South African Artist Research Articles

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE AND LAND ART IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

This paper analyses the relationships between literature and land art, in a comparative and cooperative perspective. A feeble monument in Kenya, erected by Karen Blixen and dedicated to her beloved, finds echoes in a paper installation by Canadian artist Marlene Creates. Both monuments present a strong gender signature. J.M. Coetzee's novel In the Heart of the Country (1976) includes writing with stones in the Karoo desert not dissimilarly from what children do in a popular game, where they draw with stones. Finally, Margaret Atwood provides a memorable example of bioart and ecoart in her novel The Year of the Flood (2009), where insects co-participate in the artistic project, right as South African artist William Kentridge managed to produce drawings and a film with ants. All these examples show a cooperative approach to art between humans and non-humans, be they rocks, insects, bones.

Time-Maps

Abstract This article considers how time, space, and history are mobilized across a contemporary range of debates in postcolonial studies, world literature theory, and memory studies. The time-maps surveyed all revolve around Eurochronology and its contestations, and range from novels by Joseph Conrad and V.S. Naipaul, to a video installation and essay by the South African artist William Kentridge, to the critical study of the Indian Ocean world. Traversing literature, art, critical theory, and personal story, the essay provides an imaginative and imagistic guide to new ways of thinking time. It concludes with a speculation on the promise of a “soft” rather than “mean” time, the latter evoking imperial standardization and the former describing a terrain in which affect and history are set in rippling motion.

Venus Hottentot vs. Modernity

In this interview, the multifaceted South African artist Lebogang Mashile discusses her creative process and collaborations concerning her play Venus Hottentot vs. Modernity. Saartjie Baartman is a main source of inspiration and this can be seen through Mashile’s use of different art mediums (poetry, writing and performance). The intricacies and paradoxes of slavery, colonialism and their contemporary legacies are addressed so as to reflect on the hardships black women have faced and still have to face to this day.

Rorke’s Drift (or Sandlwane)—with Measured Thanks

ABSTRACT In this article, the author addresses the problematic mythologising of certain institutional “opportunities” negotiated by black artists during apartheid—notably those associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC) Art and Craft Centre, Rorke’s Drift—and the inscription of such “opportunities” within South African art historical discourse as originary narratives of white beneficence, at the expense of black subjective agency and self-authorship. The refusal of bestowal (or “measured thanks”) articulated by artists such as Cyprian Shilakoe and Azaria Mbatha calls for, as the author argues, something more than a diligent programme of historical revision—rather, it warrants another form of appreciation altogether. This involves a relational and imaginative stepping in to what Olu Oguibe calls a “terrain of difficulty” (The Culture Game, 2004. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 11) and an acknowledgement there of the multiple transactions by which black artists have navigated an institutionalised art economy of non-opportunity. Turning to recent curatorial projects by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Gabi Ngcobo, Yvette Mutumba, and Same Mdluli, the author considers ways in which their various (and alternative) approaches to “black art histories” enable the possibility of a more open, inhabited and less historically fixed appreciation.

Touch as an aesthetic experience

ABSTRACT Touch is gaining attention in sensory studies and in art practice where the over-emphasis on sight and visuality in academic discourse is increasingly been questioned. The exhibition The Blind Astronomer (2013) by South African artist Berco Wilsenach participated in this larger critique of visuality by inviting audiences to engage with the works through the sense of touch. In particular, the artworks exposed the limitations of the spectatorial epistemology of modern Western scientific discourse. In this article, I explore some of the ways in which the exhibition questioned long-held assumptions about the primacy of vision in Western science and aesthetics, the relationship between touch and vision, and touch as an aesthetic experience. The eviction of touch from the gallery and museum as well as from what is considered to count as aesthetic experience has led to an absence of language adequate to describing the complex nature of aesthetic touch. I suggest that first-hand accounts of blind peoples’ haptic experiences with art, combined with insights gained from research in psychology as well as experiments by artists who encourage tactile encounters with their work can enrich and enhance how we understand an aesthetic experience that is simultaneously visual and tactile.

Displacing Whiteness in the Arts and Education: Dialogues in Action

The authors join forces with South African artist Sethembile Msezane in a discussion entitled “Art & Action: Displacing Whiteness in the Arts.” The transcript presents musings and strategies shared by arts professionals and practitioners of color that focus on decentering and destabilizing Whiteness within the field.

