Setting Art Apart: Inside and Outside the South African National Gallery (1895-2016) Qanita Lilla Dissertation presented for the degree of Visual Arts, at the Stellenbosch University. Supervisor: Prof. Elizabeth Gunter Co-Supervisor: Dr. Andrea Meyer March 2018 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration I declare that the entirety of the work contained herein, is my own original work. I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated) that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights. I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. Qanita Lilla Copyright © 2018 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved I Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract Setting Art Apart explores practices of exclusion and erasure in the white art world in South Africa. It looks at how art and art spaces, such as the art museum and the art academy were part of a project of reinforcing difference. The South African National Gallery in Cape Town is the historical reference of the study. The time frame spans the colonial beginnings of the museum through apartheid to the democratic present. After a long period of bureaucratic uncertainty the South African National Gallery was opened in 1930 as a monument to white art and culture. Excluding those who did not belong was part of the process of white self- affirmation. State art museums served to make black people invisible by portraying them as marginal while denying their art. Furthermore, the art museum played a role in the way powerful white constituencies imagined themselves. There are two prevailing elements that I have found useful to examine in the project: the manipulation of space and the changing position of the excluded black individual. Space is what was imagined, defined and controlled by the South African National Gallery. The museum shaped itself into a field of contention during the colonial period, physically setting art apart in the racially heterogeneous city of Cape Town. The museum differentiated itself from private spaces during apartheid by aligning itself with the sanitization and reconfiguration of the city. The black individual had a fraught and traumatic relationship with the white art world. At once omnipresent and invisible, black people did the manual labor and kept the museum space pristine but their presence was scarcely recognized. In this thesis I consider numerous instances of the erasure of black subjectivity including the way black female models were studied as generic black bodies in drawing classes at Rhodes University and were barely considered human. After apartheid, at the South African National Gallery, the art made by black women was made hyper-visible and the women themselves were objectified while the legacy of apartheid endured. In order to investigate practices inside the museum, I use traditional methods of archival research and look at exhibition catalogues, annual reports, newspaper reports and associated publications to track what was included. However, looking at what was erased and excluded exceeds the bounds of traditional methodologies, especially since archives were formed through colonial and apartheid enterprise. In order to engage with the apartheid archive while seeking to examine what is on the outside I position myself in the argument. As researcher, as a woman of colour and as a subject excluded from the white art world I insert my personal voice and experience in order to open up a space closed off to people of colour. Setting Art Apart is a project about a public institution that was never truly public and by inserting my own voice I engage subjectively with marginalization and exclusion. II Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Acknowledgements This project has had a convoluted journey, reaching its conclusion would not have been possible without the kindness and patience of numerous people. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Elizabeth Gunter at Stellenbosch University who offered me support, encouragement and good humour throughout this project. Thank you to my co-supervisor Dr. Andrea Meyer at Technische Universität, Berlin, who showed immense enthusiasm for this project and who added valuable insight despite our physical distance. Words cannot convey my thanks for the support I have received from my family. My husband Ross Campbell has always believed that this was something I needed to do. He never once doubted my abilities, taking on more than his fair share and enduring this intense period with great fortitude and tenderness. To my beautiful children Hamza and Bilal, three years seemed like a very long time but you’ll both be happy that I can finally emerge out from under ‘the book’. Thank you to my incredible sister, Ibtisaam Lilla for her generosity as well as her invaluable help across academic/family life, for her help with archival citations, IT support and with countless meals and childcare. Thank you to my mother, Nazley Lilla, who believed that my voice had to be heard and my story told. I only truly felt that this project was worthwhile when I saw the excitement and recognition in her eyes. My father, Abdulrahman Lilla, who survived because of education and who passed on the yearning and passion to me. To my dear friends who have shown me such love and generosity. I am blessed to count you as kindred spirits. Kylie Thomas who is compassionate, caring and ambitious, who generously shared so much of her knowledge with me. Mary Coombes who has come a long way from Rhodes, who survived art school stronger and wiser. Thank you for kindly allowing me to include your beautiful drawings. Carole Thompson who believed that there was life beyond the trenches of Doha. I thank you all deeply. I would like to acknowledge and thank the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) for the financial support over the period of the study. III Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Table of Contents List of Figures IX INTRODUCTION Background and context 2 Theoretical framework 4 Chapter outline 6 Race 11 Premise 14 CHAPTER ONE Setting Art Apart 1.1 Introduction 16 1.2 South African National Gallery 17 1.3 Doing theory 20 1.4 Visual culture and the postcolonial 26 1.5 Postcolonialism and the subaltern subject 29 1.6 Postcolonial Theory 33 1.7 Decolonial Thinking 34 1.8 The subaltern and border thinking 35 1.9 Syntheses: Whiteness and the construction of national identity 39 1.10 Conclusion 42 CHAPTER TWO Shaping a Field of Contention at the South African National Gallery (1895–1947) 2.1 Introduction 44 2.2 Origins and Background of a Colonial Art Museum (1895) 47 2.3 Classical Casts for the Colony (1908) 48 IV Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za 2.4 The Aesthetics of Union and the South African National Gallery Opens (1910 to 1930) 52 2.5 Conservative rhetoric in the Cape Town art world (1940–1947) 57 2.6 The Art Sales and the Commission of Enquiry (1944–1947) 62 2.7 The Modern art debate revisited (1947) 68 2.8 Good, Decent, and Uplifting: The Bailey Collection (1947) 70 2.9 Conclusion 72 CHAPTER THREE The power of public and private spaces: Remapping the city and the South African National Gallery (1949-1970’s) 3.1 Introduction 74 3.2 Eliding blackness: The South African National Gallery (1950’s) 76 3.3 John Paris (1949-1963) 78 3.4 Displaying whiteness: temporary and permanent exhibitions (1950’s-1960’s) 79 3.5 Founder Nations (1958) 83 3.6 Forced removals and white collusion: Cape liberalism and early apartheid (1950’s-1960’s) 87 3.7 The last days of District Six (1970’s) 92 3.8 The District Six Museum 93 3.9 Forced removals and looking at family photographs 101 3.10 Re-mapping Cape Town and the District Six Museum 107 3.11 Conclusion 108 CHAPTER FOUR Inside and outside a divided white art world (1980’s) 4.1 Introduction: Cultural institutions and the state (1980’s) 111 4.2 PW Botha’s politics and Separate Amenities (1980’s) 117 V Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za 4.3 Circumventing state censorship at the South African National Gallery (1979) 121 4.4 The state of art in South Africa conference (1979) 124 4.5 South African Artists Association (SAAA) 131 4.6 The Cape Town Triennial and the Culture and Resistance Arts Festival Gaborone, Botswana (1982) 134 4.6.1 Inside the white art world: The Cape Town Triennial (1982) 134 4.6.2 Outside the white art world: The Culture and Resistance Symposium and Festival of the Arts, Gaborone (1982) 138 4.7 Thami Mnyele: artist, activist 139 4.8 Apartheid intervention and Operation Plecksy (1985) 144 4.9 People’s art and the state 146 4.10 Cultural boycotts (1981) 148 4.11 Valparaiso Biennale Chile and exhibitions of ‘good will’ (1986) 148 4.12 South African Artists respond to Valparaiso (1987) 150 4.13 The Esmeralda and El Rostro de Chile (The face of Chile) Pretoria exhibition (1985) 152 4.14 Arts funding: Foundation for the Creative Arts (1989) 155 4.15 Conclusion 156 CHAPTER FIVE The black body imagined in a white art world (1990’s) 5.1 Introduction: Life drawing and art instruction at Rhodes University 158 5.2 The art history syllabus 163 5.3 The black model in the white art studio 167 5.4 Encountering the black female body and playing at having a white eye 171 5.5 Apartheid and the black body 175 5.6 The black body and the pursuit of knowledge 177 5.7 Invisibility and silence on the fringes 181 5.8 Unknown and isolated: black experiences in