This article first appeared in www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com

18th February 2010

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For better or worse, South African history over the last 120 years has been closely tied to the country’s mineral wealth – and, more specifically, to the extraction of that wealth by a combination of entrepreneurial energy and worker exploitation.

The mining industry has produced images that have become iconic: the hard-hatted miner operating by torchlight, the lift carrying workers thousands of meters underground, the gleaming gold bars that emerge from a furnace. Yet each of these is an ambiguous symbol, suggesting both a proud heritage of engineering feats and economic growth, and a shameful history linked to race- and class-based oppression.

The visual arts offer one way of exploring such ambiguities, as recent and current exhibitions by two South African artists demonstrate.

This article first appeared in THE SOUTH AFRICAN ART TIMES

December 2009/January 2010

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In 2009, a year during which South Africa acquired a new president, a bulky new cabinet and a raft of new policy documents that may or may not remedy an old set of socio-economic problems, art exhibitions in Johannesburg reflected continuity rather than change.

There was, of course, plenty of work by artists following the injunction to “make it new”; but there was also a curatorial tendency to look backwards, to recuperate or consolidate aspects of the country’s twentieth-century artistic legacy. For this reviewer, certainly, the year began and ended in retrospection.

This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

13th December 2009

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If I had a time machine, two people I’d want to put in the same room are Malcolm Terrey and Erasmus of Rotterdam. I think they’d have a lot to talk about.

Erasmus – a theologian and scholar, the most prominent Dutchman of the European Renaissance – is best known for his work, In Praise of Folly; Terrey, on the other hand, is associated with folly on stage (not only in the long running Jo’burg Follies series, but in farces, travesties, revues and light-hearted romps of all kinds).

This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

6th December 2009

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Usually I hate it when people try to scare me with tales of haunted houses and evil spirits. I’d like to claim that this is because – as an ardent rationalist – I refuse to buy into ghost stories. There’s already plenty to be scared about in our day-to-day lives (crime, reckless driving and the mortal consequences of government incompetence) without having recourse to supernatural terrors.

Yet, if I’m honest, my dislike actually stems from the fact that I’m easily frightened. When listening to macabre camp fire stories or watching B-grade horror movies, I get the willies like a little boy, crawl into a ball on my chair and cling to my wife’s arm with clammy hands.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

7th November 2009

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Nowadays, we tend to take synthesis for granted. While racial and cultural conflicts persist, post-apartheid South Africa has seen a gradual dissolving of binaries such as ‘black’ and ‘white’, ‘African’ and ‘western’. For a long time, however, these were fixed categories; those who successfully negotiated them were few and far between.

There was a particular generation of white English-speaking South Africans to whom this presented an acute dilemma. Born into an already-segregated nation in the early decades of the twentieth century, they joined the ‘mother country’ Britain and her allies in fighting a war against fascism, only to see the entrenchment of fascist principles in South African law in the years following 1948.

This article first appeared in WITS REVIEW

Volume 10 (October 2009)

Literati are inclined to pronounce, after watching a movie based on a novel or non-fiction work they have read, “The book was better than the film.” Of course, comparisons between genres are odious – and, moreover, the facile assumption that printed texts are more complex than visual or aural ‘texts’ is an inadequate formulation in societies where images and sounds have primacy over the written word.

There is, nevertheless, an obvious but important sense in which written text comes prior to an actor’s performance, to a camera recording and even to post-production tricks: almost all feature films have their origins in a script, or screenplay.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

17th October 2009

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Wilma Cruise didn’t want to be a mentor. When Teresa Lizamore, owner and curator of Artspace, invited her to participate in the gallery’s mentorship programme, Cruise was adamant: “I said to Teresa, ‘I don’t want to teach skills, to nursemaid anybody or to struggle with fundamentals’.”

Fortunately for Cruise, the young artist she was paired with, Louis Olivier, didn’t need to be taught. Instead, she found herself taken aback by “the array of Louis’ sculptural and painting skills. It’s a thing of beauty to watch him cutting, grinding and manipulating material. He has an instinctive understanding of ‘how things work’.”

