“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up”

Pablo Picasso

 

This book is not a catalogue: it is a book of stories, a book in which one man tells of the experiences in his long life, it is a book which captures his dreams in his words.

This is the story of Monty Mahobe – artist, musician, and man.

Monty Mahobe walks into the Artists Proof Studio at 12h20; our meeting is scheduled for 12h15.

I hate to be late, so I am sorry for this.

But it is only five minutes late, there is no problem. Anyway I was about to pour the coffee, would you like some?

No, I will have tea, with milk and sugar, yes, I prefer tea to coffee.

Did you get here from Rockville by taxi?

No, I caught the Rea Vaya, it is much better than the taxis. I never know where they drop me off, I don’t know the routes or the ranks, sometimes they drop me at a rank which is too far from here, so the Rea Via is much better, they just go to the same place and I know which way to walk.

The man who speaks is Monty Mahobe.

He catches a Rea Vaya bus from his home in Rockville, Soweto to Newtown in Johannesburg. He is eighty four years old. Tall and thin, his face is clean shaven except for a narrow moustache that sits, grey, above his unwrinkled lips, a slight wisp of darkening beard grows below them. His full head of hair rises above a wide forehead. He stands upright, when he walks there is no stoop and he holds no cane. His clothes are fitting; he wear a soft blue and white shirt with the words ‘Industrial Solutions and Services’ on the left sleeve, over which is a green grey waistcoat, warm for it is autumn, and grey trousers.

Monty Mahobe is old in years, but not in demeanour.

So what do you want me to tell you?

Tell me stories, you have lived for a long time, through many changes, many iterations of South Africa, just tell me stories.

I was born in 1934 on 2 October in the Eastern Cape, Graaff Reinet. I can’t really remember this town, my parents and I, and my sister, we moved to Johannesburg when I was very young. We did go back there later, not Graaff Reinet, but to the Eastern Cape, but this was only for eighteen months, we didn’t stay there long. We went, my family, to live in Lady Frere, my mother wanted us to be with relatives for a while, I am not sure what was going on in the family, we just moved. This was about 1945, so I was young, ten years old maybe. But then we came back to Johannesburg, first to Sofiatown, and then we moved to Western Native Township.

I am a city boy. My heart, and also my head, is full of the noise of the urban areas, you can see this in the wood cuts that I did. I do like the rural areas, some of my art is rural, but not a lot, my life is a city life. Look here at this wood cut (21). It is a picture of a young rural boy, he is rural, you can see this by looking at how thin he is and the clothes that he wears, but also the mountain in the background and the hut, it is not an urban dwelling. He is talking his grannie, or an old person, but it is a woman, to get her pension. You can tell that she is old, she walks with a cane, and rural, her clothes are not fashionable town clothes.

The pictures that I make on the wood or lino cuts are taken mostly from my memory. I like to paint; it was only later when I started with the wood and lino cuts, in a realist style. But I don’t sit and look at a scene and paint it, or make the wood cut, I remember it, I remember the picture, it’s like a photograph in my head, and then I put it on the canvas or the wood. This one (21) I remember from Lady Frere. My granny would ask her son, my mother’s brother, he was my uncle, to take her to town where she would collect her pension. The town, it’s not very far, but the distance is far for an old person to walk. She used to complain that my uncle stole her pension, I don’t know if he did, and I don’t know if this is my grannie, but it is a picture that I remember; or maybe it is a picture that I have made from the story that she told me about this time, I don’t know. It was long ago, I think that I was there when I was ten years old, a young boy.

Have you have been making art for a long time?

Yes and no, on and off; that wood cut (21) I made when I was maybe forty five years, but it is a memory from that time, from when I was ten for I keep the memory pictures in my head. I know that I have always been an artist, always, even when I did not paint or make the wood cuts, I was still an artist.

An artist is close to God, an artist is as good as God, he imitates God, and he is given this talent so that he can be like God. God made people, the artist makes art. It is a calling, and you must do it, if you are an artist. I remember from my early school days, I attended St Peters, this was in Rosettenville, in the south of Johannesburg, it was a white area then, but the preacher, Father Huddleston, set up a school there. He was against segregation, there was no formal apartheid then, this came later, but there was separation of black and white people, but this school was for all young scholars. Father Huddleston believed that education was for all colours. I was fortunate to be at this school, I got a bursary to go there. Later the school was closed because they thought it was a black hole, a black hole in the middle of the white suburbs, so they closed it. Father Huddleston was a very good person, he believed in the kids at the school, he believed that everyone should have the best chance that you can have, so he encouraged all of us. He was a good man. And he believed in the artist, God who art, art yes, artists have a calling because they are close to God. You know the line ‘God thou art’, the Anglican always say ‘God thou art’, yes an artist is next to God, a gentleman, an artist has a gift that he must share, it is a kindness. When they closed the school Father Huddleston went back to England, by this time there was apartheid, and he was against it and the government did not like him at all, so his church called him back to England, it was a blow for us boys because he really give us opportunities.

But to get back to what we were saying, I did art and painting then, but Father Huddleston also encouraged us to play music. I can’t remember the dates or how old I was, but I left the painting and the art and started to play the double base in a trio, there was a guy who played the saxophone and another guy the piano.

This was after I went to Polly Street Art Centre, wait look at this wood cut, I will tell you about Polly Street just now. Look at this wood cut, (3) it is a trio, it is also a picture from my memory, from when I played in the trio. The guy, there, he plays the saxophone, he was tall and always well dressed, and look how he stands holding his saxophone. Later he went to France with Chris McGregor, I think the band was called the Blue Notes group, but then they fell out, I don’t know why, and he came back to Johannesburg, he came home, and then after a few month he got a headache and died, just like that so quickly. It was a pity; he was a good player and young. And the other guy, that one, the one playing the piano, he loved this piano, he wanted to get as close to the notes as he could, look how hunched he is, he is almost lying on top of the piano, he was also part of the group, the trio. We first called it African Jazz, but then we changed the name to the African Follies. Anyway that guy, the piano player, he went to Nairobi with some other musicians and then he died there. And the bass player, I don’t know if it is me, although I did play the bass. You can tell it is the bass, look how big this instrument is, the man that plays it is smaller. The picture in my memory is old; remember those kinds of floors, the black and white tiles, but also the American jazz clubs had this type of floor.

Yes I was doing music by then, I forgot about my art and played music. I couldn’t even play an instrument when I started, but Father Huddleston encouraged me to learn, so I learnt to play the double bass, yes that is me, now I am sure, playing the double bass in the trio. But also at that time I was young, I was an adolescent when I first started playing the double bass and then of course I grew older so was still playing when I was in my twenties. And you know how young boys are? We just wanted to be famous, to be a hero on the stage, playing in front of a whole crowd. And we were very influenced by America, the jazz clubs in New York, we wanted the American dream, the fancy clothes, the clubs and all the stories, we just wanted to live this. Even before I started the music and was still painting I painted things from America, cowboys and horses. But the music, of course Sofiatown, where I was living then, this American dream thing was big. The gangsters and the shebeens there, the jazz singers, they all lived there.