South African art
Shaun de Waal - COURTESEY OF www.southafrica.infoSouth Africa is home to some of the most ancient and beautiful art in the world - the rock art of the ancestors of today's Bushman or San. It is also the scene of a host of diverse and challenging contemporary artists producing important new
work. |
|
|
|
During the colonial era, what artists there were in South Africa tended to concentrate on depicting this "new world" in detail as accurate as they could make it - though sometimes this led to selective emphasis. Artists such as Thomas Baines travelled the country recording its
flora, fauna, people and landscapes - a form of reporting for people back in the metropolis. |
|
Towards the end of the 19th century, painters Jan Volschenk and Hugo Naudé and the sculptor Anton van Wouw began, through their work, to establish a
locally rooted art. Their work is the first glimpse of an artistic vision engaging with life as lived in South Africa, for its own sake, rather than as a "report" to the colonial master. It is the art of the moment in which South Africa, with Union in 1910 and thus the formal end of the colonial era, was beginning to acquire its own national identity. In the first decades of the 20th century, the Dutch-born painter JH Pierneef brought a coolly geometric sensibility to the South African landscape, finding in it a strict but beautiful order; he also, in a way that fed into Afrikaner nationalist ideology, found it bereft of human inhabitants. By the 1930s, two women artists, Maggie Laubscher and Irma Stern, brought a different kind of subjective gaze to South African art by using
the techniques and sensibilities of post-impressionism and expressionism. Their bold way with colour and composition, and the assumption of a highly personal point of view, rather scandalised those with old-fashioned concepts of acceptable art. Yet already younger artists such as Gregoire Boonzaier, Maud Sumner and Moses Kottler were rejoicing in the new spirit of cosmopolitanism they were able to bring to South African art. Art and apartheidThe apartheid years of South African history
(1948-1994) saw a great diversity in South African art, ranging from landscape painting to abstract art, engagements with currents burgeoning in Europe and the United States, to a fiercely local sense of what it meant to be an artist in this country during troubled times. Sometimes South African art seemed to float above the political issues of the day; at other times it tackled them with vigour and insight. Dealing with a South African realityInevitably, in the early years of apartheid, as
in the colonial era, black artists were largely neglected. It was left to white artists (who had the training and the resources, as well as a supportive gallery system) to build a corpus of South African art. After World War II, returning soldiers and some immigrants brought European ideas to the South African art world. In the 1940s, Jean Welz, for instance, born in Austria in 1900, brought a detailed, nuanced and sophisticated style to still lifes, portraits, nudes and landscape paintings. Maurice van Essche, born in Belgium in 1906, brought the modernist techniques of his teacher Matisse to specifically African subject matter, with powerfully stylised forms and often bright ("fauve" or wild) colourings. Our Happy New Year wish for you
Is for your best year yet,
A year where life is peaceful,
And what you want, you get.A year in which you cherish
The past year’s memories,
And live your life each new day,
Full of bright expectancies.We wish for you a holiday
With happiness galore;
And when it’s done, we wish you
Happy New Year, and many
more.
