South African Seduction Nearly 20 years after the fall of apartheid, the country’s art scene is poised to move onto the world stage 80

to many outsiders, the south african art world may seem to have produced no more than a few major talents—most notably . Their work further suffers by being narrowly perceived as inextricably associated with apartheid, still the lodestone of South African identity. This oversimplification persists largely because even decades after the global boycott of South ’s economy and culture came to an end, the country’s art scene remains small. And while a few galleries are starting to reach out internationally, the arts still lack the broad popular audience at home that they enjoy in the Americas, , and, increasingly, Asia. Exacerbating the problem, the ruling African National Congress seems more interested in exploiting the divide than in broadening support for the arts, as evidenced by the party’s attempt last year to censor a of polygamist president as Lenin with his penis exposed. Intended by artist Brett Murray as a denunciation of corruption among ANC leadership, the government moved to suppress the work, by Jason Edward Kaufman launching a lawsuit against ’s Goodman Gallery and calling on party members to boycott a newspaper that published the image. A tribunal ruled that no action be taken, but the firestorm left the impression that ’s government was more interested in culture wars than cultural development. Yet a closer look reveals an art economy beginning to emerge from colonial provincialism. Only a small number of galleries and auction houses thrive in Africa’s largest economy, but top commercial galleries increasingly take part in major art fairs and place work in foreign museum shows, and Goodman, Stevenson, and Everard Read galleries have all recently expanded. Established and newer galleries are supporting a younger generation of contemporary artists, and many nonwhites are gaining the attention of collectors who,

until recently, seldom crossed the color barrier. The appreciation and collecting of fine art g Joh a nnesbur Mo m o, a llery remain pursuits of the white minority, but a black middle class is beginning to rise. Still, Digitally constructed from self-portraits, black-owned art businesses and collections can be counted on the fingers of one hand, an Ayana V. Jackson’s

Diorama, 2012, plays a nd G ckson unfortunate deficiency in a nation of 52 million inhabitants, 80 percent of whom are black. a Museums, including the major municipal galleries in Johannesburg, , , off Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon.

and , remain woefully underfunded. Few receive major loans of works from abroad J a n V. Ay

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because of financial constraints, substandard facilities, and international curators under the direction of Okwui Enwezor, security issues, and they tend to present mainly regional art then a rising curatorial talent. But the event’s major funder, and traditional crafts. Private support is negligible owing the city of Johannesburg, closed the exhibition early to save to unfavorable tax laws that have not fostered a culture of money, and the biennial has not been revived since. philanthropy. Even the South African National Gallery in Despite rapid social transformation since the fall of Cape Town cannot afford to buy historical or contemporary apartheid, arts and culture have seldom found a place among foreign works, and Riason Naidoo, the institution’s first government initiatives combating grave socioeconomic black director, admits, “We cannot compete with the challenges, including rampant poverty and an inadequate acquisitions budgets of international museums that are education infrastructure. Last fall the national Department also vying for South African art.” But he notes in what may of Arts and Culture announced a Visual Arts Task Team to be a hopeful sign for the emerging scene, “We have been strengthen the arts. Clearly, however, the transformation of more proactive in identifying talented young artists for our South Africa’s art scene will continue to be driven by the collections who previously would not have been considered.” private sector. There, growth is the order of the day. “Government support is low, as is understandable,” says Fits and Starts | For a brief period in the 1990s collector Paul Harris, “so in the private sector we try and South Africa seemed to have become a full-fledged member do as much as we can. Not as in other countries, but you of the international art circuit. After decades of exclusion start somewhere.” The former banker was speaking on the during the international economic and cultural boycott terrace of Ellerman House, his cliffside hotel above Cape that had isolated the country, in 1993 more than 20 South Town that serves as a showcase for his extensive collection of African artists were shown in the Venice Biennale. In 1995 South African art. On display are classic modernist the Ministry of Culture founded the Johannesburg Biennale, by Irma Stern and Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, as well as such which for the first time brought international art to the contemporary works as a slab of polished granite into which stigmatized country. The second edition, in 1997, branched conceptualist Willem Boshoff scratched a line for every day out to venues in Cape Town, with shows organized by spent in prison, raunchy political satires by Anton Kannemeyer, a monumental stacked-stone bust by Angus Taylor, and moody figurative paintings by John Meyer. “There’s a breadth of talent exploring contemporary ects, j ects, media across the racial spectrum, and it’s on a par with the rest of the world,” says Fraser Conlon, co-owner of New Indigenous arts and crafts, partic- beautiful polychromed pots teem- ularly of the dominant Zulu tribe, ing with leopards and flora; today York’s Amaridian Gallery, which sold sub-Saharan art and remain on the margins of the inter- these are collected by museums design until its recent closure. “The biggest challenge for national contemporary art world and given as diplomatic gifts by the Africa is access to the global markets. West African artists but are increasingly collectible South African government.

