Beezy Bailey   Playboy
South Africa's most outrageously irreverent artist gives poxy political correctness, pretentious prats, censorship and quite a few other things a shrapnel grenade up the bum Beezy Bailey is one of the few artists in South Africa who has an international reputation that goes from strength to strength. Painter, sculptor, showman, performance artist - he's consistently cocked a snook at the worthies of the South African art world with their political correctness and notions of aesthetics. But just who Beezy Bailey is remains a conundrum. The stepson of former Drum magazine owner Jim Bailey and grandson of Sir Abe Bailey, his background has given him several chances of a lifetime -most importantly, lunch in New York with Andy Warhol, who advised him to become an artist. Yet he loathes being classified as a "rich kid" and points out that he has to make his own living like everyone else. Beezy Bailey has mellowed with age, marriage and a baby son. And now, about to launch his own fabric line, he's still as critical of artistic hubris as ever, although he's more inclined to take it in his stride. Bailey's most famous exploit was back in 1992 when he submitted his own work and three linocuts by a black domestic worker called Joyce Ntobe - his alter ego - to the SA National Gallery in Cape Town. His work was rejected, Joyce's was accepted with alacrity, but it was six months before Beezy let them into the secret - after Joyce had appeared in an academic treatise on black women artists in South Africa. Bailey still laughs at the patronising white galleries that, he claims, only buy art because it's by a black artist - and the overseas people who only want to buy work from someone who is black. Joyce has now retired to a nunnery, but not before collaborating with Beezy on a work featuring erect and flaccid penises that was summarily banned by the SANDF in March this year. Perhaps more than any other local artist, Bailey calls constant attention to the fallacies and foolishness of contemporary society and its morality. But last year's collaboration with rock superstar David Bowie on a series of paintings has brought Bailey back into the limelight. Working with Bowie and art-star Julian Schnabel in New York has set the young South African on the international path, but with a determination to paint less and produce better quality work.
He's currently selling only to foreigners and is working on a book about the adventures of a mythical Chinaman which has received acclaim, although it is in its early stages. Freelance contributor Judith Watt spoke to the man. 1 PLAYBOY: You're very, very good at selling yourself. Where did you learn this invaluable life skill? BAILEY: I had the opportunity to work at Drum or become an artist. My father thought it would be nice for me to become an artist, but I looked at the leading artists of the time - Norman Catherine and Judith Mason - and saw that they were not making money. I wanted to, so I went into the advertising department at Drum. That's where I learnt about making money the hard way. If you can sell advertising space you can sell anything because it is so humiliating, selling two inches of space to Indian grocers in Fordsburg. 2 PLAYBOY: How important is money to you? BAILEY: Money is everything. It can totally destroy you... but if you let it flow through you it can fill you with incredible energy. But money doesn't flow through you very easily - you have to make that happen. 3 PLAYBOY: With such a privileged background, do you have to make your own living? BAILEY: My parents did support me, but I have always had to supplement my income through my own devices. The private income I have comes from my own good investment in property. At school in Woodmead I sold penis plaster casts, when I was a student in London I sold screen prints for thirty pounds each and did fifty a day. 4 PLAYBOY: So is Beezy Bailey, artist, selling his work? BAILEY: It is selling, but I am not responsible for that side anymore. A Beezy Bailey will cost between two thousand and fifty thousand rand. The most I have ever made on a work is fifteen thousand rand. Local people do not buy art; I am selling to overseas people. 5 PLAYBOY: Other SA artists have local patrons. Why aren't they buying your work? BAILEY: Simply because I've always been an outsider, studying abroad, doing my own thing. South African art has been isolated from the international scene for years - they've created their own art scene based around institutions like the South African National Gallery. Commissions are given to people within the system. Just look at Gavin Younge winning the competition for sculpture at the V&A Waterfront. It's an appalling piece of work. A student alleged Younge had ripped him off; it generally attracted very negative attention which did contemporary art no good. 6 PLAYBOY: You are very outspoken about the foibles of the local art world. Don't they dislike you for it?  BAILEY: Barend de Wet tells me they do. I don't encounter it and I'm not interested in negative energy. All creative communities are riddled with jealousy. Look at Bowie - he's given slit publicity because he's so famous. You can even get shot like John Lennon. If someone hates me it's their own tough shit. 7 PLAYBOY: But aren't you still the same self-publicising person you used to be? BAILEY: Since I met David Bowie, I have learnt not to hustle in the same way I used to. Bowie taught me that the process of making art is just as important as the glamorous marketing side. The editor of Interview magazine said to me: 'Don't write your own history. Let other people do it for you.' 8 PLAYBOY: The Bailey name is one of the great South African names. Your parents have been described as bohemian billionaires. Aren't you just a very spoilt young man? BAILEY: Firstly, it was Gus Silber who called them that in a London Sunday Times article. It is a figment of his imagination - they are not billionaires - and it caused a lot of embarrassment to me and them. Secondly, I'm not spoilt. I am very privileged, and yes, I did go to art school in London. But my parents didn't hand money to me on a plate.