African Modernism: A Comparative Study of Resistance in the Modernist Art of Nigeria and South Africa

This paper adopts comparative analysis as a classic art historic methodology for the study of resistance in the art during African modernism in Nigeria and South Africa. Other methodologies that are combined in this paper as an underlying paradigm and analytical methods include formal analysis and cultural history. While the comparative analysis is adopted to interrogate commonalities for similarities and differences regarding African modernism and resistance art produced by some modern artists in Nigeria and South Africa, the formal analysis is articulated to focus on gathering information exclusively from the visual elements of each work and the meanings conveyed to viewers and the cultural history method is adopted to narrate a history that is recalled or invoked in each art. The comparison reveals that, while the South African artists were engaged in resistance art which convey political commentaries, Nigeria artists were engaged in resistance art that relayed cultural commentaries.

William Kentridge: Process as Metaphor & Other Doubtful Enterprises

William Kentridge: Process as Metaphor & Other Doubtful Enterprises

Black South African Artists in Conversation: Nongqawuse, ‘The Bellow of the Bulls’ and Other Travelling Tropes in Zakes Mda’s <i>The Heart of Redness</i>

This article attempts to move beyond readings of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness in relation to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and other novels within the Western literary canon. My aim is to transcend the exhausted tropes of “writing back” that inevitably frame black artistic expressions as necessarily engaged with empire, responding to whiteness or trapped in the Manichean self-other dialectic, the obvious danger of which is the implication that black people are objects in the Western project of domination. Blackness, after all, is not merely a reflection of white selfnegation. By contrast I re-read The Heart of Redness as in dialogue with, and contributing to, the broader (and ongoing) existential conversations that black South African artists working in different media and genres have been engaging in for many years now. I argue that these artists have been talking to each other – whether consciously or not – in their adoption of certain motifs or tropes, which they approach from within a range of distinct disciplines, perspectives and historical moments.Keywords: Zakes Mda, Nongqawuse, writing back, tragedy, transdisciplinarity, the Bellow of the Bulls, Black Consciousness

Festival loyalty to a South African literary arts festival: action speaks louder than words!

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature by focusing on the profile and loyalty of visitors to a literary arts festival in South Africa. In addition, this research advocates that festivals can influence visitors’ supplementary behavioural intentions and actions beyond loyalty in the form of literary arts appreciation, purchases and tourism. Design/methodology/approach A visitor survey was conducted at one of the oldest literary arts festivals in the country where a total of 391 completed self-administered questionnaires were obtained. The statistical analyses comprised three factor analyses (motives to attend the festival, satisfaction with the festival offering elements and behavioural intentions) as well as structural equation modelling, to establish the relationship between the motives, evaluation of the “festivalscapes”, behavioural intentions and loyalty. Findings The findings confirmed that literary arts festival loyalty is the principle behavioural intention that will occur after attending a literary arts festival. However, the results demonstrated that literary arts festivals also have the potential to increase and stimulate supplementary behavioural intentions in the form of greater awareness of the arts, increased purchasing behaviour of literary works, increased travel to support the literary arts and greater personal involvement. Practical implications Festivals, irrespective of the art form that they showcase, therefore, play a significant role in encouraging and increasing purchasing behaviour, which is vital to the viability and continuation of the arts industry. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to research the literary arts festival market in South Africa, thereby making a distinct contribution by expanding the literature on the needs of this neglected market and the aspects that influence loyalty to these types of festivals.

Violetta's Further Predicament: La traviata under Apartheid

Long before opera was first heard in South Africa, and even longer before it took root there, the country had its own operatic figure. But Adamastor was not introduced to the rest of the operatic world until 1865 and the premiere of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, where in Nélusko's Act III ballade the terrifying story is told of the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocky spine of the Cape Peninsula and barred sailors from rounding the ‘Cape of Storms’ and opening up the sea route to the East. The literary invention – perhaps via Rabelais – of Luís Vaz de Camões, the great Portuguese Renaissance poet who himself was the first European artist to round the Cape, Adamastor appears in Canto V of Os Lusíadas (1572) and has exercised a considerable fascination over South African artists and writers. But to whom does Adamastor belong? This is a question that some, increasingly, have sought to answer, re-examining Camões's myth from an indigenous perspective – for example, André Brink in his postmodernist novella The First Life of Adamastor, imagining how that meeting with the Portuguese fleet would have looked from the landward side, and the artist Cyril Coetzee in his huge T'kama-Adamastor painting commissioned for the University of the Witwatersrand.

