Lippy Lipshitz: Sculptor and Man

by

Bernard Sachs

From a first meeting you would think that Lippy was a simple sort of fellow you could twist round your finger. But you would be wrong---As I was to discover one day when, with the satire worthy of Moliere, he mercilessly lampooned one of the “bourgeois gentilhomme” of Lower Houghton. Into this home of Johannesburg’s nouveau riche, an attempt was made to import the ceremonial from the stately homes of England, where it still has some kind of ghostly existence---and the result, as in Moliere, was highly comic. Raucous was the laughter as Lippy related how the black waiter, duly appareled in all the requisite regalia---white gloves, red sash, the lot---gave him a nerve-shattering slap on the shoulder, and with the salutation: “Hey, mister!” asked him to “pass that there plate over there.” This introduction seems a long way from sculpture. But not really. For the whole of Lippy’s art revolves about an understanding of the human condition---subtly and imaginatively, as you would expect, from one devoted to a field of human creativity as ancient as any. It was said of the great French sculptor Rodin that he could see past the mask of your face, right into your heart. So don’t lightly ask Lippy to sculpt you---and don’t lightly ask him to dinner. Yes Lippy does look more ingenuous that the average harassed or sophisticated businessman. Art may be simple by comparison with business these days, what with the electronic accounting machines becoming the vogue. But it is a divine simplicity that penetrates to the spirit of eternity lodged within seemingly dead wood and stone, and before which the electronic devices remain impotent. If the disastrous day should arrive when the machine extinguishes the Promethean fire, then it will be time for man to take final leave of this chequered planet of ours.

The second impression Lippy makes on you is that of a dreamer. Lippy knows people and he is liked by all because there is nothing of the ivory tower about him. He mingles easily with all types. But there is also a solitude about him, a withdrawal from people so that he can contemplate the problems of art and resolve them. And that is as it should be. For the artist, if he is to fulfill himself, must enter a sort of Phrygia, where things are not what they seem to be.  And under this spell he can find more than sermons in the stones and trees---the raw material from which he harmonises matter and form under the light of eternity. Yes, Lippy is a dreamer. The things he dreams have been dreamt about from the time that the Bushmen out of the Paleolithic age went off to hunt, and one remained behind to win form out of a stone with hammer and chisel. “We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams . . . “ is O’Shaughnessy’s beautiful paean to the artist. But to be a fine artist it is not enough just to observe people---their fears and hopes, greed and magnanimity---one must know the human race in all its tortuous complexity through the rich treasures of the past. And thus I was not at all surprised to learn that Lippy walks around with a volume of Plato or Montaigne in his pocket. Sculpture is more than his profession---it is his very life and being. The citadel of the human spirit will not easily yield to your assault. Your equipment has to be good, and must be drawn from the armoury of mankind’s heritage. You can’t fluke your way to victory.

And there is one more essential quality of the genuine artist. He should merge spiritually with the environment in which he creates---a rounded and complete personality who approaches his awesome task in terms of a wholeness that is part of the living, throbbing scene about him. This is not easy for the Jew with all his rootlessness and wanderings. Where he was not totally beyond the pale and oppressed, he was a marginal man barely tolerated. But Lippy gave me the impression, when I saw him some months ago in Cape Town, that on the wings of his art he had easily negotiated the racial chasm. It is perhaps not too difficult in easy-going Cape Town, where hates, racial or otherwise, are b not carried to extremes---and where the Coloureds, moving through a ghetto-like penumbra, form one of the dominant themes of this fascinating city. Lippy is a chip of the Peninsular block, to use a sculptural image. Here are his roots. It was in the shadow of Table Mountain that he grew up and where his artistic sense flowered. Its contours fascinated him---as if it had been sculptured by some giant hand. But beyond Nature is Man, with all his wonder and all his woe. Listen to Lippy talking about the Malays of Cape Town, and it becomes immediately apparent that he has probed them to the full, that he is in complete communion with them. It is not only that the Jews and Malays in the early days rubbed tattered elbows in the poorer quarters of Cape Town. Lippy sees also a spiritual affinity. “There is something of the spirit of Chassidism about them,” he said to me. This may not sound obvious, but with the necessary reservations I could see what he meant. The song and dance of the Chassidism has this in common with the Coon Carnival---that in both cases it is essentially an escape from harsh reality, as if they were dancing and singing their sorrows away. The common denominator is uprootedness and alienation.

In Cape Town is Lippy’s immediate inspiration, it is not his only one---his roots go back to other times and other climes. Lippy was born in 1903 in Plungyan, Lithuania, from where quite a number of notable South Africans hailed---including that artist-horseman Cocky Feldman, and the wholesale druggists the Sives. Wolf Heller is Ponevez-born. Lippy spent the first five years of his life in an Orthodox home, and it has left an indelible mark on his personality and his artistic expression, even if this original inspiration has with the years and the change of environment been transmuted into quite different coin. His grandfather was the beadle of the synagogue and a bookbinder. He also had architectural qualities of a kind, and he rebuilt the synagogue. Yankel Faiva is to this day referred to in the most reverent terms by every Plungyaner. Lippy told me that the late Abraham Sive often bought sculptures from him, not because of their artistic merit, but because of the link with Yankel Faiva---I’ve seen Johannesburgers buy works of art on less valid grounds. There were tentative efforts in the direction of artistic creativity among the villagers, which fascinated the child Lippy---the hommendrayers for Purin, candelabras for Chanukah, and much else that proved to be the portals to a new world. He can still see in his mind’s eye the beautiful pattern his aunts had embroidered on the curtaining of the Holy Ark in silver and gold thread.

