South Africa: the art of a nation

In his review of Martin Scorsese’s Silence, John Patterson comments that ‘Christianity is one of the Big B’s of violent colonial intrusion – Bullet, Bottle, Bacillus, Bible.’ (‘A test of faith’, J. Patterson, guide 31 Dec – 6 Jan 2017) This succinctly outlines the issues with which the curators of South Africa: the art of a nation have to grapple when it comes to exploring the influences later religions have had on South African art. They do so with rather more nuance, subtlety and grace than Patterson manages in his review.

As is the case with Shusaku Endo’s novel on which Scorsese’s film is based, artists in South Africa exploring aspects of religion have done so within their own culture and, as a result, what we view and discuss cannot simply be dismissed, as Patterson seeks to do, as alien poisons. The curators of South Africa: the art of a nation tackle these complexities from several angles. They showcase artworks indicative of indigenous beliefs as well as positive examples from later religions of engagement with the Arts, whilst also balancing confessional artwork with art which questions religion from within the belief system of the religions questioned.

This is the first major UK exhibition to use objects to tell the story of South Africa’s art heritage and history over 3 million years, including rock art images which often depict shaman (or spiritual leaders) entering trance-like states while dancing, giving them the power to heal the sick, overpower evil spirits and summon rain. This modest but astonishing exhibition includes some of the earliest known human artworks and iconic pre-colonial art from southern Africa. It also explores the impact of nonAfrican artistic influences and traditions from the 17th century onwards, showcases 20th century apartheid ‘resistance art’, and celebrates the contemporary art of post-apartheid transformation.

When the history of modern art in South Africa is examined, as here, the influence of Christian missionaries cannot be overlooked. Rasheed Araeen described Ernest Mancoba as ‘Africa’s most original modern artist’ and noted that ‘he enters the space of modernism formed and perpetuated by the colonial myth of white racial supremacy and superiority and demolishes it from within.’ Mancoba’s missionary training, however, was typical for ‘that magnificent generation’ (to use Mancoba’s own words) of ‘pioneer modern artists in South Africa that included Gerard Sekoto (a close friend and colleague of Mancoba) and George Milwa Pemba.’ ‘These artists were all, to a greater or lesser extent, educated and Christianised members of a small but influential African middle class that espoused the Victorian liberal values inculcated by their missionary training.’

Rather than highlighting the work of Mancoba, this exhibition shows the influence of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift, which together with Polly Street Art Centre and the Thupelo workshops, was ‘vitally important to the development of new artists.’ The legacy of these centres ‘lives on in South Africa’s contemporary art scene.’ (South Africa the art of a nation, J. Giblin & C. Spring, Thames & Hudson / The British Museum, 2016) Rorke’s Drift ‘became one of the most important institutions for black South African artists during apartheid,’ with Emma Dammann, Lionel Davis, BongiDhlomo, Avhashoni Mainganye, Philda Majozi, Kasigo Patrick Mautloa, AzariaMbatha, Elizabeth Mbatha, Gordon Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Sam Nhlengethwa, Anthony Nkotsi, Mpolokeng Ramphomane, Joel Sibisi, Paul Sibisi, Velile Soha and Vuminkosi Zulu all having taught or studied there. Works by Davis, Muafangejo and Nhlengethwa are all included within the exhibition, as are works from Helen Mmakgabo Sebidi and the Siyazama Project which utilize Christian imagery in the context of struggles with apartheid and HIV/Aids.

Rorke’s Drift was far from being a one-off however. Sister Pientia Selhorst of the Congregation of the Precious Blood as well as other Christian missions, including the Ndaleni Teachers’ Training College and Mariannhill Art School, all made their contribution towards the provision of access to opportunities for art education.

As a means of exploring the positive and negative legacies of Christianity in South Africa, the curators examine the work of Jackson Hlungwani and Willem Boshoff. Hlungwani was ordained in the African Zionist Church and founded New Jerusalem, a church at the site of an ancient hilltop settlement where he carved monumental wood sculptures of animals, warriors and Biblical figures. His Christ with football indicates the essential humanity of Christ, as a man for all peoples. Boshoff’s Bad Faith Chronicles skewer thirty-six very small baby dolls through the heart, like insects, labelled and displayed on a collector's chart. The labels bear the names of Old Testament nations who had lost their land and lives in ancient Israel. Below each collection is a Bible in an official South African language, opened at Psalm 111:6, which in an English translation reads: "He has given His people the power of His works, giving them the lands of other nations.” Boshoff’s work is ‘an angry response to the way in which Christian churches colluded with the apartheid regime, and to how the Bible was used to justify apartheid.’

