Celebrate South African artist, the late Walter Battiss, is looming large again - on a range of cushion covers and with a new retrospective show. By Lin Sampson. He comes out of the water, a mammoth, seaweed hanging from his head, a vast shipwreck of a man; if not King Neptune himself, then certainly a self-styled "wild man". This is how he looked the first - and only - time I met Walter Battiss. It was 1968 on a Greek island. I was to find out later that he was an artist working in South Africa and that some interesting work was coming out of this blotched and dishevelled person.Much in vogue in the '60s, a forester, a cruncher of rules, a free speaker, Battiss (1906-1982) was a natural primitive who attracted acolytes and achieved the status of a guru, although some were shocked by him. One respectable neighbour called him "this overweight man in shorts driving a Rolls-Royce". He was an irrepressible nudist.Some of his earlier works have such flair and the intimacy of locality one could smell them. Once, homesick in London, I came across a print of boys in a swimming pool. They had cast off their clothes and thrown down their bicycles. I burst into tears.mini_story_image_vleft1His inspiration from rock art had such an unexpected Picasso-like sophistication, it could make you gasp.Fishermen Drawing Nets, with its thick unfashionable colours, always spikes me - takes me back to the hardscrabble countryside in which I was raised.Battiss's fame flared with Fook Island, a fantasy Utopian stop-off with its own currency, passport, stamps, maps, driving licence and language. Norman Catherine was the king and a swag of locals like Janet Suzman and Esmé Berman became citizens; Jani Allan also requested to be a resident. He made Linda Givon, founder of the Goodman Gallery, the queen of Fook Island, a decision that might have had some commercial considerations. Censorship was banned; sadly there was little to censor.Givon says: "The joy of the years I had rollicking through art with him have formed a part of my life I never want to forget. On the way to Cape Town on a plane, we talked of many things and together we defined and redefined Fook Island."The airline meal was a sandwich with mayonnaise seeping out in a yellow ooze and a dead piece of tomato and gherkin. Batiss contemplated it for a long while. "Are you going to eat it?" Givon asked."Good God no, but I have a friend in Germany who collects this sort of thing. I don't think he has one from SAA." He proceeded to number and sign it.block_quotes_start Battiss created an imaginary country and appointed himself King Ferd III; fellow artists were also given royal titles - and passports block_quotes_endIn New York, denied access to trendy nightclub Plato's Republic, he said, putting on his royal crown, "But I am King Ferd III of Fook Island." He produced the Fook passport. He was given admittance and called "your majesty", testimony either to his charm or the club's foolishness.With an excessive personality, it is difficult to separate the person from the work.He was often accompanied by a life-sized doll, with no eyes, no mouth or breasts and scissor hands, symbolising censorship during apartheid.As he got older he slouched into the murk of hippydom, cohabiting with the bats and dogs of silly ideas (after all it was the Age of Aquarius), hoping perhaps to flush out some deep insight but only blundering into a fashionable darkness of half-baked ideas. He sought intellectual redemption with visits to such places as the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado.full_story_image_hleft2Art historian Karin Skawran writes in a brilliant essay, referring to Fook Island, "the underlying seriousness of his work is often overlooked".I disagree. I believe Fook Island finished Battiss off as an artist. Much of the work was facile and irritatingly clichéd, a sort of painted version of Mao's sayings. Once someone said, "I just adore Fook Island" (as many did), I knew I would have little in common with him or her.His view of the world was innocent because he never really became an adult, a state I have always been suspicious of; an adult painter must be willing to weigh up relative morality rather than take refuge in crude absolutes.story_article_right1It is true he understood the fine grain of African art and his great value lies in his humble interpretation of rock painting. Would it please him to know that his work will now be available on scatter cushions courtesy of The Walter Battiss Company?Ironically, it is singularly apt for a cushion cover because nobody knew better than the Bushman that a lot of history can be embedded in a single symbol.Battiss Retrospective, New Church Gallery, Cape Town, May 14 to August 29 2015. For more information, e-mail info@thenewchurch.co.zaDid you know?Battiss was so prolific that owning one is not beyond possibility. A friend bought one recently on an auction for R40 000. If you own an original Battiss, you are in luck. African Figures sold for R256 2200 in November 2012 by Strauss & Co Auctioneers and prices are rising...