(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Van den Berg, Dirk Johannes
The work of the Bloemfontein sculptor, Jacques Fuller, an interesting case of rural art at the margins of the mainstream artworld, has recently become known through a touring exhibition curated by Oliewenhuis Art Museum and the Sanlam Art Collection. This essay situates his sculptural work in the picaresque tradition of satirical art.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Steyn, Gerald
Lamu is a living town off the Kenya coast. It was recently nominated to the World Heritage List. The town has been relatively undisturbed by colonization and modernization. This study reports on the early Swahili dwelling, which is still a functioning type in Lamu. It commences with a brief historical perspective of Lamu in its Swahili and East African coastal setting. It compares descriptions of the Lamu house, as found in literature, with personal observations and field surveys, including a short description of construction methods. The study offers observations on conservation and the current state of the Lamu house. It is concluded with a comparison between Lamu and Stone Town, Zanzibar, in terms of house types and settlement patterns. We found that the Lamu house is the stage for Swahili ritual and that the ancient and climatically uncomfortable plan form has been retained for nearly a millennium because of its symbolic value.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Ord, Jennifer M.
This article focuses on a recently created artwork entitled "The Four Fields of X" - an attempt to frame an imagographic form of philosophical discourse in the hope that it would provide a model of signification not constrained by the logic of (phal)logocentrism and, therefore, better suited to suggest the mutability and open-ended dynamism that marks our (signified) existence. Initially, the article involves a description of the artwork's basis - Jacques Derrida's notion of discourse and language. The constituent parts of the artwork and their allusions to the "Timaeus" and Derrida are then presented, followed by two passages of 'exit lines'.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Olivier, Bert
This article examines the impact that the recent terrorist attacks in the United States have had on the status of images in contemporary culture. First, the event is related to what may be called the "terrible sublime". It is further argued that what Baudrillard has termed "hyperreality" has been dealt an irreparable blow by the
media-images of these events.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Olivier, Bert
This article is an art-philosophical interpretation of Kieslowski's film trilogy, "Blue", "White" and "Red", in terms of Gadamer's distinction among the three hermeneutic activities of understanding, interpretation and application. Focusing on the symbolic meaning of the colours in question, namely liberty, equality and fraternity or friendship, it traces the emergence of meaning in the narratives of the three films by moving from understanding to interpretation, before addressing the question of the films' application to the lives of contemporary people.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Naude, Mauritz
Erich Mayer is not considered as one of South Africa's well-known and significant artists. Regardless of this, South Africa has inherited a few thousand drawings and watercolour paintings from Mayer that are of incalculable value to historians and cultural historians. His work has also not been "discovered" and exploited by architectural historians interested in South African vernacular architecture. Mayer visited various regions in South Africa and made drawings of the simple vernacular homesteads and other structures he saw on the farms and in the smaller villages and hamlets. Most of the buildings have now probably disappeared and the drawings are the only evidence of building types that otherwise could only have survived through oral traditions and legends. The buildings vary from beehive structures covered with grass mats in the North West [and] "kapsteil" dwellings in Namaqualand, to Bushveld dwellings with gables and thatched roofs. Mayer also made a contribution to the recording of the crude shelters the prisoners of war erected in the prisoner of war camp on St Helena, where he was sent as prisoner of war during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Even though these structures were not erected on South African soil, they reflected the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Boers who were imprisoned.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Mare, Estelle Alma
The application of geometric configurations to the surfaces of architectural elevations, reproductions of classical vases and sculpture, and Renaissance paintings based on perspective, for the purpose of revealing structural formulae for their design or composition, is a common art historical activity. Often there is evidence of the planning of geometric proportions within the work of art itself, while no historical documentation exists to support the claim
that hidden formulae were intended. Thus, geometrical analyses of works of art may or may not contribute to the interpretation of works of art. Because of this ambiguity, the practice of using surface diagrams has recently been questioned.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Mare, Estelle Alma
The purpose of this article is not to describe, but mainly to interpret the meaning of "Ise Jingu", Japan, as a unique manifestation of Shinto architecture. For this purpose, reference is made to ideas expressed by Japanese architects concerning the architecture of the buildings of the two shrines at Ise as prototypes of Japanese architecture. These views on the meaning of the shrines are supported by Western theoretical insights, mainly those formulated by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Liebenberg-Barkhuizen, Estelle; voortest@iafrica.com
