De ArtePub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2020.1829356
K. Bagley
{"title":"Self/Other/Clay/Skin: Reflections on Ceramics by Andile Dyalvane, Juliet Armstrong, and Kim Bagley","authors":"K. Bagley","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2020.1829356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2020.1829356","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This reflection on practice develops the idea of a skin metaphor in the work of a selection of contemporary South African artists working in clay. In particular, it discusses selected works by Juliet Armstrong and Andile Dyalvane in relation to the author's own practice. The author proposes that body- and skin-like forms can speak about how we see ourselves and others within post-apartheid South African cultural contexts. Themes discussed in relation to ceramic works include cultural appropriation, the anxieties of whiteness, and cultural identities. The article covers works produced at least ten years after the pivotal democratic elections in 1994 that symbolise the end of the socially and economically damaging apartheid regime. With this in mind, all of these works can be interpreted as part of an (admittedly flawed) project of slowly healing our metaphorical skin, in which South African artists have grappled with cultural and human identities from a range of highly individual perspectives. In engaging with their works, we are better able to understand specific local human conditions.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"4 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2020.1829356","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48493346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2020.1829357
Wendy Gers
{"title":"Samuele Makoanyane: Reconsidering Ceramics Technology and Connoisseurship in Early Modern Southern African Ceramics","authors":"Wendy Gers","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2020.1829357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2020.1829357","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores ceramics production in the Modern period in South Africa and Lesotho via a contemporary reinterpretation of the oeuvre of the pioneer Mosotho sculptor Samuele Makoanyane (1909–1944). The research methodology includes a critical examination of images of works by Makoanyane in South African public collections, a literature survey of Modern South African and African ceramic sculptural traditions, as well as a detailed scrutiny of two key texts. The first is a booklet by Makoanyane’s agent, C. G. Damant. The second is a report by the artist, curator, teacher, and development consultant Herbert Vladimir Meyerowitz. A critical examination of these texts and images is synthesised with my knowledge of ceramics technology, production techniques, and professional studio practices. The resultant article opens up a new framework for understanding Makoanyane’s oeuvre, and aims to engage with Modernist tropes and historiographies concerning connoisseurship via three hypotheses. The hypotheses centre around the operation of a professional workshop in which assistants were employed and serial reproduction technology was used. These hypotheses open up new possibilities for understanding and re-evaluating the oeuvre of Makoanyane and other similarly neglected early Modern artists. They are a means to augmenting and enriching knowledge of art, craft, and design history in South Africa, and beyond.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"153 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2020.1829357","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43553826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2020.1769896
D. Riep
{"title":"A Social Life of Pots in Southern Africa","authors":"D. Riep","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2020.1769896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2020.1769896","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The movement of objects both within and across contexts often helps to define social relations. This article explores this notion by focusing on five specific examples of pottery production and use in the history of southern Africa, with examples ranging from early Cape colonial coarse earthenware vessels to 19th- and 20th-century pots produced in and around the central interior, and contemporary South African ceramics. By exploring the contextual production and function of such objects, as well as their formal significance and the movement of such objects across cultural and social boundaries, one can see how pottery in southern Africa maintains a central role in the formation and maintenance of cooperative and interdependent relationships.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"93 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2020.1769896","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44116764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2019.1631552
T. Sonnekus
{"title":"Against Ordentlikheid: Disobedient Femininities in Selected Embroideries by Hannalie Taute","authors":"T. Sonnekus","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2019.1631552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2019.1631552","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the art practice of Hannalie Taute vis-à-vis the discourses of ordentlikheid (respectability) and the volksmoeder (mother of the nation). I begin by offering theoretical frameworks for these discursive structures, as well as a selective historical trajectory of their development, with major emphasis on Afrikaner femininity and Afrikaner women's domestic labour. Through a reading of selected embroidered works by Taute, I speculate on the degree to which the artist revisits and subverts particular narratives of Afrikaner ethnic identity and “women's work” to imagine new modes of feminine expression that challenge the rigid conventions of ordentlikheid and the volksmoeder. My analysis of Taute's embroidery is informed by the concept of radical decadence, which provides a theoretical paradigm for making sense of the strategic use of excess, pleasure, and the taboo in the practices of contemporary women artists working with craft materials. The works were thus selected for their materiality and thematics, which I argue appropriate archaic signifiers of Afrikaner femininity to produce irreverent counter-narratives that resist the policing of female sexuality and other forms of patriarchal subjugation.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"31 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2019.1631552","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49605333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2019.1643072
