Niklas Zimmer, portfolio: VT

7/30/2019 Niklas Zimmer, portfolio: VT

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VT


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During a stint of lecturing at the Michaelis School of

Fine Art at University of Cape Town, curator Andrew

Lamprecht asked me if Id like to produce some work for

a Tretchikoff show he was putting together up the road at

Salon91. I immediately had a head full of ideas and gotto work, writing, drawing and making calls. I looked at all

the reproductions of VTs work I could get my hands on,

revisiting many memories of experiencing these images

for the rst time in the hallways, kitchens and garages

of the homes of future friends and acquaintances in

Cape Town, moments of rst contact for me as a 21-

year old German art student saying: no way, thats so

out there! The common ground of unadulterated Kitsch

was broad in these faded prints, and I quickly learntthat their off-beat iconicity in local arty circles provided

a reference point if one wanted to express something

about unashamed, politically incorrect sentimentality in

post-94 South Africa.

Vladimir Tretchikoff was by no means a world-class

painter, but he managed to sell print-reproductions of his

paintings on a truly global scale. Despite their technical

and aesthetic shortcomings, many of his paintings are

very striking, and possess a kind of heartfelt, passionate

engagement with sentimental beauty that is not

easily forgotten. Without doubt, many of Tretchikoffs

images display many of the typical markers of the

essentialising worldview of his time and place, and quite

unselfconsciously refer to sexist and racist perceptions

of the exotic other as noble savage. Despite all

this, somehow the fact that VT remained relatively

isolated from and shunned by the local art world,

who in including him into their midst would have had

to face their own level of relative complicity with thesocio-political status quo, retrospectively gives him a

kind of alleviating outsider-status. A foreign cast away

in the time of the second world war, Tretchikoff, once

settled here as a former set painter, now full-time

studio artist, was relatively disregarded by the local art

world. He started making a lot of money overseas with

affordable reproductions of his images. In this sense,

he ew over the cuckoos nest of Apartheid segregation

even from within the high security walls of Cape Townswealthy southern suburbia. This voelvry1 status in the

art world (and an autobiography titled Pigeons Luck2)

combined with his unabashed - and in a strange sense

unpretentious passion for kitsch, make him very

sympathetic to local and international audiences, even

to those leaning more to the left. In effect it could be

argued that if the local narrative around Tretchikoff had

been one of general acceptance through the course of

the Apartheid years, nobody would believe his kitsch tobe so cool today.

With my photographs, I want to address some of the

essentialist qualities of Tretchikoffs work by engaging it

visually (rather than being conceptually clever about it),

using some of the vocabulary of photography: a green

VT


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Birth of Venus on show at Salon91 (detail)

Lady is not lit green using gels, but her skin is painted

green (many other colours, too my makeup artist

considers herself a painter, the models skin her canvas),

and the water dripping down her form is an incredibly

expensive squeeze of 4 tubes of inverted Jojoba-Oil lip

gloss, and so forth. Tretchikoffs paintings are deeply

informed by the photographic idiom: strong ash side-

lighting, depth-of-eld effects, over-saturation, double

exposure, frozen motion effects, to name but a few of the

most obvious. By restaging his imagery and in a sense

re-photographing his source material, I am attempting to

step in between him and his work, and pre-empt rather

than re-enact some of that which he achieved over the

past 40 years, and which may (no longer) hold true or sit

so comfortably with us today. I hope that the humour and

respect in this mode of working show through my nal

work, and that is enjoyable as well as thought provokingto look at.

Every work of classical music needs to be interpreted

anew when it is played. The curious and clichd ubiquity

of reproductions of Tretchikoffs imagery in the worlds

antique stores and jumble sales heightens the sense of

mystery around the originals. I have been jamming with

reproductions as source material to create new originals

that interrogate their specic socio-cultural context from

behind, from in-between, from within.

New work in the series was show at the new MUSEUM

gallery at Upper East Side Hotel, Woodstock.

Cape Town, November 2010

1 Afrikaans for Vogelfrei (Ger.) or Outlawed (Eng.)

2 Tretchikoff, Vladimir: Pigeons Luck, 1973, Collins


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Zulu Girl + Cape FishermanC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)

Zulu Girl,C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)


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BeatnikC-Print (Diasec); 100 x 41,5 cm (7 + 2 AP)


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Birth of VenusC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)

Birth of Venus + Woman with Flower IC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)

Birth of Venus + Woman with Flower IIC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)


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Birth of Venus + The Pumpkin Seller

C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)

Birth of Venus + Melon Eater


Birth of Venus + The Herb Seller

C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm


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ResurrectionC-Print (Diasec); 100 x 72,3 cm (5 + 2 AP)


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Swazi Mother


Kwela Boy

C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP.)


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[email protected] 536 5152

Niklas Zimmer is a German-South African artist and musician working in photography, sound and performance.He was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1975, went to prep school in Maseru, Lesotho, and matriculated in BadHonnef, Germany. He lives and works in Cape Town. He holds an Honours degree in Fine Art from University ofCape Town and a BA in education from University of Cologne. After three years of being Head of Department,teaching Visual Arts at the German International School in Cape Town, he is now part-time lecturing intheory and discourse of art, critical studies, as well as giving workshops in video, sound and photography attertiary institutions in Cape Town and Stellenbosch. He also works as an independent photographer and drummer,as well as being employed by the Centre for Popular Memory (UCT) as digitisation manager and audio specialist.He is engaged in research for his masters dissertation on Jazz Photography in Cape Town. As Is, his musical

ensemble with Manfred Zylla, Garth Erasmus and Brendon Bussy performs free-form music in various culturalvenues and contexts in Cape Town (Dada South?, Breytenbach Sentrum, Edge of Wrong, Alliance Francaise,Erdmann contemporary, Serialworks, Gradex10).


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all reference images on this page courtesy of the Tretchikoff

foundation [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]


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all reference images on this page courtesy of the Tretchikoff

foundation [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]


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Without these special individuals invaluable input and hard work this series of photoswould never have been possible to make, therefore a very special thank you to:

Natasha Swift: reference images [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]

Penny Youngleson: stylingSamantha Kaye: makeup [www.samanthalaurakaye.com]Yotam Sendak: lighting [www.yotamsandak.com]Bella Knemeyer: art dept.Lorraine: model ILauren: model II [Trigger models, CBD]Kassie: model IIIChuma: model IV

Barry White: studio space [Snap Studios, Woodstock]Pieter Badenhorst: lighting equipment [www.photohire.co.za]

Paul Hudson: post production [www.settdigital.co.za]


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Niklas Zimmer, portfolio: VT