have a far greater presence because of proximity to Europe, g a nd Joh nnesbur own both at home and abroad. Several Individual pieces sell for R700 to and the colonial background is far more favorable. But white artists have taken it upon R50,000 ($90–6,000), with the southern Africa is more isolated. Only since the dismantling of themselves to bridge the divide. record at auction of R2 million ($290,000) set for a vase by apartheid have people been willing to consider the country.” pe T Ca v enson, id K rut P ro g ; Dav a nd Joh nnesbur own

Ardmore Ceramics Wonderboy Nxumalo, at Sotheby’s te In 1985 ceramicist Fee Halsted- Johannesburg in 2008. A Modern Renaissance | Reconsideration of the Berning founded Ardmore Ceramic South African market has been fueled largely by a handful

Workshop in the province of Ubuhle Beading a nd S a rry

of wealthy collectors within the country and expatriates in pe T Ca a llery, KwaZulu-Natal, training rural black Bev Gibson founded Ubuhle to cG artisans to produce elaborate and provide materials and guidance to England who compete for trophies by such modernists as native women whose colorful Maggie Laubser, Pierneef, Alexis Preller, Stern, and Jean Welz. beaded textiles depict subjects According to the art historian Esmé Berman, in 1993 a post- ranging from the Crucifixion to Impressionist still life by Stern topped R200,000 ($65,000). a i nd Good ma n G buffalo to the night sky. Their works When it returned to market in 2011, the piece brought more have not achieved prices close to than R10 million ($5 million) at auctioneer Strauss & Co. Ardmore’s, but a show planned for a n i C hiur the Anacostia Community Museum, Berman says the exponential rise in the early-modern udz in Washington, D.C., may help market was catalyzed by Bonhams’ 2007 launch of South

turn their work into South Africa’s African sales in London. The first included 13 Sterns with g ; Mich a el M a nd Joh nnesbur own answer to the Gee’s Bend quilts. estimates above £70,000 ($140,000) and one at £550,000

($1.1 million). Strauss & Co. was founded in 2009 in pe T Ca o., Both workshops are located in a Johannesburg, and a marketing battle resulted in a string region of KwaZulu-Natal farmland uss & C uss where craft studios, boutique of record prices that culminated in 2011 with the sale a tr hotels, and restaurants dot a of Stern’s Arab Priest, 1945, at Bonhams for £3 million tourist route marketed as the ($5 million) to the Qatar Museums Authority. But by 2012 Midlands Meander. Ardmore and the auction houses had flooded the market, and the supply Ubuhle pieces are in many South of top works had diminished. The annual Bonhams sale last K f ro m top: clockwise u fma n. O pposite, African museums as well as the October flopped. The following month, however, in a perverse

Museum of Arts and Design, a rd Ka in New York, and their work can confirmation of the rising value of works by South African be found at galleries such modern masters, paintings by Pierneef, Laubser, Hugo Naudé, g ; S ork a nd Joh nnesbur son E dw son a

as Kim Sacks, in Johannesburg. and Gerard Sekoto were stolen from the Pretoria Art Museum. J Y N ew