Fiona Rankin-Smith has noted that ‘the immense and often unfathomable topic of faith is frequently debated in the public sphere in South Africa’, including its political history. The 2006 Figuring Faith exhibition that she curated provided multiple depictions of the symbols, people and places associated with belief. William Kentridge, whose work features in South Africa: the art of a nation, spoke at the opening of Figuring Faith saying that the works showed that ‘we are incurably en route’ between ‘a quotidian, every day reality and the world of mystery and transcendence beyond.’ This journey is ultimately what is depicted in South Africa: the art of a nation. The very activity of making the work’, Kentridge suggests, ‘involves the artist in a journey of going from what is known to what is glimpsed at, half understood and tentatively approached within the work.’ (Figuring Faith, ed. F. Rankin-Smith, Fourthwall Books, Johannesburg, 2006)    

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Soweto Gospel Choir - Thina Simnqobile.

Beyond Airbrushed from Art History (11)

In Figuring Faith Anitra Nettleton highlights South African artists creating work with Christian subjects:

Most of Father Frans Claerhout’s artworks depict biblical themes but he uses the people and ordinary lives of those who surround him to depict his spiritual vision. The Christ and the Other series perhaps most clearly expresses his belief that Christ must be experienced by each individual, in their own way. The loose brush strokes, bright arbitrary colours and the heavy black outlines used in his paintings show the influences of the Expressionists and Fauvists.

'In a review of an exhibition of [Pranas] Domsaitis’ paintings in September 1962, Graham Watson wrote, his work possesses something of Chagall’s enchanting visions, the guileless piety of Rouault, the resonant colour of the Expressionists and the intuitive wisdom of the peasant (Verloren van Themaat, 1976). Mykolas Drunga writes of Domsaitis’ work: Although the artist never formally allied himself with any specific school, he moved from the romantic realism and what the well-known art critic Karl Scheffler called the ‘spiritual impressionism’ of his youth towards an ever more personal Expressionism ... According to Berman (1996), he is unique among South African painters in that much of his subject matter was devotional in spirit, and even his interpretation of the vast South African landscape was infused with a spiritual intensity." "His painting took on a melancholy stillness and transcendental premonitions. His landscapes, common human figures are filled with deep symbolism. Especially important is the deeply experienced archetypes of his work – the journey and the themes of travelling – expressed realistically as well as expressions of Biblical studies.'

Judith Mason, '“an agnostic humanist possessed of religious curiosity,” as she puts it, once commented that “… the bulk of Judeo-Christian thought is part of our culture, even if … the Russian
Revolution has superceded it and will in time assume its own mythical proportions. The Judeo-Christian myths are instinct with drama, and time has eroded them into skeletons which can be
clothed in a richer fabric than orthodoxy. The painter of religious themes, whether he does so as a
reflection of his faith or as an exploration of his doubts, makes icons." ... Mason’s “trajectory
suite of religious iconography,” ... includes paintings such as The Plague (1980), Pièta (2003)
and Judas (1996).'

Understanding the sacred within the commonplace, and presenting these images was a hallmark of Peter Schütz' work, as in Durban Icon, in the permanent collection of the Durban Art Gallery, which honours the rickshaw man – the work of a common labourer, with a halo and flames of light.
'A feature of this work was to create an inviting tension between images of spiritually and lightheartedness. He found peace and profundity in nature wherever he was and organic life forms were constantly emerging from his work.'

Azaria Mbatha 'is on record as saying that he wished to ‘Africanise’ the whole Bible, and an appreciation of his work must also take into account the concurrent rise of a black theology in southern Africa. Mbatha claims that he wants to reconcile Christian values with the myths and realities of his African, specifically Zulu, heritage. However, it should not necessarily be assumed that his use of black figures is consistent with this aim. Mbatha has also used black and white faces in his religious prints for aesthetic reasons, where the colour was chosen purely for artistic reasons and as a pattern maker par excellence he would have been acutely sensitive to these design needs. Inextricably linked with the legacy of the Evangelical Lutheran Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift, Mbatha’s impressive body of work over the years justifies his place as one of the most important printmakers in South Africa.'

Religious subjects feature prominently in the work of John Muafangejo, reflecting his strong religious background. 'But, even here, Muafangejo also commented on the political and social role of the Church in resisting and opposing an inhumane and unjust regime. Many of his prints are of an autobiographical nature and refer to dramatic or humorous incidents in his life. But the references to his personal life are mediated by a gentle humour and an objectivity which transcends the merely anecdotal.'

'The iconography of [Johannes] Segogela’s work is essentially religious. Like [Jackson] Hlungwani (qv.) he regards his work as ‘a means of proselytising the public into the Christian faith’. However, many of these themes are adapted – and the modern world intrudes in the most engaging and witty ways. In one work, for example, angels record on video camera an epic battle ensuing between the devil and another angel. And Nelson Mandela, astride a leopard, tops a walking stick in a contemporary reworking of traditional walking sticks from the region.'