The Socio-Economic Challenges of South African Indigenous Musicians: A Case Study of Venda-Based Vho-Ntshengedzeni Mamphodo

This article discusses and raises awareness about the socio-economic plight of indigenous musicians in South Africa. Through a qualitative case study of the Venda musician, Vho-Talelani Andries Ntshengedzeni Mamphodo, dubbed the “Father of mbila music,” the article highlights the fact that the welfare of Black South African artists, particularly indigenous musicians in South Africa, is generally a precarious affair. Their popularity, at the height of their careers, sometimes masks shocking details of exploitation, neglect, and the poverty they are subjected to, which are exposed only after they have died. Empirical data identifies this as a symptom of, among other things, cultural policy and arts management deficiencies in the promotion of indigenous music. The article aims to find ways to redress this unfortunate situation, which is partially a product of general apathy and scant regard that these artists have perennially been subjected to, even by their own governments, as well as some members of their societies. All these factors mentioned are compounded by ignorance on the part of South African artists. Part of the objective of this study was to establish whether the exposition of the Vhavenda musicians is a typical example of all Black South African indigenous musicians and, if this is the case, whether the suggested ways to redress this unfortunate situation could contribute to or play a role in alleviating the plight of such artists in the entire country.

The relationship between decision-making factors and ‘festivalscapes’ with visitor loyalty: Evidence from a South African national arts festival

Orientation: The escalating number of festivals leads to competition, with festivals finding themselves in the decline phase of their product’s lifecycle. In South Africa, many festivals choose to terminate, but in the case of Aardklop, the festivals chose to undergo a rebranding and repositioning process. The question is to what extent did the rebranding process influence visitors’ decision to attend the festival? Research purpose: This research determined the key ‘festivalscape’ and decision-making factors, including the rebranding and repositioning of the festival, and established the relationship between these factors and visitors’ loyalty to Aardklop. Motivation for the study: Although Aardklop and its offerings are clearly popular among the public, to date, no research attempts have been made to determine which factors influence visitors’ loyalty towards the festival. Research design, approach and method: The research was quantitative, and a survey was conducted in 2017 where 498 completed visitor questionnaires were obtained. Factor analyses identified the main ‘festivalscape’ and decision-making factors, while structural equation modelling was used to test the relationship between the factors and festival loyalty. Main findings: The results showed that a combination of ‘festivalscape’ and decision-making factors influence loyalty especially the distinct offerings, festival features and experiences. Practical/managerial implications: Managerial and marketing implications are made outlining how the distinct festival offerings need to be emphasised as they have the most significant influence on festival loyalty. Contribution/value-add: This research contributes to a better understanding of the factors that influence visitor loyalty and how these factors can be managed.

Public Art in South Africa: Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents

Public Art in South Africa: Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents

Crossing Worlds: South–North Collaborations as Creative Encounters with Arts, Humanities and Sciences

ABSTRACT The humanities and the arts are increasingly in crisis, yet have never been more needed. To illustrate challenges and possibilities in this crisis, we give examples of collaboration between north and south; and amongst scientists, artists, humanities and legal scholars. As a Canadian law professor and a South African visual arts scholar who co-founded a Johannesburg community art centre, we describe our collaborative work and its lessons. Overall, our work strengthened our convictions that while the humanities are in crisis, they are also in a state of becoming, hope and possibility. We describe two examples: HIV/AIDS prevention work in the early 2000s when artists and humanities resources helped stem the tide of infections in the midst of scientific misinformation about how the disease was spread. Our second example is a seminar abroad for Canadian law students in South Africa. As the responsible faculty members, we integrated arts and humanities pedagogies into the students’ experiences. Students found many encounters unsettling, and arts methods both ameliorated and, in some cases, accented, their discomfort. Discomfort, when normalised and engaged, gave way to curiosity and growth. This work proved useful in addressing broader questions of the role of arts and humanities in future democracies.

