The Art of South Africa
An Eclectic Mix of Diverse Cultures
Mr. Hermanus The Willie Bester Home
A characteristic
that defines our species is the making of art.
(Art; from Latin 'ars' meaning worked or formed
from basic material.)
Art as a medium of
exchange is the gift in the hand of its creator, alive in the mind of
its beholder, converting the private to a public good, and thereby
adding it to the common store of human energy and hope. Art is the
creative output by human beings, that allows other people to be infected
by the inner feelings of one another.
People say Africa
gets into your blood. The fact is Africa is already in your blood no
matter where or who you are. Archaeology and genetic mapping confirm that
Africa is the birthplace of humankind. The first word ever spoken, the
first fire lit, and our first home - all were of Africa. The origins of all
art, culture and science is African.
As humans -
we are able to explore our consciousness and through art, understand our
precious world. With art and from it, we feel profound integrity for our
own design. South African art and more particularly its contemporary
art, brings millenniums of diverging cultures back to their African
roots. South African art blends humankinds past with the present and
moves forward into time...
Hand Axe dating from 250000 to 500000 Years -
Franschhoek South Africa
Long before people first engraved and painted on
stones and rock faces, they invested objects of their existence with
meaning. Care and thought went beyond mere functionality in stone tools
from Middle and Late Stone Age sites.
Blombos Cave - Ochre Tablet - Circa 73000 BC
Dating to 75,000 years, this ochre tablet found at
Blombos in the Southern Cape, bears cross-hatched markings. It is
thought to be one of the earliest examples of human abstract
illustration.
Blombos Cave Shell Beads - Circa 73000 BC
Small drilled snail shells unearthed from Blombos
cave show patterns of wear on the shells,
revealing they were worn as parts of necklaces or bracelets,
making these shells the earliest known objects of African adornment.
Blombos Cave -
Archaeologist Chris Henshilwood
The
significance of the discovery represents an occurrence of behaviour that
communicates abstract information through the medium of a symbolic
objects.
Kisalen Grave - Democratic Republic of Congo
Forty thousand years ago, stone and bone pendants, shell
ornaments and ostrich eggshell beads were widely traded throughout
Africa. Their inclusion in burial graves, confirms people used objects to signal social
relations and rank with others.
Paleolithic Rock Art
Drakensberg Rock Painting -
Kwa-Zulu Natal
Between 20000 to 30000 years ago, people started
leaving more obvious signs of their presence. Detailed cave
paintings (so-called Bushman paintings) are found depicting hunting, domestic
and ceremonial activates.
Distribution of Southern African
Rock Engraving and Paintings.
San rock art is distributed from Angola in the west to Mozambique and
Kenya in the east, throughout Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa
- wherever cave conditions have favoured preservation from the elements.
There is a stylistic unity across the region, which
includes the art of the Tassili N'Ajjer region of northern
Africa.
Stone tablet from Apollo11 Cave - Erich Wendt
Small portable stones
and rock fragments called art mobilier, are the
earliest examples of rock art in Southern Africa. Some examples are so
small they could be held in the hand. Between 1969 and 1972, Erich Wendt
found seven such painted stones in a rock shelter in the Huns Mountains.
(Southern Namibia) They were radiocarbon and stratigraphic dated
to + - 27000 years.
Twyfelfontein Namibia Brandberg Namibia
Contrary to other first arts of Africa, southern
African rock art is not easily slotted into distinct regions. Successive
generation of artists depicted similar themes and drew on a shared array
of painting and engraving techniques. The gradual representational
shifts that occur across a wide landscape, do not tie in with our
knowledge of San linguistic boundaries, which were often absolute. What
we do find is that the recurring pictorial themes echo what is known of
San cognitive systems. In the late 19th century, German linguist Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd and Joseph Orpen began meticulously recording folklore
and myths as told by San informants. Together with more recent
testimonies by San from Namibia and Botswana, the accounts allow us to
track a continuous, albeit fragile thread back through time to the
makers of the southern rock art.
Brandberg Namibia
Common San rock painting subjects include hunting, often depicting with great accuracy
large animals which no longer inhabit the same region in the modern era,
as well as warfare among humans, dancing, domestic scenes, multiple
images of various animals, including giraffes, antelope of many kinds,
and snakes.
The last of San works are
emotional
in their representation of larger, darker people and even of white
hunters on horseback, both of whom would supplant the Bushman peoples.
Brandberg Namibia
Rock paintings
associated with peoples belonging to the Bantu language family are
comparatively recent and one can link them to specific ethnic groupings,
such as the Kalanga of Zimbabwe and Warangi of Tanzania. The
predominantly geometric finger painting of central Africa, with its core
in Zambia and Malawi, has been shown to have indisputable links to the
BaTwa ancestors of modern day Pygmies. The distribution of rock art of
the central Kondoa district of Tanzania, tallies with the historical
distribution of the Hadzabe and Sandawe peoples. The assigning of these
traditions is well supported by archaeological, genetic and linguistic
evidence.
The African Era (Bantu Speakers)
Broadly speaking -
the art of South Africa can be seen in terms of a rough division into
categories, as falling into a two by two matrix: traditional or modern,
black or other. Modern South Africa includes a large diversity of races and cultures.