And then from the flatlands of Lithuania he he came to the City of the Mountain and to the sea. From an eastern environment reaching back to the medieval, he was suddenly transported to western influences---a counterpoint out of which much of his artistic fire was born. Lippy is proud of the fact that he brought to this comparatively new country a craftsmanship and a spirit deriving from an ancient heritage. But humanity overlaps and interweaves at many points, despite the age-old demarcations, and it is Art that mercifully helps to wipe out he divisions. One of the first carvings Lippy was the Great Trek, in which he saw a parallel to the Exodus from Egypt. Lippy spent much time at the Constitution Street Synagogue. While the Talmudists pored over their tomes, he would collect the tallow from their candles. And then to while away the tedium waiting for the service, he would relate tales of wonder and horror to his schoolmates, which he would illustrate with improvised modellings. The beadle resented this distraction from things more solemn.

Sculptor Moses Kottler was an important influence in Lippy’s life. Let Lippy now do a little reminiscing on the local artists who helped to shape his career:
            “Kottler’s stern, constructive criticism and technical advice
             was a great help. With Meyer Fortes, now a Cambridge
              professor, Im used to ’shlepp’ my ponderous ‘oeuvres’ all the
              way to Kottler’s cottage, a distance of ten miles by train and
              two on foot from where I lived. My studio at home was a
              coal-shed partly filled with coal. I got my coarse, red clay
              from a nearby brickfield. I had a model whom I paid with
              books by Jack London and Rex Beach. Until I met
              Meyerowitz, my plastic efforts were confined to modelling. I
              drew my subjects from the life around me. I liked making
              figures and people at work. The Cape washerwomen,
              labourers and Coloured hawkers were my favourite models.
              Meyerowitz took me under his wing, and I owe a lot to him
              for teaching me the craft of wood carving. My first job was
              carving a tombstone in teak for a Coloured hawker, who paid
              me in watermelons while the season lasted.”
Incidentally, Lippy finds the rugged Africans very good subject matter sculpturally, and the Malays a fertile field for painting. So did Gauguin. With due modesty he confesses that he does not understand the African.

In 1928 Lippy married and went to Paris to study. It was the world’s cultural capital, where many hopes and aspirations were dashed to the ground and the fittest survived. Lippy got to know the fullest meaning of privation. Many an hour he stood on the banks of the Seine, its waters flowing peacefully to sea---little concerned with Man’s trials and tribulations. And Lippy also knew the meaning of privation when he returned to South Africa, before he gained the recognition which is his due. But he is not in the least bitter about it. He even regards it as an enrichment. What is more, I knew him in those days, and he was the same genial Lippy as today, now that fortune has smiled on him. He is a lecturer at the Michaelis School of Art, where, in his own words, he preaches and teaches sculpture. And he is nor displeased that his influence is greater than his own creative work. Hundreds of students have passed through his hands, and his greatest reward is that he is contributing to the development of sculpture in this country. Varied are the visitors who come to his studio to look at his work. Recently, tobacco tycoon A. E. Rupert blew in. They chatted over a cigarette and Lippy advised him to have more leisure after two hours had gone up in smoke and a look of repose settled on his visitor. Mr. Rupert, who told reporters that he spends a third of his time in planes racing to every corner of the planet, sighed deeply and went off to the D. F. Malan Airport---to catch the next plane to Johannesburg. He is interested in one of Lippy’s works---King size.

Lippy has with the years moved away from subjects of Jewish interest into the more universal. But he has not broken artistically with his racial roots. A favourite work of his, which is still with him because he values it so highly, is his “Simchas Torah Mirror” in teak, composed of ecstatic Chassidim dancing with Torahs and happy, flag-waving children, entwined in singing scrolls and synagogue décor. And at his recent Cape Town exhibition, about which everyone spoke in the most glowing terms, the outstanding work was the “Moses” which the Salisbury Museum of Art has bought. Judaism, basing itself on the Second Commandment against graven images, frowns upon reproduction of the human figure. And for centuries it scorned classic Hellenic art. But it has not prevented a Jacob Epstein from emerging as the most significant figure in the world of sculpture. And it has not prevented Lippy from attaining to a very good standard. Technique and imagination are perfectly harmonized in his work, and strength dominates sentimentally. Delicately, and at the same time boldly, he makes form and life emerge from chaos. A reverence for the material, and a knowledge of their inner tensions, grain and texture, are a feature of his work. His figures glow as they are touched by his humanity. It may truly be said of Lippy that he possesses both hands and wings.

From: Bernard Sachs, South African Personalities and Places, Kayor Publishers, Johannesburg, 1959.