Max Wolpe b. 1953 is a born and bred Capetonian.
Home is a place he does not leave, preferring his own travels into the microcosms of society, their grid lines becoming his ley lines and their kaleidoscopic fluidity, his utterly unique travellers cheques.
The house of the artist; a rambling, seemingly abandoned ‘mock’ Victorian, it’s stained glass windows peeking out behind overgrown, unkempt, ivy-laden trees, some of whom creep into its walls in the leafy suburb of Oranjezicht, a water-rich area of Springs and underground rivers in the valley of one of the seven wonders of the world, the flat topped crystal and granite mountain: Table Mountain, at the tip of the African continent.
Max inhabits the house that his father lived in before him, the late Joe Wolpe, art dealer and art framer extraordinaire. Indeed, any framed work of art in South Africa and beyond, that emerged from the Wolpe Gallery is highly sought after by art collectors, it’s provenance at auction, a given.
The late Joe Wolpe nurtured South African art greats such as Irma Stern and Fred Page long before they became art establishment icons of their time. Setting the global auction record for Ben Nicholson and importing the first Van Gogh into South Africa, Joe Wolpe, the art dealer, during the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, was its doyen. When Irma Stern was on her deathbed in 1969, it was Joe Wolpe she called for, the prolific personae a long-time friend, confidant and support for the artist.
The gatherings of the Wolpe Gallery, Cape Town, were a creative hotbed of opera, slide shows, artists, patrons and clients in a vibrant and eclectic cocktail held within the restraints of a tall tumbler of political turbulence under the thumb of a deeply repressive and authoritarian regime that was Apartheid South Africa in the 1960’s.
Max was immersed in the art world from a young age. It can be said that he emerged from inter-generational art royalty since his grandfather, much like his father, was a photographer and art framer who fled the pogroms in Russia, taking refuge in South Africa together with thousands of other Jewish Lithuanians, Poles and Germans.
As a child Max was shipped and schlepped from school to school, not quite fitting in anywhere but nonetheless excelling first in art and later in maths. His art education was largely completed at the Ruth Prowse School of Art, his Diploma in Painting crafted under the guidance of Eric Laubscher and Edwin Simon Martinus.
His extensive exhibition list of both group and solo shows includes exhibitions at the AVA Gallery, Cape Town (1988, 2006 and 2010), Linda Goodman Gallery Johannesburg (1989), the Jacob and Liknaitsky Gallery (1991), works in collection at the South African National gallery, SMAC and Cape Galleries in the early 2000’s and a solo show at the Jewish Museum in Cape Town together with Joe Wolpe (2018) to arrive after something of a reclusive absence and subsequent rebirth over the past 4 years, at the Isaac Benigson Gallery in London in 2025.
The works of Max Wolpe are mostly deep observations of the society he plays visitor to. Often so much an outsider as to be the only real insider.
Though Wolpe oftentimes inhabits the periphery, he appears at almost every art opening in town as a terrazzo mix of Hobbit, Guru, Tzaddik or Saint, Hobo, Bohemian, culture vulture and hippie. His long, unkempt hair is thick and his beard a gathering between eyes so bright and youthful they do not age. Max himself defies aging, credit to his strict vegetarian diet and healthy habits. A self-taught artist from the age of 16 – in the words of the late Solly Dizner, his mentor, a sculptor and friend of Joe’s: “He could be nothing else”. As Max himself confesses, they tried to suggest alternate career paths for him, such as tradesman or plumber, but art, was the only thing he could do.
Max finds the humour in observing society and his paintings are vivid, fluid portrayals of people and societal situations.
He carefully curates society into groups comprising 3 “types” for men and the same 3 “types” for women.
“I divided the world into 3 types of male and 3 types of female, these are: “Laanie/Larney” or South African slang for fancy, posh or well-to-do, blue-collar worker and Bohemian. “Sometimes, people are different components of the 3 types, the 3 types over-lap or they have different percentages of each.”
Perhaps to be construed as a parallel as to how paint is mixed into different colours. Speaking of which, Wolpe’s colour palette is unique as he does not use primary colours. Most of his colour ways are secondary or tertiary.
A deeply astute observer of society, these human ley lines allow Wolpe to fathom some sense of the world.