Art+Auction february 2013 | blouinARTINFO.COM Revelations V, 2011, David Krut Print 83 above, is from a series of Workshop. Among the political satires by early 20th-century Kudzanai Chiurai, who modernists whose won the FNB Art Prize at markets have taken off of last fall’s Joburg Art Fair. late is Jacob Hendrik One of the few South Pierneef, whose African artists to have oil-on-canvas Extensive built an international Landscape Northern career while remaining in Transvaal, 1949, below, the country, William sold in March 2011 at Kentridge produced auction house Strauss & Universal Archive (Ref 22), Co. for R10,583,000 2012, at right, a Linocut ($1.5 million). Michael printed on dictionary MacGarry applies the pages, with the tradition of nail-adorned Johannesburg-based fetish figures to contem- porary machinery in works such as Motorcycle Fetish, 2012, left. Opposite: Elvis Mkhize glazes a piece at Ardmore Ceramic Workshop in KwaZulu-Natal. Few contemporary artists achieve such prices, however, “Part of the fair’s mission is to educate people,” says without emigrating, as Marlene Dumas and Robin Rhode Douglas. “There are not enough good commercial galleries have done. The South African record for Kentridge, whose in South Africa, no government contemporary art museums, 2010 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in no place to look at art. It’s mainly in corporate collections New York was universally acclaimed, is just R2.2 million and commercial galleries.” ($250,000), set at Stephan Welz in Cape Town in 2010, though But according to many arts leaders here, there has one of his works reached $600,000 at Sotheby’s New York in been improvement. “The market today is unrecognizable 2011. One of the few other artists of international reputation from what it was 10 years ago,” says National Gallery to make a home in South Africa is photographer Roger Ballen, director Naidoo. “It has become more professional; there an American who moved to Johannesburg in 1980. He has is more competition with many more commercial galleries, documented white poverty in images that mix grim intimacy and there are many international museums and collectors with touches of Surrealism. He has shown with Gagosian and acquiring South African modern and contemporary art, at major museums, with a 2013 retrospective slated for the which can only be good for the artists. South African Smithsonian’s Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. commercial galleries are now more visible at international art fairs from Miami to Berlin, and Stevenson for the Contemporary Growth | “The scene is changing first time will be participating at Frieze, which is a rapidly,” says Ross Douglas, founding director of the annual significant breakthrough.” Joburg Art Fair, which was launched in March 2008. By Another goal of the Joburg fair is to diversify the the time of the fair’s fifth edition last September, several audience for contemporary art. “Galleries were perceived satellite events and fringe shows had sprung up around town. to be white, elitist, alienating spaces. We want to change At the main event, 29 South African, French, German, and that,” says Douglas, noting that opening night five years British gallery booths were augmented by more than a dozen ago was an all-white affair. Now affluent blacks number special projects. But despite high-quality offerings for modest among the patron class, made up largely of bankers, prices, the fair attracted few foreign collectors and curators. mining barons, winery owners, and corporate executives.

The vast majority of the R100,000 ($13,000) FNB Art country’s galleries and Prize at last fall’s Joburg Art auction houses are based in Fair. His vibrant, Pop-inspired Johannesburg or Cape Town, political satires appear in the with many operating in both collections of moma, Elton John, cities. Here, a look at some of and Richard Branson. the most prominent: a llery Stevenson Gallery Goodman Gallery After opening in Cape Town in Founded by Linda Goodman in 2003, Michael Stevenson part- Johannesburg in 1966, it has a nered with David Brodie in

strong international reputation, launching a Johannesburg Good ma n G v enson; stemming from representation space in 2008. An exhibitor te of such major figures as William at Art Basel and abmb, and the Kentridge, , first South African gallery to and Candice Breitz and regular break into Frieze in London and participation in Art Basel, Art New York, Stevenson has Basel Miami Beach (abmb), mounted the country’s first and the Armory Show. With a shows of international artists second location in Cape Town like Francis Alÿs, Rineke since 2007, the business is now Dijkstra, Thomas Hirschhorn, S f ro m le t: O pposite, j ects. owned by Liza Essers. Also in the stable is Sue Williamson, whose socially engaged photo- graphs, including portraits of women involved in the struggle for civil rights, are in most museums in South Africa. Rising talents include Mikhael id K rut P ro Mo m o; Dav a llery Subotzky, who documents the impact of crime on the daily lives of South Africans and a nde nd G was featured in moma’s “New Photography” exhibition in 2008, and Kudzanai Chiurai, who showed at last year’s

