1. 120 Days of Sodom Manfred Zylla – from series to book
Heidi Rasch
In a review of Manfred Zylla’s latest book, German critic Andrea Schlaier noted
that Zylla’s paintings suggest that the lust for cruelty is inside all of us. The
seventy seven year old German/South African artist does not disagree, points
out that it was not the focus of his series, 120 Days of Sodom. However, the 120
paintings which took the artist a year to complete, are arguable his most
transgressive work since the 1980’s.
Influenced by the writings of Dante Alighieri and the Marquis de Sade, but it was
Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last made film Salò which provided Zylla
with his primary influence. In re-contextualizing the series into book form, Trevor
Steele Taylor was the artist’s first choice as leading essayist. Taylor had met Zylla
in South Africa during the 1980’s, was familiar with his history and his work as a
resistance artist. But it was Taylor’s own history which singled him out as the most
suitable writer for this kind of cross-over art/cinema publication that was
envisaged; a consummate film connoisseur known as the champion of the
alternative, non-conformist, eccentric and often obscure film practitioner.
Taylor is the film curator who programs his festivals with the gems of cinema
found on the deep outskirts of the non-mainstream, films either forgotten or
considered too controversial.
In a recent interview Taylor notes that: “Zylla comes to de Sade through a
relationship with the lens of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini is
probably the most directly political of filmmakers. That said, he is also the most
spiritual; a Marxist with deep understanding of the message and the journey of
Christ, and a homosexual who glorified the natural energy and innocence of
sexuality in its widest meaning.”
According to Taylor Pasolini’s final film, Salò is: “cinema on the very edge of the
abyss. Sade’s book concerns a group of libertines (representing power in the
form of religion, politics, finances and governance) who, through their wealth,
kidnaps a group of the children of the rich to fulfill, through a series of ritualistic
orgies, their depraved desires. Pasolini reset the events in fascist Italy in the last
months of the war, with the same pantheon of power brokers now gorging their
cruelty and lust for power on the kidnapped children of the proletariat. Zylla’s
series of paintings vary between direct representations of frames from Pasolini’s
film as well as side references to modern consumerism, nuclear immolation, the
rape of Gaia (fracking) and militarism (the military-industrial complex).”
Zylla has said about the series: “As a painter I wanted to immortalize particular
scenes from Pasolini’s film by making small and intimate paintings. I used the

2. outline of a screen to frame these scenes and Pasolini’s cast characters. I
wanted to disrupt the original context and settled on a non sequential
sequence in the series. I wanted each painting to own its own narrative. My
paintings are not film stills – they bear the burden of my intricate brushstrokes.
Collectively the series acts as homage to Pasolini, but perhaps also reflect the
world today - in all its brutality. A world gripped, trapped and slowly being
suffocated by a lust for power and desire to consume. That is the vision I share
with Pasolini. In the book I relied on multiple voices to comment on the main
threads of the series. I have not worked with writers in this way before, but
throughout my career I have included text in most of my work, I have
collaborated with fellow artists both in South Africa and in Germany, and
probably my most memorable collaborative project was when I invited my local
community to alter my artworks. ”
In addition to Taylor’s essay, the book also includes text submissions by thirty one
writers drawn from a variety of backgrounds, nationalities and professions. The
writers were briefed to not reference Zylla’s artworks but instead focus on the
contemporaneity of the three main influences. It was not only Pasolini’s legacy
as a filmmaker which creates the bridge between the visual and written sections
but also his influence as poet, and his strong views on language. Mother
tongue submissions were thus favoured and writers were limited to a word
count; an intentional stripping of explicatory detail. The linkage to cinema
continues in the text section with the inclusion of two excerpts from film scripts,
the voice of an actor and a reference to music, through the lyrics of COIL.
Once printed and bound, the visually rich 120 Days of Sodom Manfred Zylla
developed into a publication which is difficult to categorize; as an art book it
has found its way onto the book shelves of art museum libraries; the text content
has taken the book into some of the world’s leading research libraries and its
rich cinema content has secure its arrival at several film libraries and institute’s.
120 Days of Sodom Manfred Zylla is published by ErdmannContemporary in
Cape Town, South Africa.
Text by Trevor Steele Taylor, Aryan Kraganof, John Peffer, Chris Pretorius,
Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, Professor John Higgins, Nicola Roos, Ludwig Binge,
Antonín Mareš, Marlene Le Roux, Dr Nomusa Makhubu, Andrea Dicó, Niklas
Zimmer, Caspar Greeff, Ivor Powell, Rafael Powell, Tim Leibbrandt, Pablo Cesar,
Andrea Tapper, Stephen Thrower, Dr Ludmila Ommudsen Pessoa, Professor
Rozena Maart, Erik Chevalier, Ashraf Jamal, Carsten Rasch, Hofmeyr Scholtz,
James Matthews, Garth Erasmus, Cheng Qian, Cheng Haotian, Usen Obot &
Paul Valentine.