50th-anniversary celebrations, the museum will host painter Georgina Gratrix as its second artist in residence, displaying her work The Cult of
Ugliness to the public from Wednesday. Gratrix, born a century after Stern, is a passionate colourist, pushing the boundaries of oil painting. Many of Stern’s works are mirrored in Gratrix’s compositions, both directly and indirectly, via composition, colouration, and subject matter.
With the press slamming Stern’s first show, Art of Miss Irma Stern – Ugliness as a Cult, a century later, Gratrix said she used this criticism as a starting point to look into the impact of Modernism and German Expressionism on her work to shape the various twists and turns of contemporary art today.
“The Cult of Ugliness has a long precedent beginning with the German philosopher Karl Rosenkranz who wrote The Aesthetics of the Ugly in 1853, while the poet Ezra Pound again used the phrase in 1913 to distinguish artwork that differed from what he described as belonging to the ‘Cult of Beauty’. Most recently, Umberto Eco deployed the phrase in his book On Ugliness in 2007, where he questions why, through the centuries, have there been so many theories of beauty, but none devoted to what the public generally considers ‘ugly’,” said Gratrix.
During her residency, Gratrix will spend time painting her own collection of artefacts and the vast and diverse archive of Stern’s personal collection, which provided her with limitless inspiration. Alongside these studies, Gratrix will show previously unseen paintings from her collection.
Director of the UCT Irma Stern Museum Nadja Daehnke said: “I am excited about how Gratrix refers back to the way Irma Stern’s work used to be called ugly – the very same work that is now celebrated as so beautiful. By calling her exhibition The Cult of Ugliness, Gratrix questions taste, beauty and ugliness, and who gets to decide what is what.
“She also removed all paintings of men from the main exhibition room – this room used to show Stern’s portraits of men and women – now Gratrix has removed all the male portraits. This is a subtle and clever
intervention that questions the male gaze and how it is so often either men that determine what female beauty is or female beauty is constructed in order to please the male gaze. Gratrix’s intervention subverts this.
“There are paintings that sparkle, which are a hit with our youngest visitors. There are works that are visually incredibly beautiful with thick, luscious paint and bold colours – these will inspire those that are interested in art-making and aesthetics. Then there are conversations that the works evoke around naming, social conventions and power. I am hoping these conversations make our guests question commonly-held assumptions.”