William James Sebastian Bailey is nervous. Really nervous, he says. It is the kind of worry that can knock the stuffing out of even a self-confidant man, and artist “Beezy” Bailey has oodles of that — confidence. The cause of this anxiety, he explains, is the auction of a large 2.5m canvas from 2007 at a Strauss& Co sale in a few hours.
“It is a resale,” Bailey says. “I hate those things coming up, but ja, one always hopes it gets a good price for the sake of everything else.”
We’re standing inside the Everard Read Gallery, the older and frumpier sister to dealer Mark Read’s Circa Gallery, whose new Cape Town outlet Bailey will inaugurate on November 23 with a solo exhibition. Seeing Bailey nervous is an
object lesson in composure. There is no sweat, no outward show of anxiety, no
minute-by-minute reaching for the phone. Bailey is Paul Newman in Cool Hand
Luke, steely and composed.
One photo, more than any other, captures Bailey’s public persona. In 1994, Magnum photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov snapped Bailey naked, his body painted blue, blowing an orange flame over the terraced lawns of his Tamboerskloof villa. Bailey’s spotted Dalmatian views the spectacle with a mixture of intrigue and terror. Bailey’s patrician nose remains, less so the svelte midriff. The extra weight around his gut simply adds to Bailey’s kinky Buddha of Suburbia in a Porsche vibe.
But the artist’s anxiety is real. Despite his evergreen knack for showmanship and survivalist instincts in the face of a hostile local critical establishment, Bailey has for years failed a crucial art test. His prices at auction have been, well, underwhelming. In the seven years since auction house Strauss & Co was established, the highest price Bailey has achieved on its benchmark sales is R42,332. This was in 2012 for canvas titled What’s in this Tea? (2004). The work depicts two floating figures in a landscape. This compositional arrangement recurs across Bailey’s canvas work, including his 18 new canvases portraying
dancing figures which, together with five new bronze sculptures, form part of his Circa show, 1,000 Year Dance Cure.
London, where Bailey studied art at the Byam Shaw School of Art in the mid-1980s, has proven no more hospitable when it comes to resales. Prices for his work there have hovered around the teens at auction house Bonhams. In 2009, a cloud-soaked landscape populated with carnival figures and titled Leeroy to fly again after the rain (2006) fetched R83,445 at Bonhams, a London record for the artist. But lots have also gone unsold. The auction floor is a brutal theatre, where buyer dispassion trumps artistic showmanship and hubris.
But, as things turn out, Bailey’s worries are for nothing. A few hours after we speak, a buyer at Strauss & Co’s Cape Town sale will stump up R318,304 for the large 2007 canvas, In the Purple Forest. The work depicts an attenuated female figure floating above a stylised Namibian landscape. The figure quotes the Egyptian goddess of the sky, Nut, who Bailey cheekily reimagines as a slinky suburbanite in heels. The auction price is a record for Bailey at auction.
Tellingly, it wasn’t Bailey’s patron, the Chinese businessman Dabing Chen, who snagged the painting. It was a gentleman who could easily be a prominent member of the Royal Cape Yacht Club. Based on this recent result, is it fair to speculate that Bailey is on the up and up? Bailey thinks so. In moment of remarkable candour, even for Bailey, he explains why.
“No one knows who the hell I am outside South Africa. I still have the prospect of a career around the world. I am a mid-career artist; I am 54, I have been painting for 30 years,” he says.
Beezy Bailey's studio @ 54
The artist is on the up and up — both locally and internationally
Image: Karl Rogers
William James Sebastian Bailey is nervous. Really nervous, he says. It is the kind of worry that can knock the stuffing out of even a self-confidant man, and artist “Beezy” Bailey has oodles of that — confidence. The cause of this anxiety, he explains, is the auction of a large 2.5m canvas from 2007 at a Strauss& Co sale in a few hours.
“It is a resale,” Bailey says. “I hate those things coming up, but ja, one always hopes it gets a good price for the sake of everything else.”
We’re standing inside the Everard Read Gallery, the older and frumpier sister to dealer Mark Read’s Circa Gallery, whose new Cape Town outlet Bailey will inaugurate on November 23 with a solo exhibition. Seeing Bailey nervous is an
object lesson in composure. There is no sweat, no outward show of anxiety, no
minute-by-minute reaching for the phone. Bailey is Paul Newman in Cool Hand
Luke, steely and composed.
One photo, more than any other, captures Bailey’s public persona. In 1994, Magnum photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov snapped Bailey naked, his body painted blue, blowing an orange flame over the terraced lawns of his Tamboerskloof villa. Bailey’s spotted Dalmatian views the spectacle with a mixture of intrigue and terror. Bailey’s patrician nose remains, less so the svelte midriff. The extra weight around his gut simply adds to Bailey’s kinky Buddha of Suburbia in a Porsche vibe.
