Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

This is great progress—especially when one considers that in “free” Namibia, for example, the national museum shows old pottery alongside models of mating rhinoceroses and dioramas with black mannequins clad in “native dress.” Confusion about what art is and what its purpose may be can make even the designation art museum feel suspect. At the National Gallery, I found in one room a large installation by the middle-aged, white conceptualist Malcolm Payne, built up with shopping carts, ancient and new ceramics, light projections, and a text full of such words as appropriation and deconstruct. The piece made no concessions to the possibility that some viewers would be unversed in the international discourse of contemporary art. In the room beyond was an exhibition called “Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape”; in the corner sat two Xhosa women, Virginia and Lucy, who beaded quietly all day unless asked a question through their translator.

It is fashionable in South Africa to call craft “art,” especially if it’s very good craft. Very good craft is very good craft—not less than art, but different. “We have freed ourselves of the shackles of such Eurocentric definitions,” Marilyn Martin said in a bluntly PC manner—though she holds to the Eurocentric principle of the museum. Yet the Xhosa beadwork in the museum’s gift shop, where I bought some milk pails, is not an imitation of the work in the museum; it is that work. In contrast, the Pierneef postcard that I bought at the same time is not a Pierneef, but a representation of a Pierneef. There is good and bad art, and good and bad craft, and some work that falls between these categories. This does not mean that the categories are irrelevant.

The presence of Virginia and Lucy in the museum also points to this unacknowledged distinction. Marilyn Martin insisted that Virginia and Lucy were there to demonstrate that the historical tradition continues, a point made elsewhere simply by the inclusion of contemporary material. Of course, Martin had not asked a German expressionist to sit all day and paint in the gallery showing German expressionism, nor had Malcolm Payne been invited to sit in the middle of his installation and conceptualize. Putting the ladies in situ was meant to elevate their craft, but it felt only patronizing; Malcolm Payne compared it to the nineteenth-century European enthusiasm for putting Hottentots on show for the public.

The Bag Factory and Others

A London-based patron opened the old Speedy Bag Factory to Johannesburg artists in mid-1991; it contains nineteen studios now, occupied by black and white artists. On Fridays, they have lunch together. To many outsiders, this place seems a miniature utopia, where racial barriers have been eliminated, but closer examination shows painfully vivid gaps.

Several of the leading lights of the black art world are at the Bag Factory: David Koloane, Durant Sihlali, and Ezrom Legae, as well as younger artists such as Sam Nhlengethwa and Pat Mautloa. The distinctive and poetic styles of such artists as Koloane and Sihlali reflect a courage and self-determination not relevant to the work of white artists. This does not make the black work better (it’s often ingenuous), but it does make it different. “It’s very politically correct,” said Sam Nhlengethwa, “not to write the race of murder victims in the newspapers. But you can always tell—from the names, the place of the murder, how much space it gets in the paper. It may seem gracious not to mention the race of the artist, but you can always tell the difference.” That is to say that while you are advised to treat the art equally, you should not treat it equivalently.

I was talking to Nhlengethwa at the Bag Factory when one of the white artists burst through the door. “I’ve been waiting for you for three hours,” he said to me angrily, though I had said simply that I would be at the building from noon onward and would hope to see a number of people. “If you don’t come now, I’m going home.” No apologies were offered to Nhlengethwa: he was as invisible as Barbara Masekela had been on the plane. I was rather embarrassed by this affront, but Nhlengethwa said, “Go ahead. I’m in no rush.” When I came back to Nhlengethwa’s studio, I apologized for the confusion. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’s really trying. He’s a good guy. He’s just still a white South African.”