Braam Kruger - Artist

Braam Kruger





Braam Kruger gently agitated people toward seeing the possibilities of beauty in, well, just about anything. He, of course, was a hell-raiser too. At an early age (Boksburg, Vanderbijlpark, Nigel) he was expelled from schools, later he would open restaurants doomed as commercial successes, but for the periods open, actual dining rooms for sensualists and people who saw like him, felt like him, admired his sybaritic splendour and had no money, Braam didn't care too much, as long as he could share in an experience of the senses, be it in the restaurants, the many articles in newspapers and magazines, the radio and television presenting, or in just having people over to cook for them, talk to them, he was a student of the senses and made no apologies for it. He confused critics and audiences alike with his seemingly un-intellectual approach to his art.

Braam Kruger, with his alter ego Kitchenboy, have a resume, a list of a life, that overwhelms you, you simply cannot take in the range of things the man managed to fit in. He lived more in any one of his years that we do in our whole lives. His works are represented in most public galleries & museums in SA, including the SA National Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum, SASOL Collection, University of Pretoria, University of Natal, Pretoria Technicon, Cape Library Services, SA Nursing Council, Northern Province Art Gallery, Pietersburg, Walter Battiss Museum, The Netherlands Ministry for Culture, Het Sterckshof Museum, Antwerp. He studied Graphic design, Fine art in Pretoria, then Lithography in Belgium. He travelled the world of course.

But it was in his painting that he did the most travelling, to interior worlds, using exterior forms. The nude, the female form draped, undraped, food, suggestions of landscapes, odd cultural juxtapositions, in an almost faux classical style, sometimes having a little fun, sometimes deeply serious, Kruger's art was that he was never one thing, he shifted, he refused to sit still and be classified.

I can't say I ever really knew the man, he fed me at two occasions, once at Kitchenboy in Troyeville in the 90's, where I was overwhelmed by merely the waitresses, and his insistence of try this, now, try this, now this, try, this, now, exploding my senses. The other was when he was living sometime, in Bellevue east, Johannesburg. I was with a friend who knew him well, Nicole. She took me over to see his paintings and I understood then, the descriptions I had heard, was later to hear, that he wept when he painted. His paintings are great weepings. He cooked for us and I remember the figs in chilli, the ginger, the pure delicious narcotic assault on the sense that is Braam Kruger. Not just taste, sight, but touch, hearing and yes scent.

After a stroke in 2000, he learnt to paint and draw again, the first work being for his doctor in blood from his IV. Signing his works with his age as he advances. Famous food coloums for the Business Day follow. He became food editor for Rapport and was nominated for a Mondi Award in 2007. He spent the last months of his life with his beloved in Heildelburg and was still working full-time on writing and commissions, his last article for Rapport appearing a week before his death.

It would be easy to say that through the large volume of Work and Memories, Braam Kruger is still with us. But he was more than just the five senses splayed out. His death at any age would have been too early. And now that he is gone, who but his beloved will carry on the work of grabbing us by our material nature, showing us through the senses our interior worlds of beauty and delight. His humour, his positive gentleness always pushing. He was someone that I never knew was such a big part of our cultural landscape until he was gone. He was that natural and unobtrusive and large.



for full exhibition & pictures - go here > http://www.jhblive.co.za/live/publications_view.jsp?pub_id=258119

Purpose, Prodding and the Comedy of Hope

I wonder how many times Pieter Dirk Uys has read the "I may not like what you have to say, but will fight to the death for your right to say it" line in reviews of his work (And let's face it, it may seem effortless to an audience but the man works it). As a youngster I never really appreciated the comedy of Dirk-Uys, but I understood and was in awe of the danger, the imminent arrest for anything he might say, and also awe for the thin veil of protection he seemed to enjoy. I found his jokes somehow a little obvious, a little crass. But Dirk Uys deals in politicians, which are, as he points out, a little obvious and a little crass. And now with the danger long gone, i wondered how relevant he could be. His new show, "Elections and Erections", may at first glance seem to be a collection of greatest hits and easy targets, but as we are drawn in deeper into his world, Mr Dirk-Uys (or Sir, as he should be referred to) never letting up the patter, slipping from himself, to this character, to that character, never so much as entertaining a crack in the flow, never revealing his purpose, making small points, draws a persons mind to having to consider all the givens of their own personal politics.

It's not straight comedy, he manipulates the audience from caricatures that challenge our own bigotry, to personal moments about the past. He let's us know what is happening on a small level, and then paints the bigger picture. He defines our place in the history of this country, makes us insignificant, then vastly significant and then let's us laugh about it. Pieter Dirk Uys takes to the stage as if the whole country is his living room, commanding hundreds of people as if he's having them over for tea. The audience is made comfortable, uncomfortable, jovial and then uncomfortable at being jovial. He exercises our dark thoughts, he shows us how to hope through a comedy of despair. I can wax lyrical about the man for hours. I could also merely describe the show, but why ruin it for you. You will go see it, I humbly command you.

HIs genius can be pointed out in a comparison, in a riff about the long stretched popular topic of road name changes he does, in three short lines, what I've seen younger pretenders have to stretch to fifteen minutes to do. And he's funnier. And he has a purpose. For all the seeming randomness of his wandering through all his characters, he has picked carefully what he wants to tell us, he uses jokes and languages understandable on all levels, and he guides the audience through a thought process that is primarily to amuse, yes, sure, but actually to enlighten. There is not much comedy that can claim such ideals, Sir Dirk Uys is up there with Bill Hicks and Andy Kaufman in this regard.

I'm not saying that "Elections and Erections" is a long political diatribe, far from it, Dirk Uys uses the comedy of politics to gently prod out complacency, and make us feel good about thinking again, he delivers a meal of humor with a spice of thinking. Moreover Dirk Uys shows us that the danger is not gone, that these same old dangers lurk, indifference, greed, lack of hope. He shows us what silly little concerns these are, what silly creatures we and our politicians are for focusing on ego, personality and he does it through ego's and personalities. I'm going on here. You simply have to see the man to understand the depth of his comedy. I may not like everything Pieter Dirk Uys has to say, But I like a lot of it, and yes, many have given their lives for his right to say it, so long may he continue to stand up, adapt and spread the hope, if not here, then Quo Vadis?


First Pub : http://www.durbanlive.co.za