Osian's Auction Catalogue The Osianama Series |February 2013

244 1986 “There is, at the heart of any interesting idea of art a volatile center – a sort of living principle – which will not tolerate categoric definition… if you can argue with a work of art it ceases to be one. No one can command the imagination. One does not choose one’s obsessions; they choose one. The demand for a certain kind – any kind – of art is therefore almost certainly a demand for an inferior kind. There is not and never could be in art any such thing as a hierarchy of subjects in order of importance or relevance… Through introspection and fidelity to personal experience a work of art will tell us, what oddly enough we probably did not know, where in fact the shoe pinches and provide the basis of compassionate understanding which only it (the work of art) can provide. To say this is of course to leave out art’s obvious function of giving pleasure… A truly social art is a wrestle with ourselves; it is to entangle self with the basic stuff of reality; it is to get out of our egos and to enter the worlds of universal energy.” – K. Khosa, rpt. in K. Khosa Paintings: JAG ExC.1984 .) 131 K. Khosa b.1 February 1940 The Ball Oil on canvas, 1986 S/d in English ‘KHOSA 86’ l.r., s/d in English ‘KHOSA 86’ on verso. Inscribed in English ‘The Ball’ ‘K KHOSA 1986’ on verso 55.1 x 44.1 in (140.0 x 112.0 cm) Condition Good, a tear mended l.r. Provenance The Artist’s Family Private Collection ` 400,000 – 800,000 US$ 7,270 – 14,540 GBP 5,000 – 10,000