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

26th September 2009

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Walter Benjamin famously insisted that the age of mechanical reproduction, in which works of art can be reproduced and widely distributed, has removed the “aura” of authenticity that is associated with original and unique artworks – a sacred association dating back to their use in religious and spiritual practices. As a result, Benjamin argued, art can no longer be based on ritual but must be firmly entrenched in the realm of politics.

Visitors to “Painted Narratives from India: Preserving History Through the Art of Story-Telling” might well expect to have this trend reinforced, if not because of the relentless politicisation of South African art (which we bring to bear on artworks from elsewhere in the world), then because it would seem safe to assume that the items on display must be reproductions. How, after all, can the murals of grand temple complexes and musty caves be displayed halfway across the world – except through pale imitation?

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

19th September 2009

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Braam Kruger was a man of many parts: artist, restaurateur, TV personality, writer, general dissident and latter-day Lothario.

He applied great energy to the art of living and was well-known for his skill as a raconteur, his peremptory comments about many of his fellow artists, his curious dress sense and other quirks – such that his personality (or the persona he cultivated) often overshadowed his substantial artistic output. After his death last year, friends and former colleagues decided to rectify this imbalance by putting together a retrospective exhibition.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

19th September 2009

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They’re odd creatures, teenagers; or, rather, they have an odd effect. Adult patrons at theatres, concert halls and other terribly sophisticated arts venues feel anxious shivers down their spines when a group of adolescents walk in – an anxiety confirmed by loud whispers during the overture and aggravated by sporadic giggles.

Every now and again, however, the tables are turned and adults find themselves in the minority. This happened to me at the Joburg Theatre last week, when I attended a matinee performance of the SA Ballet Theatre’s Giselle staged primarily for school pupils – an event forming part of Johannesburg’s Arts Alive Festival. In that context, a strange alchemy occurred: I heard in the whispers an enthusiastic engagement with the production (“Who is she?”; “What’s that one doing?”; “Look at his costume!”), while the giggles were signs of delight at the spectacle onstage and bemusement at the unwritten codes that dictate when it is appropriate to applaud. 

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

12th September 2009

Recently I met an American actress who had been in South Africa for a few months and was considering relocating. “I’d love to live out here,” she said, “but I expect it would be difficult to secure work. It seems many actors here finish each show with few guarantees of what they’ll be doing next. You guys have hardly any rep theatre companies!”

Indeed, ‘rep’ (short for repertory) is hard to come by in this country. The principle is a centuries-old one: a fixed group of performers – sometimes a travelling troupe, but usually a resident company – builds up a broad repertoire of plays that are produced in rotation. Various factors, however, inhibit the development of local professional rep theatre.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

15th August 2009

It is a truism that the arts – and in particular the visual or ‘fine’ arts – cannot thrive without patronage.

The celebrated painting, weaving and pottery of medieval China flourished under the Tang, Ming and Qing emperors. Likewise (despite their many faults) we have the Medici dynasty and a few popes to thank for the Italian renaissance artworks of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and others.

Artists have always depended on either public or private capital to support and promote their work, from the tomb-obsessed pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the guilty philanthropy of the Guggenheims in America. There is often a taint attached to government- and corporate-funded works, an expectation that the artist will endorse a particular ideology or brand; but great art has the capacity to outlast such considerations and to rise above its murky origins.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

18th July 2009

Actors who put on one-man and one-woman shows at this year’s National Arts Festival variously described the experience as “exhausting”, “risky”, “gratifying”, “challenging” and “terrifying”.

Interacting physically, verbally and psychologically with other performers requires no less skill, energy or acuity than ‘going solo’. Nevertheless, holding an audience’s attention when alone onstage is a particularly daunting test of an actor’s ability.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

11th July 2009

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Among the many idiotic things that Springbok coach Pieter De Villiers has said recently, perhaps the least appropriate is his comparison of rugby and dancing as “contact sports” – for while the Boks’ series victory over the Lions was marred by dirty play, there is no such taint attached to South African dance and physical theatre. Certainly, if the productions that have by turns delighted, confounded and affected audiences at the National Arts Festival are anything to go by, we can be unequivocally proud of our dancers.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

11th July 2009

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If you’re a denizen of Grahamstown, or from the Eastern Cape, or were once a student at Rhodes University, this historic varsity town is a cosy and familiar place. Standing on Gunfire Hill (the site of the 1820 Settler Monument Building) and looking down over the small city, which can be taken in with a brief sweep of the eyes, you wouldn’t think it’s easy to get lost here.

