A Pantheon of Icons
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Introduction A Pantheon of Icons As I flew up the stairs of the Louvre Museum, I looked around for a friendly attendant to direct me to the Mona Lisa, the famous portrait by Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci. No need. The route was clearly marked with several laminated signs showing the enigmatic face and an arrow indicating the way. After a few flights of stairs, a few turns, past other magnificent paintings and, there it was, a smallish painting just beyond a large knot of people. I elbowed, apologised, shoved and burrowed my way to the front to finally lay eyes on the actual artwork which has become so renowned. On my left a small group of youngsters pushed even further, creating a deep bulge in the barrier. A sharp rebuke, followed by a question regarding their sanity, was issued from one of the vigilant attendants. I focussed on the painting, consciously cutting out the babble of the crowd, hoping to be able to assess what it was about this work that had brought me to this point. While I pondered the popularity of the Mona Lisa, I also began to think about my own country. South Africa is also home to some remarkable artefacts, artworks, historical sites and unique, internationally renowned fossil records. Why are the millions of tourists who travel the globe annually not also queuing up and jostling to see them? Are our cultural products not equally valid? Admittedly the cultural and artistic output of this planet is vast and varied. Many countries or nations have capitalised on this phenomenon and have built thriving tourist industries. In France, for example, the Louvre in Paris, which houses a culturally diverse collection of works of art dating from pre-history to 1848, is one of the most visited museums in the world with 2016 visitor figures of approximately 7.4 million.1 With an average of 20 000 1 Visitor numbers have dropped from a high of 9.7 million in 2012 due to recent terrorist attacks in Paris such as the Charlie Hebdo incident. 1 visitors a day, 70% of whom are foreign tourists, this institution generates a substantial amount of money for the French state (Musée de Louvre 2017). The culture of ancient Egypt which has long captured the imaginations of people all over the world can be seen in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. This institution has a collection of approximately 160 000 fascinating objects of antiquity, covering 5 000 years of that country’s history (Supreme Council of Antiquities 2017). Overall the museums and ancient 2 sites of Egypt hosted 5.4 million visitors in 2016 (Capmas 2017). In America, The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) has a collection of over 200 000 modern and contemporary artworks from around the world. It too receives millions of visitors which generates substantial income for the museum (MOMA 2017). What is also worth considering is that these institutions, amongst others, are also home to internationally renowned artworks. The Louvre boasts works such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503-1506), Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Eugène Delacroix and the Venus de Milo (c. 150-100 BCE). The Egyptian Museum houses the contents of the tomb of the famous Tutankhamun (c. 1340 BCE), the Palette of King Narmer (c. 3000 BCE) and the statue of Chefren (c. 2 500 BCE), as well as many other artefacts which are instantly recognisable from popular books on general art history. Within the walls of MOMA visitors can see The Starry Night (1889) by Vincent van Gogh and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) by Pablo Picasso. The presence of these artworks is undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the high visitor numbers recorded at these institutions. So what of the South African situation? It also has a relatively healthy tourist industry, but in this instance it is wildlife safaris that prove to be the most popular and lucrative tourist attraction. The Kruger National Park, the most famous wildlife reserve, is South Africa’s main tourist attraction, having recorded 1 659 793 visitors in 2015 (Department of Environmental Affairs 2017). Profits from accommodation in the park amounted to R 321 482 000 in 2015. Cape Town is the most popular city for tourists in South Africa. When consulting a wide range of publicity media for the city, again it was the natural heritage institutions which received the most attention, while the cultural institutions were not as visible. Visitors are 2 Visitor numbers have dropped from a high of 14.7 million in 2010, due to the political unrest in Egypt in 2011. 2 urged to visit Cape Point Nature Reserve, a World Heritage site which accommodated 223 000 visitors in 2014 (Cape Point 2017). The cable car operating from the iconic flat topped Table Mountain had 909 000 visitors for the year in 2015 (Table Mountain Aerial Cableway 2107). These attractions, together with major sporting events, play a fundamental role in 3 generating income for the city, while the city’s art institutions do not seem to fare as well. The statistics for South Africa’s art galleries speak for themselves. The Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) in Cape Town, housing a collection of South African, African, British, Dutch, French and Flemish artworks, had 45 010 visitors in 2017 (Iziko 2017). Johannesburg Art Gallery has a collection of local and international artwork dating from the 17th century to the present day. They experienced 36 000 visitors in 2016 (Gauteng Tourism Authority 2017). The Wits Art Museum (WAM), which hosts temporary local and international exhibitions, experienced a record breaking year in 2017, having visitor figures 4 of over 34 000 (Charlton 2017). These visitor statistics for South African art institutions are a far cry from those quoted above for North Africa, Europe and America. Why is this so? Do South African institutions simply not own any works that may be considered iconic, hereinafter referred to as ‘icons’? Alternatively, is it possible that these institutions have not developed their marketing strategies around specific works which could be considered icons? Don Thompson in his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses (2008), would certainly agree. The most important museums are the few that are internationally branded, the ones the guide books tell you not to miss ... Each features one or two paintings that are world famous ... Each museum has thousands of paintings in its collection, but each are defined by one or two that are essential viewing. The Louvre has found that of the 20 000 people a day who pass by Mona Lisa, more than half have come to the museum to see nothing else (Thompson 2008: 235). 3 The recent opening of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in September 2017 may change this scenario. 4 It should be noted that these high visitor numbers were achieved due to the WAM hosting an exhibition by internationally renowned artist Andy Warhol. The show entitled Warhol Unscreened: Artworks from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection ran from 25 July till 8 October 2017. 3 The purpose of this research is to explore the development of the concept of the fine art icon and possible reasons why South Africa appears to have failed to produce ‘iconic’ artworks which attract the kind of interest enjoyed by other collections and institutions. In order to achieve this, the approach will be firstly to interrogate the concept of the fine art icon on a theoretical level in order to understand the phenomenon more clearly. These theoretical insights will then be applied to three different areas of investigation. Firstly, do the inherent contents of particular artworks contain something intrinsic that has made them so famous for so long? Secondly, can their iconicity be explained by the possibility that they so eloquently embody the particular issues, values, trends and desires of the contexts (time and place) in which they were created? Or is it possible that their iconic status is due to the fact that they are also capable of finding continued relevance with audiences from vastly different times or places from the one in which they arose? Thirdly, is their iconic status a construct, produced as a result of their becoming entangled in dense webs of signification created by broad, highly complex networks of players, events and circumstances? Are they the result of this particular type of socio-cultural discourse? Alternatively, could their iconicity be a combination of all three factors, their content, their context and their constructed significations? Art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) explored the aspects mentioned above when he attempted to formalise the process of the aesthetic experience. In his work entitled Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955) he discusses a number of problematic assumptions about the concepts of form and function. With regards to form, he argues that we cannot use this as a basis to identify an object as either utilitarian or aesthetic, as utilitarian objects can be experienced aesthetically. He provides the example of beautifully decorated African spoons displayed in art museums. When discussing function he remarks that artworks could be defined by their function as vehicles for the communication of ideas or concepts, but then reminds us that typewriters or traffic lights communicate ideas very efficiently and are not generally considered art (Panofsky 1955: 12). Revealing the influence of the linguistic philosophers which will be discussed in Chapter 2, Panofsky concludes that artworks constitute an aggregation of form and idea: “[T]he more 4 the proportion of emphasis on ‘idea’ and ‘form’ approaches a state of equilibrium, the more eloquently will the work reveal what is called ’content’(Panofsky 1955: 14).