From Backwater Bush Art to Urban Abstraction
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No photos of, or existing examples of David Chudy’s art prior to 1947 are known.
The earliest work we know of was from Northern Rhodesia where he spent eight years between two small sub- tropical mining towns in the Copperbelt There is no way of knowing whether these paintings and sculpture were his first ever attempts. His work from that period develops technically, but stylistically things move slowly.
The paintings take on a broadly late, 19th century European lean – albeit, including indigenous Africans in some of the images. And they seem to have self-consciously resisted the influence of cutting edge modern art of the age. David Chudy’s later work reveals that he was not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative or stubborn traditionalist. So this is curious to us now that he was not more excited about the most up -to-date experimentation in art right at the onset.
David Chudy had received no formal art training (and a very limited education in general). The Copper Belt was not going to make up for this. His reticence to race to join the avant-garde was probably twofold. Firstly, being an artist, no matter how conservative, his work would be, it would already be shocking enough in local terms. Secondly, with no one to please, he likely undertook a kind of self-mentored artistic apprenticeship. He would want to satisfy his own curiosity in technical terms, before coming to terms with personal expression.
Unlike today, with ‘instant launch artistic careers’, there would be a minimal ‘hit’ for not expressing originality right at the start line. A grounding in traditional art (meaning being able to paint in a photo realistic manner) was still considered a prerequisite, even by the most advanced educators of the day. It seems plausible that the young David Chudy, lacking a tutor at that time, had to prove ‘that he could paint’, for purely personal reasons.
The general public, even outside the world’s sub-tropical cultural backwaters, had been on the defensive in relation to art since the earliest days of the industrial revolution. For a long time, the coping mechanism was to demand traditional drafting competence, from any artist they were asked to consider.
Here in Africa that persisted. Failure to convince the average viewer that the artist could create photo-realistic drawings on demand meant that the entire contribution of that artist would be disputed.
The common suggestion was somewhat petulant. Namely that the modern artist ‘only did what they did’ to disguise the fact that they were not real artists. The hypothesis was that because they could not ‘paint properly’, they therefore had no better option than to try to resort to ‘fooling the public’.
Even in ‘enlightened circles’ in Southern Africa at that time, ‘abstract’ was considered highly controversial. Meanwhile even mildly stylized painterly treatments, applied to traditionally representational images, would tend to be rejected as ‘snake oil’ by the man in the street. Photo-style documentation was what people were convinced they wanted. It did not challenge the intellect while craftsmanship was always an easy thing to admire.
The most effective way to deflect criticism in this environment – from an artist’s point of view – was to produce a few samples ‘of the right stuff’ (just for the record’). For example, Picasso – for those who had heard of him – had done just this. He was reluctantly given a pass in relation to some of his other ‘wild experiments’ as a result. Proving that one could ‘draw muscles just like Michelangelo’ was like a visa stamp, in an in-date passport to painterly success.
What actually motivated and drove David Chudy, in his early twenties – when he began working in Northern Rhodesia – can only be speculated on. But one can rule out ‘rubbing shoulders with others in the context of an art scene’. There were no museums or galleries within hundreds if not thousands of miles to set the pace.
In the Copper Belt, at that time, chances were, that many, if not most people would even really know what art was, let alone have a stand on modern art.
The remote Third World geographic location may not be defining in terms of basic artistic style, but it can be positively taken into account in terms of understanding David Chudy’s inspiration as an artist. The social and political environment at that time would be formative of the entire person, not simply First World, parlor-preoccupations with ‘subject matter, composition, concepts or color’.
David Chudy began to indulge in First World ‘modern art’ precepts of color and form after his move to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1947.
This gallery loosely features work chronologically – the most recent work first and the oldest last.