But the artist’s anxiety is real. Despite his evergreen knack for showmanship and survivalist instincts in the face of a hostile local critical establishment, Bailey has for years failed a crucial art test. His prices at auction have been, well, underwhelming. In the seven years since auction house Strauss & Co was established, the highest price Bailey has achieved on its benchmark sales is R42,332. This was in 2012 for canvas titled What’s in this Tea? (2004). The work depicts two floating figures in a landscape. This compositional arrangement recurs across Bailey’s canvas work, including his 18 new canvases portraying
dancing figures which, together with five new bronze sculptures, form part of his Circa show, 1,000 Year Dance Cure.
London, where Bailey studied art at the Byam Shaw School of Art in the mid-1980s, has proven no more hospitable when it comes to resales. Prices for his work there have hovered around the teens at auction house Bonhams. In 2009, a cloud-soaked landscape populated with carnival figures and titled Leeroy to fly again after the rain (2006) fetched R83,445 at Bonhams, a London record for the artist. But lots have also gone unsold. The auction floor is a brutal theatre, where buyer dispassion trumps artistic showmanship and hubris.
But, as things turn out, Bailey’s worries are for nothing. A few hours after we speak, a buyer at Strauss & Co’s Cape Town sale will stump up R318,304 for the large 2007 canvas, In the Purple Forest. The work depicts an attenuated female figure floating above a stylised Namibian landscape. The figure quotes the Egyptian goddess of the sky, Nut, who Bailey cheekily reimagines as a slinky suburbanite in heels. The auction price is a record for Bailey at auction.
Tellingly, it wasn’t Bailey’s patron, the Chinese businessman Dabing Chen, who snagged the painting. It was a gentleman who could easily be a prominent member of the Royal Cape Yacht Club. Based on this recent result, is it fair to speculate that Bailey is on the up and up? Bailey thinks so. In moment of remarkable candour, even for Bailey, he explains why.
“No one knows who the hell I am outside South Africa. I still have the prospect of a career around the world. I am a mid-career artist; I am 54, I have been painting for 30 years,” he says.
Like fellow South African painter Penny Siopis — who was collected by David Bowie after his 1995 visit to Cape Town for a US Vogue shoot with his model-wife Iman, and is now, at age 63, finally finding success in London — the ground is shifting under Bailey’s feet. After a fallow period during the early 2000s, when Bailey couldn’t decide if he was Beezy or alter-ego Joyce Ntobe, a black female painter he achieved some success with in the early 1990s, things started shifting in 2011. His patron, Chen, organised a show of 80 paintings at the Chenshia Museum in Wuhan, China, a city with a population of eight-million.
“It was phenomenal,” Bailey says. “The reception was overwhelmingly complimentary. A woman burst into tears in front of my paintings. The top [critic] in China said I’m a bird flying over China and she wants to fly in my wake. It was moving and humbling.”
Take Bailey with a pinch of salt. Earlier in 2016, in the wake of the very public mourning of Bowie’s death, Bailey publically rehearsed details of his 1990s artistic collaboration with the androgynous musician. Bowie, it should be noted, was not entirely convinced by Bailey at first. Writing in Modern Painters about his 1995 visit to South Africa, Bowie describes Bailey as feeling “bitter about affirmative action in the visual arts”. Bowie was unmoved by his complaint. “I’m not sure that I am willing to even remotely buy into this, as I see very little evidence in SA of white-destitute garrets, loaf-of-bread-and-water situations,” Bowie noted.
Still, an enduring friendship was formed. Its sincerity is measurable: a Bailey sculpture owned by Bowie and kept at his upstate New York home will not be auctioned off at Sotheby’s London on November 10. Bowie is, however, less important in the story of Bailey than former Roxy Music nob-twiddler Brian Eno. The two met in 1996 when they showed with Bowie and others at a celebrity exhibition at socialite Jibby Beane’s London gallery. Six or seven years ago Eno invited Bailey to visit his Nottinghill studio. Fun with paint was had — some of it showcased on Facebook. Then, in 2015, the two showed a series of abstract paintings in pastel tones on a staircase in Palazzo Pisani at a collateral exhibit at the Venice Biennale.
The Sound of Creation, as their collaboration was titled, included headphones replaying scored sound pieces for each picture. It was, as Larry David would say, pretty, pretty good. I’ve never much bonded with Bailey’s canvases, which marry a treacly sentimentality with the mythological bravado of neo-expressionist painting. But the Eno-Bailey collaboration was definitely intriguing. Eno pushed Bailey to reimagine his style. Figures were broken down; colours less garish.
Bailey has parked this newfound sobriety for his upcoming show. His shamanic paintings, which offer art and dance as muti, mark a return to the feel-good ethos of the 1990s raconteur from Tamboerskoof. But things have also shifted in Bailey. He credits Eno, whose career is dogged by his early success as a musician, as having played a crucial role.
“When I was young I wanted to be famous,” Bailey says. “Coming out of Warhol’s factory, that’s what it was about — being famous, being a celebrity. Having worked with Brian and gotten older …” He chews a bit on what he plans to say next. “I don’t want to be famous … It is alienating … Getting older, I’ve realised it is such bullshit. To engage someone on a human level has become important.”
• Beezy Bailey’s 1,000 Year Dance Cure opens at Circa Gallery on November 23. Circa Gallery, Ulundi House, 3 Portswood Road, Cape Town, 021-418-4527