Documenta and took the S ib M a ry Fro m L e f t: Mary Sibande’s sculpture … of Prosperity, 2011, opposite, far left, features one of her “super maids.” David Krut shows smoke drawings by Diane Victor, such as Free Fall (The Fall Among the largest collections of modern and contemp- Piet Viljoen in a converted Victorian house in of Bankers), 2012, oppo- orary South African art are those of financial institutions Cape Town. The New Church—named after site, right. A detail from Ndize, 2010, below left, by and mining companies like absa, BHP Billiton, and Standard the street it is on—opened with a show drawn Nicholas Hlobo, who Bank. Noted private collectors include the Rupert family from Viljoen’s 480-piece collection and curated moved back to South Africa to stay close to his in and Graaff-Reinet; entrepreneur Bruce by Stevenson Gallery film artist Penny Siopis, sources, after completing Campbell-Smith of Cape Town, whose late 19th- and 20th- who selected works by Nicholas Hlobo, abstract a yearlong residency in London with Anish Kapoor. century black South African art was shown at the National painter Zander Blom, and installation artists The bronze Mrs. Oligarch, Gallery in 2005; and investment banker Gordon Schachat, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Wim Botha. 2008, below right, by Brett Murray, who caused who exhibited parts of his modern and contemporary On the international front, South Africa will a stir last year when he collection at the Joburg Art Fair in 2009. not only return to Venice in 2013—the South showed a painting at Goodman Gallery that Among those in attendance last fall was Kentridge, who African Consul General in Milan will serve as parodied South African feels the fair is a poor substitute for the intellectual heft of a commissioner—but the Department of Arts president Jacob Zuma. biennial. “I’m very pleased that we have the fair,” he says, “but and Culture has been in discussions to establish it’s a shame the biennial no longer exists. That was a curated a permanent pavilion at the Biennale. As the country’s essay about what’s happening in the art world. The fair, like leadership seeks to transition from revolution to all fairs, is a trade show.” Nonetheless, the fair provided a fully functioning democracy, some hope that the character snapshot of the variety of young artists from South Africa. of the art, too, will change. “Art thrives where there’s a lot of turmoil and emotions,” collector Paul Harris Looking Beyond Struggle | Among the most observes. “And so for a long time the so-called ‘struggle welcome recent developments in the South African art world art’ was the main thing. But my personal view is we’ve was the opening last year of the Wits Art Museum, a modern got so many more positive things, in terms of building showcase for tribal and contemporary art in downtown government and reconciliation between people. That will Johannesburg. Then, in December, the country’s first private be the future: celebrating what has been achieved in museum of contemporary art was christened by financier terms of reconciliation, and what still can be.”

the more established sculptor floral jewelry and sculpture. triumphantly portrayed look- Jane Alexander, a veteran of Among the rising stars of ing dreamily into the future various biennials, whose contemporary photography is or in heroic poses, confronting 85 stunning Butcher Boys, 1985– Zwelethu Mthethwa, whose soldiers or on horseback. 86, consisting of three life- impressive large-format size seminude white figures color portraits of Africans have David Krut projects with devil horns seated on been collected by moma, the Krut runs project spaces in a bench, greets visitors to the Guggenheim, sfmoma, lacma, and Johannesburg, Cape Town, and National Gallery in Cape Town. the Getty. In 2010 owner Mark New York and a print work- Read opened Circa on Jellicoe, shop in Johannesburg that has Everard Read a three-story oval-plan annex collaborated with such major Established in Johannesburg in for contemporary art, designed artists as Deborah Bell and 1912, South Africa’s oldest by local studioMAS with a William Kentridge as well as gallery has since 1980 occupied spiral ramp hidden behind a gallery artists like Diane a sprawling villa in the screen of vertical aluminum fins. Victor. At the Joburg fair, Victor e Rosebank district. Collector showed delicate “smoke draw- Paul Harris is a major investor. Gallery momo ings,” figurative social critiques The gallery deals in figurative Founded in 2003 by Monna in soot, made using a candle modern and contemporary art Mokoena in Johannesburg, flame as a brush and enhanced Glenn Ligon, and Walid Raad. At from South Africa and the U.K., Momo is among the country’s with charcoal and stumping. the Joburg fair, the gallery with inventory drawing on few black-owned galleries. Her work is owned by moma and presented a fetishized cement painter John Meyer and sculp- From its modernist glass box in sfmoma yet can still be had for mixer bristling with bolts by tor Angus Taylor as well as an elegant area of the city, four- and low-five-figure prices. Michael MacGarry and a room early-modern work by Gerard it represents native artists with a wraparound forest mural Sekoto, George Pemba, and such as the Art Brut–inspired painted by Deborah Poynton. Jacob Pierneef. Also on the painter Paul du Toit and Photographer Pieter Hugo, roster is the most prolific and photographer Ayana V. known for portraits of Nigerian popular artist in South Africa, Jackson, an African-American street performers and their the animal sculptor Dylan transplant who digitally alters trained hyenas, garnered atten- Lewis, whose bronze leopards self-portraits into politically tion there with large color dot myriad public and corpo- charged compositions, images of Cape Town residents rate spaces and appear in the including one based on Les nude in their homes. Other homes and on the grounds of demoiselles d’Avignon and Stevenson artists include the virtually every wealthy South another in which she appears quickly ascending Nicholas African collector. Lewis sells for as a Malian Islamist rebel, Hlobo, whose multimedia prices comparable to Kentridge. seminude and armed à la assemblages of rubber, ribbons, Another artist who is obsessed Valie Export. Mary Sibande, and other materials comment with South African wildlife and whose mother, grandmother, on issues of black identity and has shown work at the gallery, and great-grandmother were sexuality with a raw elegance Nic Bladen casts live specimens domestics, creates monumen- and allusive power, as well as of plants to create unique silver tal sculptures of “super maids,”

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