Tracing the Passion of a Black Christ
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Tracing the Passion of a Black Christ Critical reflections on the iconographic revision and symbolic redeployment of the Stations of the Cross and Passion cycle by South African artists Sydney Kumalo, Sokhaya Charles Nkosi and Azaria Mbatha James Macdonald Supervised by Professor Pippa Skotnes, Professor Virginia MacKenny University& Professor ofAnthony Cape Bogues Town Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Fine Art, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, July 2016 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town Plagiarism Declaration This thesis/dissertation has been submitted to the Turnitin module (or equivalent similarity and originality checking software) and I confirm that my supervisors have seen my report and any concerns revealed by such have been resolved with them. Name: James Macdonald Student number: MCDJAM009 Signature: Signature removed Date: 05.09.2016 i Abstract In this research I consider ways in which black South African artists working during and after apartheid have both revised and symbolically redeployed the Stations of the Cross – and more broadly, the iconographic tradition of the Passion cycle. In so doing, I demonstrate the strategic application of Christ’s episodic sufferings as a means of both analogously chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as articulating more aspirant narratives of political resistance, self- liberation and reconciliation. Concentrating initially on church-commissioned projects realised in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I trace the reinterpretation (or ‘Africanisation’) of the Stations of the Cross by artists such as Bernard Gcwensa, Ruben Xulu and Sydney Kumalo. Noting the emergence of a black Christ and a localised Passion, I emphasise the complex cultural and political implications of this iconographic transformation – arguing that its hybrid realisation undermined the cultural bias of a European-styled Christianity, and the racial hierarchies of colonialism and apartheid. Following this, considered in more detail are the secular reimaginings of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi’s Crucifixion (1976) and Azaria Mbatha’s Stations of the Cross for Africa (1995) – as series wherein the episodes of Christ’s Passion are consciously and symbolically redeployed. In the case of Nkosi’s Crucifixion, I show as covertly documented in a black Christ’s sufferings the incarceration and torture of political activists in apartheid South Africa. On a more ideological level, I demonstrate also, as embodied in the series, the aspirant directives of Black Consciousness and Black Theology. Turning to Mbatha’s Stations of the Cross for Africa, I present its visual narrative as analogously envisioning, as well as critically rethinking, the mutually embedded traumas of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Significant to my analysis is the future vision of reconciliation posited by Mbatha, and the extent to which it both reflects and challenges that maintained within the ‘transformative’ programme of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Demonstrated in my evaluation of these appropriative projects is the way in which a traditionally European iconographic tradition is critically redeployed – in chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as in the envisioning of alternative futures. As such, I hope to afford a more nuanced and challenging appreciation of these reimagined Passion narratives, as significant projects of cultural and postcolonial memory. In keeping with this, I advance in conclusion a ‘rethinking of pilgrimage’. Recalling the culture of participative witness associated with devotional programmes like the Stations of the Cross, I propose that in the case of both Nkosi’s Crucifixion and Mbatha’s Stations of the Cross for Africa, extended to viewers is a certain imperative: to imaginatively revisit, and rethink within the present, traumatic histories of black suffering and resistance. ii Acknowledgments It is with grateful thanks that I acknowledge the assistance and support of my supervisors, Professor Pippa Skotnes, Professor Virginia MacKenny and Professor Anthony Bogues. I am indebted also to Father Michael van Heerden, for his generous input, Reverend Hans Blum, for making his collection available to me, and Sokhaya Charles Nkosi, whose insights were invaluable and his artworks an inspiration. I am also thankful to Sharon Friedman for her valuable assistance in the editing of this document. Lastly, I am immeasurably grateful to my wife Gabrielle, for her patient encouragement and for many hours spent thinking, reading and talking through this research project. iii Table of Contents Plagiarism Declaration .............................................................................................................. i Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Research outline ...................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter One: A Pilgrimage in Miniature .............................................................................. 8 I. Via Crucis – The Way of the Cross ....................................................................................... 8 II. The Passion cycle in devotional art .................................................................................... 13 Chapter Two: An African Way ............................................................................................. 19 I. Colonialism, missions and the problematic of a European-styled Christianity .................... 20 II. Inculturation, and the critical re-evaluation of Catholic visuality in Africa ........................... 24 III. Shifting iconographies in the ecclesial art of South Africa ................................................ 29 IV.Modernist agendas in Sydney Kumalo’s successive reinterpretations of the Stations of the Cross .............................................................................................................. 37 Chapter Three: The Cross as an Instrument of Pain ........................................................ 45 I. Sokhaya Charles Nkosi’s Crucifixion, 1976 ........................................................................ 47 II. Chronicling the ‘violent science’ of apartheid ..................................................................... 52 III. Ideological embodiments of a black Christ’s Passion ....................................................... 68 Chapter Four: Stations of the Cross for Africa ................................................................. 76 I. To Africanise the whole Bible. Situating Mbatha’s creative project ..................................... 78 II. Figurations of Christ, and the imperative of reconciliation in Mbatha’s oeuvre .................. 85 III. A Stations of the Cross for Africa ...................................................................................... 94 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 113 Rethinking pilgrimage ........................................................................................................... 119 Plates ................................................................................................................................... 124 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 157 iv List of Plates Plate 1: Adam Krafft, The Seven Falls of Christ, Station Four: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face (replication), ca. 1490, Nuremberg. Photo Sailko .............................................................................. 124 Plate 2: Adam Krafft, The Seven Falls of Christ, Station Four: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face, Bas- relief detail, ca. 1490, Germanic Museum, Nuremberg. Photo Sailko ............................................... 124 Plate 3: Artist unknown, Pietà with Saint John, hand-coloured woodcut, ca. 1465, Germany, c. National Gallery London ..................................................................................................................... 125 Plate 4: Artist unknown, Christ as the Man of Sorrows with Arma Christi (Instruments of the Passion), Glass painted with enamels and silver stain, ca. 1650, Switzerland, c. Victoria & Albert Museum, London ............................................................................................................................................... 125 Plate 5: Mathias Grünewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece (closed), tempera and oil on panels, 1512–16, Alsace, c. Musée Unterlinden, Colmar ............................................................................................... 126 Plate 6: Mathias Grünewald, The Isenheim