Y. Coetser
{"title":"Cruel Art: Intersections between Art, Animals, and Morality","authors":"Y. Coetser","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2019.1643072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2019.1643072","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The process of making art, art itself, and the effects of art can be cruel to those who are, often unwillingly or by virtue of being unable to consent, a part of the process. Even though the thought of restricting, controlling, or censoring art is frowned upon, many would agree that cruelty ought to be avoided, condemned, and discouraged. To frame my discussion, I use the term “cruel art”. I define cruel art as any artistic endeavour (for example installation art, performance art, literary works, paintings, sculptures, etc.) that harms non-human animals physically or psychologically. In this article, I firstly examine the notion of cruelty. Thereafter I differentiate between three types of cruel art. I argue that cruel art ought to be avoided as a moral imperative.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"57 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2019.1643072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46969005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2019.1626532
L. V. D. van der Merwe
{"title":"Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa","authors":"L. V. D. van der Merwe","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2019.1626532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2019.1626532","url":null,"abstract":"Acts of Transgression, edited by Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle, speaks to the aesthetics of crises observed in performance or “live art” in contemporary South Africa. The subversive nature of the performances discussed in this book is related to lingering emotions of anger, resentment, and dispossession, but also to a way of articulating the unsayable—the desire to know, to say, and to be (Braidotti 2011, 126). The authors contributing to this book question an understanding of art as mere representations of identities and humanist notions of self, rather positioning figurations as “embedded and embodied, social positions” (Braidotti 2011, 5), constantly in flux and operating as a process of teasing out new meanings of citizenship, agency, and relationality. Acts of Transgression is the product of Pather’s and Boulle’s longstanding interest in and engagement with performance practices in South Africa, supported by the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town, where they are based. The volume consists of 15 chapters, divided into four sections, each addressing a different aspect of the multidisciplinary field of performance or “live art”, as it is referred to in this book. The book contains engagements with a variety of artists’ work by a diverse collection of authors, critics, and artist-writers, who each contribute in a meaningful way to the debates offered in this book.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"104 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2019.1626532","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43504829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2020.1721721
A. Kearney
{"title":"In the World: Essays on Contemporary South African Art, by Ashraf Jamal","authors":"A. Kearney","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2020.1721721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2020.1721721","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"109 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2020.1721721","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46639454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De ArtePub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00043389.2019.1608405
A. Nettleton
{"title":"Promoting “African Art” and African Modernisms in Johannesburg in the 1960s","authors":"A. Nettleton","doi":"10.1080/00043389.2019.1608405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2019.1608405","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the 1960s, during the years in which apartheid was to become fully entrenched in South Africa and black Africans relegated to second-class citizen status, there was an apparently paradoxical growth of interest in art circles in the art of black Africans. Two major players in the Johannesburg art market who acquired large collections of historical African art and promoted contemporary forms said to be African in quality are identified as having fuelled this interest. This article traces the founding of both the Günther Gallery and the Totem Meneghelli Gallery and the influence they exerted on the artists they exhibited and on other emerging galleries in Johannesburg—such as Gallery 101 (later the Pelmama Gallery)—in their constructions of particular African themes and aesthetics in the 1960s and early 1970s. The fact that many of the gallerists involved in this Africa-philia were immigrants from Europe is examined in relation to the apparent paradox noted at the outset and to the politics of race in the South African context and of “primitivism” in the wider art world.","PeriodicalId":40908,"journal":{"name":"De Arte","volume":"55 1","pages":"30 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00043389.2019.1608405","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46638787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}