Yet each year, the National Arts Festival brings thousands of culture vultures from around South Africa – and, indeed, the globe – to Grahamstown in search of the arts, bohemian living, late-night partying and general invigoration in the cold mid-winter; and, whether you’re a hardened Jo’burger, a Capetonian sophistiqué or an inhabitant of any big metropole, you’re guaranteed to become disorientated at some point. If the throngs of colourful festival-goers, the thousands of posters competing for your attention, the street vendors and the temptations of numerous restaurants and pubs don’t confuse you, the plethora of performance and exhibition venues will.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

27th June 2009

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Cartoons and cartoonists have been much in the news (and in the courtroom) recently. But, as numbers are bandied about – two lawsuits, seven million rand and so on – there is one figure that should not be forgotten: fifty. That’s how many years South Africans have known and loved “Jojo”.

This affable character was created by Len Sak in 1959 and appeared first in Drum magazine, then the World newspaper and subsequently the Post and the Sowetan. In the 1980s, Jojo had his own TV show on SABC 2 and, in celebration of Jojo’s half-century, a selection of the images produced for this series now form the basis of an exhibition currently on display at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

13th June 2009

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The art in portrait painting, Reshada Crouse reflects, is neither to flatter nor to insult: “I try to find a synergy between my subjects’ visions of themselves and what I see in them”.  This perhaps explains why Crouse’s collection of portraits is so eclectic – each subject demands a different approach. A range of materials and styles (not to mention poses and settings) is evident in her work, making it difficult to characterise.

She could be classified as a ‘portraitist’, yet Crouse resists such categories because they can limit the way in which an artist is viewed: “Calling a painting ‘a portrait’ has a favourable effect on the way the sitter is perceived (we have ‘portraits’ of important people, ‘pictures’ of ordinary citizens). But it can demean the artist. Frida Kahlo, Lucien Freud ... although there are many renowned painters whose output consists almost entirely of portraits and self-portraits, you wouldn’t label an exhibition of their work ‘portraiture’.”

This article first appeared in THE MAIL & GUARDIAN

29th May 2009

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The first scholarly journal, it is commonly believed, was the Journal des Scavans (in modern French, savants: “those who know” or, more prosaically, persons of learning). It appeared in January 1665 and was followed, a few months later, by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. As networks of “learned gentlemen” – encompassing both major and minor figures in Europe’s so-called Age of Enlightenment – became formalised on either side of the English Channel, similar publications accommodated a proliferation of scientific theories, political tracts and historiographical miscellania.

Critics such as Zygmunt Bauman have shown, however, that these self-styled hommes des idées et des lettres were not disinterested promoters of reason and the quest for knowledge. For Bauman, as “the Enlightenment reached its full maturity” in the eighteenth century, an age began in which “a managed society, a society consciously designed, planned and supervised by the centralised power [of the state]” was an implementable reality. Who would design the model? Les philosophes, of course – the intellectuals. Who would transfer it to the people? Les professeurs – the educators.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

22nd May 2009

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The annual Wits Arts and Literature Experience (WALE) has come and gone, but one of the festival’s key elements is still on display. “Capital: How Heads Talk” is an exhibition showcasing a number of items from the university’s collection of contemporary and historical African art, on the site of what will be the new Wits Art Museum.

The collection – which has been ‘hidden’ over the last few years during the search for funding and an appropriate gallery space – is a substantial one and the current exhibition features some celebrated South African artists: William Kentridge, Gerard Sekoto, Walter Battiss, Sam Nhlengethwa, Penny Siopis, Robert Hodgins, Brett Murray, Pieter Hugo and Cyril Coetzee, to name a few.

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

16th May 2009

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The two exhibitions currently on display at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg are characterised by substantially different approaches to both form and medium. While the small sculptures in Edoardo Villa’s “Moving Voices” evince a preoccupation with primary colours and basic shapes, “Past/Present” – a selection from Andrew Verster’s work over the last two decades – presents the latter artist’s fascination with complex patterns and rich textures.