9 PLAYBOY: Aren't you sick of being pigeonholed as just another rich white South African? BAIlEY: It is a totally isolating experience because people write you off. Their preconception is that you are an arsehole. They have an image of a rich kid and think you're a wanker in principle. When you are in the studio, how important is your bank balance? I0 PLAYBOY: There's a lot of discussion about the fact that Jim Bailey is your stepfather rather than your "real" father. What are your feelings about him? BAILEY: I don't want to discuss my biological father, basically because Jim has always been a father to me. He brought up five of us and he was always very loving and fair. It was he who encouraged me to be an artist. My parents are seen as eccentric but I am very lucky to have been brought up in their home. My mother's a very strong figure in my life. It's not easy being married to my father; bringing up five kids while he was traveling through the continent because of Drum. I come from four generations of powerful women, and my wife is very important in my life. I'm aware of the feminine side in myself and I'd be ashamed to be viewed as a stereotypical South African male. 11 PlAYBOY: Why? BAILEY: Because I think that, generally speaking, South African males are a shoddy bunch. Having said that, I really admire men like Hansie Cronje and Francois Pienaar - and I like eating meat. 12 PlAYBOY: OK - we're going to have a monument of Nelson Mandela's hand costing fifty million rand. What is the current state of culture in South Africa? BAILEY: I'd say very good, but not in a conventional sense. The art form has changed from that of a bronze sculpture to that of a massive performance art piece in the form of World Cup rugby. Francois Pienaar is an art star as great as Andy Warhol and Nelson Mandela is the cherry on the top. That's because sport is dealing with the community and with the culture, the bringing-together of the family and upliftment. It's entertaining, it's spiritual and it brings emotional ecstasy. These are all the things that I believe great art provokes in people. 13 PLAYBOY: Are there any limits to Beezy Bailey? BAILEY: I've always wanted to be a pop star. Maybe I'm a popular star - as David Bowie says, you can be famous for being famous. But at the same time, fame is completely unimportant and complete bullshit. Yet it's an addiction at the same time. It's a quest to be loved by all - all artists want this, like most human beings. 14 PLAYBOY: The picture of you naked and painted in gold as an angel. Why did you do it? BAILEY: I'd felt beforehand that I wanted to be integrated with the painting, which is huge. I was naked painting the whole thing, slipping and sliding all over it, so I wanted to integrate physically with the canvas. I wanted the huge exposure in the media - to make a work of art for an audience of millions. But the London Sunday Times magazine put a red star over my cock which just shows how conservative Britain is. 15 PLAYBOY: Aren't you just a big show-off appearing naked again, this time in Playboy? BAILEY: It's a nice achievement to appear naked in any South African magazine, even if my cock doesn't reach down to my knees. 16 PLAYBOY: Can you tell us where Joyce Ntobe is now? BAILEY: She's in a nunnery in Natal because she suffered a nervous breakdown after the Jo'burg Biennale following the way she was treated. Her work was accepted for an exhibition curated by someone from the National Gallery in Cape Town. It was an exhibition of work by women artists. At the last minute, the curator told her they were only accepting work by artists with one personality. I was pissed off because the Joyce work was my only contribution to the Biennale. As a white South African I'd felt marginalised and I was excited about the opportunity for my black woman alter ego to exhibit in what was the first major international art exhibition in SA. 17 PLAYBOY: Have you ever collaborated with Joyce or are you separate creative entities? BAILEY: We collaborated recently on a ceramic work that was banned by the SA National Defence Force from an exhibition curated by the British Council at the Castle in Cape Town. It was a risque piece. A pair of pink bosoms were surrounded by wilting penises except for one large erect one. The SANDF said they would close down the show if it wasn't removed, so the curator asked me to do so. It was my first and last collaboration with Joyce and I suppose one of the reasons I did it was to take the piss out the silliness of black and white artistic collaboration, which is all the rage right now. 18 PLAYBOY: But you did get your knuckles rapped. What do you think about the fact that censorship is carrying on as normal? BAILEY: It is terrifying. It demonstrates that we aren't living in as much of a free country as we thought we were. As an artist one should be given total freedom to be creative. What was demonstrated was that certain people have a problem with penises and are obsessive about the male member. We have had bottoms and bosoms and fannies for thousands of years. Why is the penis a no-no? 19 PLAYBOY: Why do you think the penis is perceived to be a problem here? BAILEY: Because South Africans across the board are incredibly conservative. Which means that you're strangled as an artist. Art becomes a crime and you only feel free and safe in your studio. 20 PLAYBOY: Why do you make fun of the local art establishment? BAILEY: Because there is almost no art world here to speak of. It is a bit of a fart world.