Pornographic intersections: race and genitalia in South African political art in the age of digital media

Post-Apartheid South Africa has been characterized by fractious relationships between the races that compose this society and also between the rulers and the ruled. Society has devised many strategies to cope with, understand, resist, and oppose this, but also to bring about change. One of these strategies is the expression of personal viewpoints through elections, social media, protests and humour. This paper is concerned with the deployment of near-pornographic satirical humour in South African politics, satire created to challenge the powerful. Using critical discourse analysis of paintings, citizens’ comments and news media reports, this paper questions the use of ‘genital art’ and offers different readings of these images in the broader context of South African identity politics. Race seems to be the most dominant lens through which the paintings that are the foci of this paper are read. In a racially charged South Africa race is not a funny subject. The paper concludes that the refusal to see humour in South African race relations might be due to the shocking manner of aesthetic representations in these paintings. That the artworks capture the grave levels of the socio-political and economic situation is indisputable but what remains contested could be the modes of representing these situations. All this seems to interplay with race politics and South Africa’s problematic Apartheid past.

Art in Africa: Hedonic price analysis of the South African fine art auction market, 2009–2014

Real asset markets are characterized by illiquidity and heterogeneous assets, presenting challenges to price estimators. Use of a new dataset of 7,553 auction fine art lots brought to market in South Africa, for 2009–14, allows us to examine the full sales hedonic price estimator over a wide set of characteristics. Results validate full sale hedonic pricing: Identities of artists, medium and genre, dating characteristics, and physical characteristics of artwork are significant. External validity of hedonic pricing is supported by out-of-sample price prediction for 40 individual artists. Auction house catalogue presentation of art work also proves correlated with realized auction prices. Art as an asset finds support: art prices move countercyclically with GDP and domestic equity markets, pro-cyclically with off-shore equity markets, implying a risk diversification role. JEL Codes: D1, L8. Keywords: hedonic price equation, art market, South Africa Word Count: 9467 (including all Tables, Figures, References).

The Blue Notes: South African jazz and the limits of avant-garde solidarities in late 1960s London

ABSTRACTFor the Blue Notes, an ensemble comprised of South African jazz musicians living in Britain, 1968 was pivotal. After 3 years on the margins of the London jazz scene, their debut album Very Urgent was released in May that year to positive acclaim. Very Urgent was understood as an important statement of the British jazz avant-garde movement that captured the spirit of 1968, infused with the Blue Notes’ musical South Africanisms. In this article, I explore how shifting understandings of jazz in the 1960s aided and undermined the Blue Notes’ musical identities: as mbaqanga, hard bop, and free jazz musicians. I argue that Very Urgent and, to an extent, the Blue Notes cannot be understood solely in the terms favored by their early reception in Britain. Rather, both represent a complex matrix of personal, musical, and political relations that constituted British and South African jazz art worlds in the 1960s.

Why Jazz? South Africa 2019

I consider the current state of jazz in South Africa in response to the formation of the nation-state in the 1990s. I argue that while there is a recurring sense of the precarity of jazz in South Africa as measured by the short lives of jazz venues, there is nevertheless a vibrant jazz culture in which musicians are using their own studios to experiment with new ways of being South African through the freedom of association of people and styles forming a music that sounds both local and comfortable in its sense of place in the global community. This essay uses the words of several South African musicians and concludes by situating the artistic process of South African artist William Kentridge in parallel to jazz improvisation.

Decolonization and popular poetics: from Soweto poetry to diasporic solidarity

This article reads Soweto poetry in terms of Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness thought. I argue that Soweto poetry develops dialectically. It uses popular cultural theorizations of shared daily experience to formulate black solidarity, while remaining attuned to historical change as the Soweto uprising and the murders of Onkgopotse Tiro and Steve Biko unfold. The implication of Biko’s dialectic is that we need to consider Soweto poetry’s volumes not as settled texts in themselves, but as texts in history whose modes and values are constantly re-formed by the very environment of historical impermanence and political contestation from which they emerge. In line with Biko’s dialectic, I argue that Soweto poetry’s affinity with the wider black diaspora is in keeping with its project of developing a fuller humanity after Apartheid, and that its lasting influence on South African artists and poets is but one sign of its sublation. Biko’s dialectic, I argue, offers South African literary history a way of thinking a genuinely multiracial, transnational canon via a national experience of political conflict and contested cultural value. Moreover, I suggest, the presence of a suppressed women’s poetic tradition after Soweto 1976 means that we ought to complicate Biko’s thought by contemplating the South African literary canon via polythetic, intersecting dialectics. Keywords: Steve Biko, Black Consciousness, dialectic, literary canon, Soweto poetry, Mongane Wally Serote, Oswald Mtshali, Mafika Gwala, Sipho Sepamla