Making, fabricating, reproducing was central to Colin Richards' sense of purpose as a creative person: "So are the large and messy questions of meaning. Art is a relational affair, and it seems to me that the increasingly seamless semiotic packaging of the worlds in which we live sets limits on our horizons of ways of being and doing. In my creative work I am energised by puzzles of power and powerlessness. My preferred mode of expression has always involved strong pictorial illusionism (which is still magical to me, as it is to all children), and also in reproduction and repetition. In matters of power my focus tends to be on formal religion and its iconographies, on family, especially fatherhood and boy childhood, and on the cultivation of 'nature' (rocks, trees, animals, insects... mothers, fathers)."

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Paul Buchanan - Mid Air.

Beyond 'Airbrushed from Art History' (3)

Caribbean Art contains a chapter covering Popular religion, festival arts and the visionary which includes the following:

"Two aspects of popular culture, the religions and the festival arts, are particularly important to the visual arts, as subjects and as sources of artistic production in their own right …

Philomé Obin … was a devout Protestant and primarily a secular artist … Obin’s best-known religious works are his contributions to the mural cycle at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (1950-51) in Port-au-Prince.

The Holy Trinity mural project was executed by the major ‘primitives’ attached to the Centre d’Art at the time. It was initiated and directed by Selden Rodman and enthusiastically supported by Bishop Alfred Voegeli, an early patron of the Haitian art movement. The first section to be completed was the apse, with three major murals, The Nativity, The Crucifixion and The Ascension by Rigaud Benoit, Philomé Obin and Castera Bazile, respectively. Despite the distinct painting styles of each contributor, the apse murals form a surprisingly coherent whole, although the sugary angels and tumbling rosebuds by Gabriel Lévèque (b. 1923) in the upper section detract from the more formal compositions below. Obin also painted the stately Last Supper in the west transept chapel and Wilson Bigaud the spectacular Wedding at Cana in the east transept. The mural cycle includes smaller paintings by Bazile and several other artists. In 1954, Bishop Voegeli added a terracotta choir screen by Jasmin Joseph (b. 1923).

The biblical events represented in the Holy Trinity murals were placed in a modern, recognizably Haitian context, a revolutionary departure at the time. The actual biblical figures were represented according to conventional Christian iconography, although most were ‘Haitianized’ by combining Caucasian features with a darker skin. Some murals contain Vaudou-related motifs, such as the drums and sacrificial animals in Bigaud’s Wedding at Cana. While several participating artists were Vaudou practitioners, this does not mean that the murals are disguised Vaudou art since the references to Vaudou were included to depict typical Haitian life. Not all of this happened spontaneously, however, and contemporary accounts reveal that Rodman encouraged the artists to include anecdotic Haitian details, to the point where some felt he was interfering. While the results were generally successful, the mural project illustrate that the ‘primitives’ were already then willing and able to adapt to the demands of patronage.

Predictably, the project was at first highly controversial in Haiti. Some members of the establishment felt the murals were sacrilegious and inappropriate for a mainstream Christian church. The Holy Trinity murals were executed during the conflict about the promotion of the ‘primitives’ by the Centre d’Art and in fact contributed to the crisis. The importance of the murals to Haiti is now well recognized, although they are in urgent need of restoration …

The Jamaican intuitive sculptor and painter Mallica ‘Kapo’ Reynolds (1911 - 89) was a Revivalist bishop and, like most other Caribbean artists-priests, he claimed to have received divine instruction to start carving and painting. His subjects vary widely, from biblical figures, angels and Revivalist rituals to the landscape or market scenes, yet even his secular works portray the social and physical context of Revivalism. Many paintings and sculptures are autobiographical and include self-images of Kapo in his capacity as church leader. Some of his most outstanding works are about women and reflect the prominence of women in the cult …

… Guyanese painter and sculptor Philip Moore (b. 1921) … is associated with the Jordanites, an inspirational Guyanese church, but his work expresses a very personal, utopian vision of Guyana, an ideal of community in a country that has a history of racial and political divisiveness. Like Everald Brown in Jamaica, Moore frequently uses polymorphic imagery, but his brilliantly coloured, symbol-laden pattern structures are even more intricate …"

In Art of the South African Townships Gavin Younge describes the involvement of the churches in black art training and the subsequent rise of community-based educational initiatives:

"Another important art centre was established in Natal in the early 1960s. A radio talk, given by the Swedish missionary Helge Fosseus, resulted in the formation of a committee which raised sufficient funds to enable Ulla and Peder Gowenius to come out to South Africa in 1961 and to start a weavery and art school at Umpumulo. Two years later this was moved to the Oskarsberg Mission at Rorke’s Drift. The weaving workshop was organized co-operatively and gave employment to local women and helped subsidize the school which was known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC) Art and Craft Centre. A ceramic workshop, under Kirsten Ollson, was added in 1968.