By Joanna Fuchs
SA OLD MASTERS - Please contact us if you have any to sell, or would like to purchase. We have a large selection in stock, at extremely negotiable prices
Conceptual art of the '90sConceptual art in South Africa - which had had significant though muted beginnings in earlier decades - seemed to come into its own in the 1990s. Events such as the two Johannesburg Biennales (1995 and 1997, then discontinued) contributed to a new dialogue between South African artists and currents from other countries. Media such as
video, performance and installation took the place of painting. |
|
Shaun de Waal
|
|
Jeremy Wafer, for instance, has used photography, earth, and fibreglass sculpture to create enigmatic but resonant works that deal with issues such as borders and boundaries. The complex installations of Sue Williamson use found and reworked materials to speak of memory and history. Sandile Zulu has made paintings out of the unpredictable marks of fire upon surfaces, or created sculptural tableaux from natural
materials ingeniously arranged. Ordinary refuse has been imaginatively turned into suggestive assemblages and collages by Moshekwa Langa. Steven Cohen has turned drag into a viscerally challenging form of sculpture/performance with works that deliberately shock in order to address issues of identity and marginality. Kendell Geers has used a variety of media, from improvised actions in situ to the tools of commercial art (pushing toward a "non-object-based" practice), to interrogate the very process of artmaking itself. Other artists have put a conceptual spin on traditional artforms, and continue to make interesting and stimulating work into the new millennium. Jane Alexander, for instance, took sculpture into new realms with disturbing figures that place the human form in
extremis or subject it to frightening transformations. Willem Boshoff has used exquisite wood carving, as well as encyclopaedic installations, to comment on systems of knowledge and classification. Jo Ractliffe works with photography to investigate personal and familial memory, death, decay and love. Hentie van der Merwe has also used photographs, whether taken or found, to talk about the body and its discontents in an age of Aids. The contemporary sceneThere are many other artists at work
in South Africa today, making art from a huge range of materials and pushing the boundaries of what art itself consists of. Through their very works, they ask what art's position is in a society in transition from the repressive limitations of the past to the scary uncertainties of the future. There are important prizes such as the FNB Vita Award to encourage new work, and corporate collectors such as cellphone company MTN and mining house Gencor have assembled notable collections. It all adds up to an art scene of unprecedented richness, one it is impossible to do comprehensive justice to in this article, but one worth exploring in detail. Cape Town has the widest spread of independent galleries than any city in South Africa, as well as the South African National
Gallery, which contains key historical works and also hosts innovative new ventures. There are, however, important collections in Johannesburg and Durban as well, and several vital galleries such as the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg and the Natal Society of Arts Gallery in Durban. In the New Year,
we wish you the best year you’ve ever
had,
and that each New Year
will be better than the last.
May you realize your fondest dreams
and take time to recognize and enjoy
each and every
blessing.Happy New Year,
And many more!By Joanna Fuchs
VALUATIONS done on all SA art - either email us the pic with details or bring it into the Gallery
Tick TockI’m writing this in a state of shock,
Watching the clock—tick tock, tick tock,
Advancing, approaching, relentlessly,
A brand new year; Oh, can it be?The calendar says the same thing, too;
Time races, vanishes for me; Boo hoo!
No, wait! If time flies,
I’m having fun!
A year of fun! It’s gone! It’s done!I now embrace the blur of time,
Because it simply means that I’m
Too busy with pleasure, joy, delight
To mourn the passing days’ swift flight.So I’m wishing you fast, happy days,
Pleasuring you in myriad ways,
Filled with happiness and cheer,
Oh Happy, Happy Bright New Year!By Joanna Fuchs
ART RESTORATIONS & REFRAMING - done to perfection - bring your damaged artwork in now to be restored for the new
year.
People Like YouA brand new year!
A clean slate on which to write
our hopes and dreams.
This year:
Less time and energy on things;
More time and energy on people.
All of life’s best rewards,
deepest and finest feelings,
greatest satisfactions,
come from people--
people like you.Happy New Year!By Joanna Fuchs
FRAMING & BLOCK MOUNTING - of paintings, certificates &
memorabilia, at extremely competitive prices Pieces of TimeNew years come and new years go,
Pieces of time all in a row.
As we live our life, each second and minute,
We know we’re privileged to have you in it.
Our appreciation never ends
For our greatest blessings: our family and friends.Happy New Year!
By Joanna FuchsBRONZES - we have a large selection, done by top Artists available Looking
ForwardMay this new year find you
healthier and happier,
peaceful, content, satisfied,
looking forward
to fresh, revitalizing interests,
a variety of pleasures,
interesting new people,
material and personal successes
to make this new year
the best one yet.
Happy New Year!By Joanna FuchsPICTURE DECOR FOR YOUR HOME OR OFFICE - we will come to your premises and advise you, according to your budget. Large range of
originals and prints available
Another year, another chance
To start our lives anew;
This time we’ll leap old barriers
To have a real breakthrough.We’ll take one little step
And then we’ll take one more,
Our unlimited potential
We’ll totally explore.We’ll show off all our talents
Everyone will be inspired;
(Whew! While I’m writing this,
I’m getting very
tired.)We’ll give up all bad habits;
We’ll read and learn a lot,
All our goals will be accomplished,
Sigh...or maybe not. Oh well, Happy New Year anyway!By Joanna Fuchs
FACEBOOK - please join the Henry Taylor Gallery Facebook page, to be kept upto date with all our latest news & events, and we would appreciate you sharing it with your FB
friends |