Much like ley lines are theoretical, invisible lines connecting geographical locations to sacred space, so too, do Wolpe’s personality ley lines organise and connect the people in them.
An example is the watercolour featured in this latest exhibition and titled ‘The Lawns’. In this scene a Laanie/Larney family from “Upper Claremont or Constantia or Wynberg (well-to-do neighbourhoods of Cape Town) is at a family get together. The grandparents are conservative, traditional, maybe from England and they have a big colonial style house. They are home for the holidays as gaga or granddaddy but the grandchildren are veering more towards being Bohemian. The painting is a criss-cross of the grid. An intergenerational ley line. The grid is people as components of it, from my perspective and from my observations. People have different sections of the grid inside them. Some belong to all 3 in different quantities.” – Max Wolpe
The interesting part about ley lines is their perceived mystical, paranormal or spiritual significance. Wolpe, like his father Joe before him, openly accepts the multi-dimensional layers of reality often consulting ‘Pendy’ or the Pendulum to make important decisions.
Such is exemplified by the painting titled ‘In the shade of the coffee sipping tree.’ This painting refers to the situational complexity of a cryptic crush.
“Coffee is in the Tropics and the sub-Tropics, there is no coffee grown in Norway or Scandinavia because it is too cold to grow there. It is only grown in the Equatorial areas. It’s tropical. The Tropics are an area of the world. Coffee, cocoa and tea are not grown in First World countries. Certain crops thrive in certain weathers, you can’t grow coffee in Australia because it is too dry.” – Max Wolpe
The geographical line of the Equator imbues it’s hosts with certain characteristics, not found elsewhere. Herein lies the key to the societal matrices informing further complexity of Wolpe’s grids and his psychological tools for unravelling people, the connections between them and the great mystery of life. Some call it synchronicity, for Wolpe that is far too New Age. For him, it’s just about connecting the dots.
The early 20th century proponents of the theory of ley lines, first proposed by amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins in 1921, attribute their energetic latitudes and longitudes as portals to the unknown. They would argue that the choice for building early man-made structures such as ancient temples to serve as gateways to the Divine, around these Earthly co-ordinates, is no coincidence.
Likewise for Wolpe, such is the answer to the question as to why he makes what he makes: “There are some answers that even I can’t answer myself. There should be some questions that cannot be answered. Art deals in a sense of mystery and magic. It has a kind of mysticism. If artists could use words then they would not use paint. Then artists would be writers. Picasso said why does one try to understand the song of the bird. There are some answers that are not cut and dry. It should not be concrete. Art is not a law court, you don’t need an explanation for everything.” – Max Wolpe.
Ley lines serve to join the geo-physical dots, explaining why some spaces might be more potently transcendental than others. Similarly, the making of art may serve as the key to the ancient kist of the unknown, the portal to divinity or the connection point to the hallways of the sacred.
When asked to explain the calming serenity of the oil on canvas: ‘Split, Croatia’ Wolpe’s reply is that it is a painting and one should not need to explain it. “It should communicate without words. I paint. I don’t write. I never went to Croatia. It is from my imagination.”
Thus, much happens in Wolpe’s world which is close to home. As a deep empath and an acute observer, he travels into the interiorscapes of people and personality. His many portraits of people over the years, such as ‘Bevan’ seek to analyse and portray various facets of his subjects.
If he paints these personalities often enough they become recurring characters in thematic visitations enriched both by his own multiple variations of them and by the dissecting grids he splices them into. ‘Remittance Man (down on his luck)’ is such an example.
“The Remittance Man wouldn't be seen dead at Afrikaburn. He would give his life for the Empire. His stance is: they shalt not pass. He guards the space like a sentinel but he could not enlist in the army because he had flat feet. He is a real life person that I met twice in Wynberg. His name is Arthur Paul Hargreaves. He is an Empire die hard. His ruddy cheeks and brandy in a paper bag are the accessories to a life he left behind, most likely in England. He could be one of the characters in a boys’ comic. He is almost a joke. His motto would be he who laughs last, laughs longest. Obviously he's limited. I believe he was a shoemaker, probably a good one. He is certainly no Bohemian." – Max Wolpe
Max finds the humour in observing society and gifts his honesty and wisdom to those he encounters.
