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Twenty Questions
Mercury Wednesday 5 May 1999, Billy Suter's TWENTY QUESTIONS.
ANDREW VERSTER, the award-winning Durban artist who was in the limelight last week with his designs for the fine Opera Africa production of the opera Faust, seen at the Playhouse Opera, is today's subject in our fun weekly series putting personalities on the spot.
What would you say is your favourite among the many works you have created?
I try not to look back. What is done cannot be changed, so the only painting
which really interests me is the one I am working on right now.
What is the smallest artwork you have ever produced? And biggest?
The smallest was a postage stamp-sized watercolour of a swimming pool - so
exquisite that when I met it again many years later I thought it must be by someone else.
The biggest is the tapestry in the ICC woven by Marguerite Stephens, said to be
the third largest contemporary tapestry in the world.
The most unusual work was a commission to paint a life-size portrait of a child
who had died within its first two weeks. The parents told me that when he had
opened his eyes briefly, they were exactly like his two-year-old sister.
As reference I constructed a collage of the two children from photographs. I
knew the painting was a success when the parents cried on seeing it.
Who are the greatest artists – and what is your favourite work of art?
There are two works which thrill me because in them you can see history being made (the moment when one age died and anew one was born).
Leonardo and Picasso then must rate as two of the greatest artists, if for those two moments alone. The Mona Lisa is the first painting to have atmosphere and soft edges, like a photograph, like real life. Until then everything was hard-edge.
Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein has a realistic body and a diagrammatic, mask face. A mixed metaphor. It is the moment the five hundred years of illusionism begun by Leonardo was broken, and nothing was the same again.
It was the moment that western art was pulled back from the side-track into
which Leonardo had led it, a brief diversion, an incidental flirtation with minor
matters before Picasso led it back to its true path.
What five words best describe you?
Impatient, shy, opinionated, energetic, bossy (ish).
What has been your most embarrassing moment?
The mind is clever in blotting out awfulness and romanticising happy
moments, otherwise one would go mad.
You received flak not so long ago for calling for the scrapping of Durban's Victorian art collection in favour of SA works. Any omments?
One should always read between the lines - what people say and what they
actually mean can be different. The debate it started was useful: today
the Durban Art Gallery leads the country in its vision, in what it buys, in its
community programmes, its exhibition policy and in its commitment to democracy and affirmative action.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Fresh flowers whenever I see them.
What five things would you list under Vastly Over-rated? And Vastly Under-rated?
Over-rated: oysters (chilled phlegm and tabasco), caviar (solid cod liver oil), Steven Spielberg (the arrogance of suggesting the Holocaust happened to allow him to make an Oscar-winning film), Table Mountain (intrusive, holy, treated with
irritating reverence) and bottled water (a cynical way of making money from a
designer-obsessed world).
Under-rated: Durban, early Leonard DiCaprio, soft-boiled eggs, Durban's temples
and Gertrude Stein.
Do you have any fears or phobias?
Besides death, my biggest fear is something senile. As much as I hate the
thought of dying, I'd hate even more not to be there when it happened.
Phobias: cocktail parties. Parties of any kind. Being invited anywhere so far in
advance it is impossible to say no.
Tell us something about your family, when and where you were bom and what sort of childhood you had?
I was born in Johannesburg before the war, was at school during it, went to
London to study art after it, discovered Durban in the '60s and have been here
since. My father is 91, my mother died years ago and I have a brother who does clever things with electricity in Benoni
If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?
I would love to eavesdrop on people to see if their private face matched their public one -1 don't mean only the famous and notorious, but acquaintances and
friends. I am, by nature, curious.
Tell us three things about yourself that the general public does not know?
I play the bagpipes, I am a member of the Film and Publications Appeal Board,
and my dog, Mustapha, spent seven years on the road from Cairo to Maputo in the Egyptian Circus and has seen more of Africa than I ever will.
Who would you give gold to meet?
The Maharani of Jaipur, an amazing woman who was born an aristocrat, but who, after Independence went into politics and was India's first woman MP,
winning with the biggest majority in history. She became a champion of the poor
and downtrodden, and of women's rights.
Do you support calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty in SA?
The death penalty is immoral – which one of us is God? It is inefficient - it has been proved not to be a deterrent. It discriminates – the poor get put to death, the rich buy their way to freedom. It is arbitrary - only a fraction of convicted people get hanged. Justice is not even-handed.
Who is your favourite real-life hero?
Fatima Meer, whom everyone courts, but who belongs to nobody. Always true
to herself, she is incorruptible and un-temptable.
What are among your favourite movies of all time?
Don Juan De Marco and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
What are among your favourite records of all time?
Anything by Tom Waites, a genius, in love with low-life and desperate towns,
who would find poetry in Brakpan. I also enjoy a collection of five South
Indian Ragas played on the violin by L Subramaniam, music made in heaven.
And then there is the Maria Callas recording of Tosca. No matter how often I
hear it, I break down in the same places.
What are your hobbies?
When life and work are one and the same, one does not need hobbies and pastimes.
What would you change if you could rewind history?
The inventions I would scrap are gun-powder and guns and all devices used to
torture, bully people or put them to death. The reasons are obvious. I'd also abolish organised religion, which has not been a good invention.
Believing in God seems right, reasonable and good. Starting clubs to promote particular ways of worshipping God has caused more death, destruction, misery and hate than all the natural disasters that have ever been.
What do your plans for the rest of this year include?
To say no to any invitation from anyone to celebrate the millennium with
anyone anywhere!
