NEO-KOOL AFRO-SUPREMATISM

“Suprematism – The supremacy of sensibility over form”

Kasimir Malevich

 An interview.

Q: So What is this NK-AS all about? What is it?

A: Story is, I was in Cameroon, working with a semi-nomadic, pastoralist group, the Mbororo. They do transhumance, dry season the mountaintop, rainy season the valley. I was struck by the design and colours of their hut exteriors. I asked the women – nearest town about forty miles -  where they bought their paint. They answered no, they fetched their colours from the river. I was dubious. I think they took that as a challenge. I had lunch with the local Imam, the best I would ever have in my 18 months in Cameroon. By the time I finished, they were back. Six plastic bags, each with its particular mud.

Back home, I had a kind of makeshift studio, a disused garage, with chickens. I dried and ground the mud. I was astonished. Here were the purest Renaissance colours, Burnt sienna, raw umber, yellow ochre, the cleanest black and white. I was vividly reminded how the Italians found their basic vocabulary out of the earth iself. I started to paint. But what?  In any case, the canvases just got bigger and bigger. I would paint late into the night. The chickens kept me company.

Q:  What about the Suprematist part?

A: I’ve always been interested in Kasimir Malevich, if you will, his arrogance, his stubborn insistence on the primacy of concept and sensibility over representational form. We should remember he had a revolution behind him, at least for a time. As a student, I did plough through his Non-Objective World. But I only knew his work through textbooks. It wasn’t till the show at the Berlin Guggenheim that I got up close. I’d always imagined him, among other things, as a precursor to the much later American hard-edge movement.  Up close, not at all. Quite rough. And none of the corporate sterilities of Stella, Kelly and the likes.

So the mix of African and revolutionary Russian seemed like a natural combination. Not exactly Mondrian’s Broadway Boogle-oo, but a distant relative, different aims and impacts. Problem with my paintings was mud on wood, they just couldn’t travel. I tried all kinds of fixative. The mud despised them. Refractive index. Even simple egg white, the yellow ochre turned a dull grey. Back in Berlin, I had to turn to acrylic. Not quite the same vibrancy, but that might be just as much to do with the different qualities of daylight. The Mbororo themselves, I guess it would take a heavy downpour and they’d have to start again from scratch. They’re fighting for their political identity, and fighting well. But something else, they’re nomads, with a nomadic history and, back of that, perhaps an aesthetic of transience. I like that very much.

Q: Earlier, you mentioned an Imam. What’s your take on Islam?

A: None. My experience is limited to West Africa and the Maghreb. These people, Muslim men and women, I find conscientious and honest, the people I’m most comfortable doing business with. I have no spiritual disposition. But I respect them. I’m an atheist, but not, I hope, an idiot.

Q: And Greece now. What?

A: Austerity. IMF. I suggest they go the way of Iceland and former Argentina, and default. Sure, a deficit of treasury bonds, and the inevitable inflation. But they’ve been cheated by their politicians. Credit is not a facility, it’s a commodity, and that’s the root of the problem. They’re a smart and energetic people. They’ll find their feet. Meanwhile, I suggest we squat the Parthenon.