Coincidentally, but perhaps not surprisingly, the two most iconic art works of the resistance era are triple portraits of malevolent figures that represent aspects of the apartheid state. One is literal, the other metaphorical. The literal work is Paul Stopforth’s The Interrogators (1979), a triptych of the security policeman responsible for the death of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko. The metaphorical one is sculptor Jane Alexander’s Butcher Boys (1985–86).
Made while she was still a student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Alexander built up the forms of the three bodies in builder’s plaster over a plaster and gauze core, glazing the surfaces in oil paint to an unhealthy grayish tint. The flesh around the figures’ spines is peeled back to expose vertebra bones, the heads are horned, and the nose and mouth areas strangely lumpish and undefined in a way that subtracts any element of humanity from the trio.
Butcher Boys is the best-known artwork in the collection of Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and the only South African artwork to be represented in the Oxford History of Western Art, edited by Martin Kemp (2000). When the sculpture is not on display due to gallery maintenance or its appearance in traveling art exhibitions, its eerie, menacing presence is missed and inquired after by visitors.
The lives of the Butcher Boys are not restricted to the gallery. As part of her continuing practice, Alexander makes photo montages in which her sculptures take on another, self-referential, history outside their existence as artwork in themselves. In one the Butcher Boys appear in a grainy image in the setting of a tiled room—a poster on the wall behind them reads BY THE END OF THE DAY YOU’RE GOING TO NEED US. The message is clear: These three menacing figures may appear to be lounging casually on a bench, but when the security of the state is threatened by those who oppose apartheid, the Butcher Boys will know how to deal with the situation.
In refraining from portraying her figures engaged in any act of aggression, Alexander has increased their power, leaving the viewer to imagine them in action. Believing that her work should speak for itself, Alexander does not comment on specific pieces. In this case the title says it all.
Butcher Boys 1985–86
Plaster, oil paint, bone, horn, wood
128.5 x 213.5 x 88.5 cm
Collection of Iziko South
African National Gallery, Cape Town
Photographer: Eileen Costa
© Jane Alexander