Thus many of his paintings are humorous and fun. ‘Bohemian Safari’ is such an example. It is a fun painting, laced with humour and good times. “There is nothing that I can tell you that is not in the painting itself except …. bohemians on safari! This is not a serious safari, it is tongue in cheek. Look at the painting again. There is a jungle, a leopard in a tree, one of the big cats in the tree. The main character is pretentious, hence the crown. There is a tame lion. They went on safari, it is one of the places they would go. They are sentimental Romanticists.” - Max Wolpe
Just as ‘the big five’ traverse the picture plane in groups with a certain dynamic energy and a kaleidoscopic fluidity in Bohemian Safari, so too in the large oil on canvas titled ‘Table Manners’ which is itself a fun painting depicting the world of fine dining with a tongue in cheek title and so too, the watercolour titled
‘Australian Dagga Olympics’. “Here we see Bohemians at a glorified dagga party. I took this image from a photo in the newspaper and based a painting on it too. I have never been to Australia.”
According to Wolpe, an easel gives you artistic license to talk to people (women). What you can’t do in real life, you can always do artistically.
For example: “If you had to stalk someone it would be embarrassing but on the easel you have artistic license to talk to them. It is a reveal of the person.”
Sometimes the reveal occurs within societal underpinnings in a kind of situational comedy such as in ‘Cats Conversations’, ‘The Three Graces’ and ‘Bernadette’s Nil Predator’.
‘Cats Conversations’ is a dissection of Bohemians drinking tea but with a different slant. “They are wearing odd shoes. These are Bohemians; the hat, the black dress, the half coffee, half tea. Only someone that is trying to make a statement would drink half coffee and half tea in the same cup. They want to be adventurous. They are smoking a joint. Cats is a Cape colloquial nickname for a type of woman - a Bohemian type. Today they are discussing logic. Are the leaves blue today or are they green?” – Max Wolpe
The women in ‘The Three Graces’ are a homage to Shakespeare's 'The Three Witches' in Macbeth. They are "graceful" women being "disgraceful" - indulging in red wine, smoking joints, cackling with infectious laughter and reigning their empowerment.
‘Bernadette’s Nil Predator’ displays the intersecting weirdness of society and societal situations. The acronym of the painting is BNP or British National Party. “Bernadette has a red star on her necklace. I met Bernadette, Duncan and Scott at a backpackers lodge. Duncan and Scott are English. They went to Botswana to see the elephants and Bernadette said she got so close, that she could smell the breath of the elephant.”
What does all this mean, I asked? To which Max replied:” I’m going to do what Picasso did and write down the alphabet in letters and let you re-arrange it.”
Apparently ‘Between amazing and stunning but too early for awesome’ is an ode to buzzwords and the people who use them too frequently.
Of course, the battle lines of the societal grids sometimes play out, most often displayed in the clash between the left and the right or between the conservatives and the Bohemians. ‘The Knight and the Damsel stirring stress’ is such an example. “Who is the knight?”, I gently ask. “Enoch Powell, the right wing politician. He suggested to repatriate immigrants from the Commonwealth otherwise there would be rivers of blood. She (the woman) is a left wing journalist. She is interviewing him.”
The clashing societal ley lines play out in the visual clues of supermarkets and neighbourhoods too. One just has to get up close and intimate with: ‘Pick ‘n Pay, in the supermarket’ or play the acute observer of the fractal human details of ‘Sea Point’ to realise this truism.
‘Early Friday’ pays tribute to the Capetonian art world, particularly the art students at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. “Early Friday is a fundraising event for the art year book. On Friday afternoon they (art students) get together and people decorate a bottle of tequila or gin and it gets raffled. The profits go towards making the year book. What excites me about Early Friday is that I have made a lot of friends there. It’s interesting and a nice way to contribute to the art community. I have met plenty of other artists there such as Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne ;) ;)” – Max Wolpe
Lastly, ‘Blockx House’ refers to the alchemy of paint – a subject close to Wolpe’s heart. “Jacques Blockx was a Belgian alchemist. He started the paint line in 1865. I used Blockx paint to paint it.”
“A lot of paint is connected to alchemy.” – Max Wolpe
Bohemian Safari will run at the Isaac Benigson Gallery, London from the 25th of June through September 2025.
Words by Robyn Lidsky, Cape Town.