A ex-principal of the school, Jay Johnson, has stated that the school and centre was established ‘to explore the possibilities of the arts and crafts as a means of livelihood.’ With this aim in mind the organizers have, perhaps not surprisingly, identified west Europeans as their potential market. This has led the weavery to concentrate on luxury wall and floor coverings using the finest wools and mohair. The weavers are responsible for the design and choice of colour and over the years a tradition of figurative tapestries with a strong autobiographical and narrative structure has evolved.

The largely foreign market and the fact that the weavery has not oriented itself towards a ‘village industry’ producing blankets and other locally useful goods has prompted allegations that the centre is organized along neo-colonial lines. The school has faced financial difficulties and the principal, Goran Skogland, was forced to close it temporarily at the end of 1982. However, in its twenty years of operation a number of young artists have successfully completed the two- and three-year Fine Art Certificate.

Together with Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo is probably the best known of these students and both have enjoyed international exposure and acclaim. Other students have become teachers. Anthony Nkotsi now teaches printmaking at the Johannesburg Art Foundation; Lionel Davis teaches at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town, and Velile Soha teaches at the Nyanga Arts Centre. Paul Sibisi, who studied at Rorke’s Drift in 1973 and 1974, won a British Council bursary in 1987 and is now a language teacher at the Umzuvela High School in Umlazi, Durban …

Mpolokeng Ramphomane’s painting For the Gift of Love is typical of the more tutored and sophisticated technique of artists living within commuting distance of Johannesburg. Nearly two metres wide, it is large in comparison with the work of other artists to have graduated from the ELC Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift. The nervous flick of brushstrokes in the background provides a bogus psychological space within which two lovers turn to face the viewer, their faces in sharp focus against a frieze of dark shadowy figures …

In 1981 his [Paul Sibisi’s] exhibition broke new ground, white viewers suddenly saw a reflection of what was going on in the closed world of the townships. His photo-journalistic treatment of police intervention in Umlazi Township also broke new ground technically. It was at this time that he began using a paint atomizer to lay down thin colour washes over ink drawings. The unusual, perhaps photographically inspired, cropping of his images, gave them added immediacy and when the critic Edward Lucie-Smith asked to be shown the work of some black artists, it was Paul Sibisi he was taken to see …

… Paul Sibisi acknowledges the influence of the nineteenth-century satirists (among them, Honoré Daumier, whose work he saw in reproduction whilst studying at Ndaleni College) but claims that his imagery is not politically motivated. ‘Artists should be above politics. I’m depicting what is happening on the street, the way I see it.’ …

Jackson Hlungwani has said that his work does not originate in himself but that ‘it comes from God Himself, and from the Lord, and from the Holy Spirit.’ He is not only referring to his sculpture, but also to his evangelistic work as the overseer of an African Independent Church called ‘Yesu Geleliya One Apostle in Sayoni Alt and Omega’ …

Although Hlungwani frequently refers to Christ as the source of life he makes little use of central Gospel themes. Instead, as Schneider notes, he dwells on one recurrent apocalyptic vision, ‘Heaven and Hell are about to be radically transfigured, and mankind will open its eyes. The old world of sin and strife is about to be replaced by the new world of forgiveness and brotherhood.’

… Seeing Straight is an idealized self-portrait. We see a man pointing forward with his whole body. Hands with long outstretched fingers guide the man’s gaze forward, like the blinders on a carthorse. But the real exhortation, to ‘see straight’, derives from a curios protruberance of raw, unworked wood which rises from the subject’s head. This, according to Hlungwani, is the ‘map’ by means of which people must live their lives. It is not a concrete representation of abstract thought, but life prefigured.

[John] Muafangelo’s work is strongly autobiographical and he often includes written observations on the events he portrays in his prints. What began as labelling device after his return from his second stay at Rorke’s Drift in 1975 quickly took on an important supplementary function. Whilst the text in Battle of Rorke’s Drift (1981) is little more than a title, his New Archbishop Desmond Tutu Enthroned (1986) includes a prayer asking for God’s help. This meshing of two narrative structures, text and image, gives his work a topical currency and, on occasion, historical importance …

… A number of prints deal with the bombing of church buildings at Onilpa. The image of Bishop Kauluma outside the boarded-up windows of the seminary at Odibo in Anglican Seminary Blown Up is a catechism on the principle of Christian forgiveness. In many other prints, notably New Archbishop Desmond Tutu Enthroned and Activity Centre, black and white people are shown shaking hands in ‘love and co-operation’. This was Muafangejo’s message to the world …"

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Jonathan Butler - Falling In Love With Jesus.