Political history was divisive of societies across the
sub-continent. It was inevitable that the resulting socio-political upheaval
would produce a contrasting variety of art forms.
Traditional African tribal art characteristically has a range of recognizable
forms within which the artisans work, allowing for recognition of
an objects tribal origin. A few examples include the wall decorations of the
northern Ndebele of South Africa (though some would argue these to be
modern), the beaded aprons worn by Zulu and Xhosa girls (and other
tribes) before marriage, the patterns on the Dhlo-dhlo headband and various other fairly rigid genres showing typical
tribal influences. In west - central and east Africa, tribal forms are
ever more distinguishable through sculpture.
20th Century Contemporary Art
Alfred Thoba - 1976 Riots Sydney Kumalo - Matriarch
Jump ahead to the present era, when
traditional tribal forms were scattered and re-melded by the
divisive policies of apartheid. New forms of art evolved in the townships: a dynamic art using everything from plastic strips to
bicycle spokes. The mining culture in particular produced characteristic
decorated travel trunks, decorated transistor radios, blankets with
urban motifs, and the like.
William Kentridge
Art of this era represents a 'modern' black
art form less easily recognized as belonging to a particular tribe.
Carvings and paintings also recorded urban difficulties,
lifestyles and objects, such as queues, bussing, drunkenness, urban poverty,
vehicles and the 'dompas,' police activity.
Willie Bester - Forced Removal
Add to this the Dutch-influenced folk art
of the hardy Afrikaner Trek Boers and the urban white artists earnestly
following changing European traditions from the 1850's onwards, and you
have an eclectic mix which continues to evolve today.
Cecil Skotnes 1926 - 2009
White artists have made other art in South Africa, both modern
and traditional. Indian and Cape Malay or Coloured traditions, also have recognizable clothing and musical art forms.
As with black art,
white art has tended to fall into art based on traditional
European or white tribal forms, that is - two dimensional oil paintings in
the European realist mould 'usually urban artists' and the folk art or
rural art of the Boers.
Apartheid Art
The political art of the apartheid era
often originated in the universities and large cities. It was usually short
lived in the sense of being graffiti, protest cartoons, or similar works
published in student publications.
Art with a political message was often banned and anyway, was not
intended for deliberate preservation.
Delise
Reich - Wits University Collection
White artists exhibited works critical of
both black and
white political behavior. (above and below)
Click image for a larger resolution picture and
contact us
regarding their sale.
Zoot Suited Bothas of a Feather (left to right)
Fanie Botha, PW Botha, Pik Botha by Sonja Zytkow
Ceramist
Sonja Zytkow exhibited
Zoot Suited Bothas of a Feather
at a solo
exhibition at 'Things Gallery' during 1981. The three works were later
published in “LIP from Southern African Women" (1983). At the
time of the exhibition, three Bothas ruled South Africa and
coincidentally, the French
movie
La Cage aux Folles (Birds of a Feather) was all the rage. Sonja's
presentation was meant as a political message to lighten up, as everything was banned
left right and center. Even a government official dressed in a flashy
suit of extreme cut would have been VERBOTTEN.
State
President PW Botha's daughter Roxanne came to the exhibition and
apparently left in tears. Roxanne Botha would later appear in a
documentary called 'Children of Apartheid'.
(The trio
of Zoot Suited Bothas of a Feather is for sale. Click
image for a larger resolution image or
contact us.)
Michelle
Raubenheimer - Wits University -
1989
Several
exhibitions were closed by government order for their political or obscene content.
Alternatively, items within the exhibitions were ordered to be
removed from display.
South Africa held
its first multi-racial elections in 1994, which the ANC won by an
overwhelming majority. The arts flourished and diversified and continues
to do so today.
Enjoy the images to follow, representing artists that caught
our 'tribal eye'.
Alexis Preller
Andre Serfontein
Anton Van Wouw
Barbara Tyrrell
Cecil Skotnes
Don Heywood
Dumisani Sibisi
Edoardo Villa
Elaine Savage
Eli Kobeli
Francois Krige
Frederick I'Ons
George Pemba
Gerard Bhengu
Gerard Sekoto
George French Angas
Hannes Harrs
Irma Stern
Jabulani Ntuli
John
Muafangejo
Joseph Maseko Julias Mfete
Karel Nel
Leora Farber Lucas Sithole Lucky Sibiya Mizraem Maseko
Nathaniel Mokogsi
Niville Lewis
Norman Catherine
Ntukwana Hargreaves
Phoshoko
Mogano
Pranas Domsaitis
Sabela Judus Mahlangu
Sipho Ndlovu
Sonja Zytkow
Speelman Mahlangu
Sydney Kumalo
Thandaphi Landela
Themba Siwela
Tienie Tritchard
Titta Fasciotti
Vladmir Tretchikoff
Walter Battis
William Kentridge
We end this page
celebrating an engraved vision of an elephant found in the Northern
Cape. The photograph connects the petroglyph to the art of the
cameraman's eye, while a South African elephant dances forward into yet
another time...
Detail - Craig Foster
and
through