In her experimental carvings, Mary Agnes Stainbank (1899 - 1996) depicted the South African indigene as subject matter. She continued its use in the popular cultural artefacts intended for mass production,
which she made through the Ceramic Studio at Olifantsfontein. While these artefacts are primarily decorative and ornamental, Stainbank nevertheless executed them according to the same aesthetic idioms, which she employed in her large-scale carvings. Considerations of "self" and "other", as generated by her sculptures on the whole, apply, as Stainbank focused on those characteristics of her subjects, which identify them as 'different'.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Konik, Adrian
In "Requiem for a Dream" (2001), Aronofsky uses certain techniques of critical cinema to make the audience aware of the "constructed-ness" of the represented material. In doing so he goes against the "norms" of mainstream American cinema that aim to "mesmerize" the audience and "draw" them into the narrative. There are distinct parallels between the techniques used by Aronofsky and those employed by Eisenstein in his critical cinema, namely the use of non-stable footage, to make the camera conspicuous, the use of montage of rhythm, to disrupt the continuity of the narrative, the use of "word play" in relation to the captions and the representation of footage in "reverse", which force an audience to engage critically with the material, and the use of "Brechtian" theatre techniques to alienate the audience from the text. However, Aronofsky does not merely mirror Eisenstein's use of these techniques but rather develops them in his own way. Also, Aronofsky does not attack capitalism and bourgeois axiology in the same way as Eisenstein, but rather aims his criticism at the way in which subjectivity is constituted through the hegemony of the postmodem mass media. Through his critical cinema he subverts this constitution at both an overt level, involving the more blatant and jarring techniques of critical cinema discussed above, and at a subtle level, involving the valorization of a different narrative structure to that of mainstream cinema, namely one that does not edge its way towards some amiable form of Apollonian resolution. I conclude with a brief discussion of how Aronofksy's film constitutes a criticism of image-saturated postmodern culture.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Gericke, Elizabeth M.; Van Zijl, Carol
The information world of South African visual artists was investigated. It was found that artists need a variety of information sources. The most pressing problems are a lack of information about local artists, lack of training in the use of information retrieval tools and a lack of co-operation between information-providing bodies.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Coetzee, Anton
This article is about the second semester of a new course that was first offered at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2000, namely Architectural Discourse. In this course the history and theory of architecture in Africa are studied and African cultural products are interpreted in terms of general patterns of change because of internal forces. In the essay the term "architectural discourse" is explained as a holistic way of studying architectural theory and history in relation to social and political factors and by using sources from a variety of disciplines. The term "culture" is explained and there is a discussion of how studies of local cultures are related to a globalized context of knowledge and information. The investigation of African cultural products from an African perspective is motivated.
The course is presented within the format of a grand, sweeping narrative with dignity and dramatic impact. The cultural products of the regions of Africa are discussed according to a strategy that considers the chronology of historical events. In conjunction with the general narrative strategy, architectural responses to local climates are interpreted, historical reconstructions of aspects of the material cultures are provided and guidelines for current architectural practices are derived from the histories of African cultural products.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Afonso, Luís
The purpose of this paper is to study the homology between the heavenly and the earthly kingdoms in late medieval Portugal. The analysis that follows, is based both on large-scale public iconographic programmes, namely mural paintings and architectonic sculpture, and on small-scale media, namely miniatures, coins and tomb sculpture. It will be shown that there is a symbiotic relationship and a deep homology between the two kingdoms, namely in what concerns the rules of plastic depiction and the attributes of royal status. It will also be demonstrated that the homologies between the two kingdoms supported the idea of a perfect and perennial hierarchy on earth, modelled upon the one in heaven.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2002) Duffey, Alexander Edward; alex.duffey@up.ac.za
This essay attempts to reconstruct the ten missing years in the life of the well-known South African sculptor, Anton van Wouw, from the end of the Anglo-Boer War to the end of 1910 when he received the commission to make the Women's Memorial in Bloemfontein. These years were characterized by his co-operation with the English architect, Frank Emley, and through him with the mining magnates of early Johannesburg, especially with Lionel and Florence Phillips, who became his patrons and promoted his art in South Africa and overseas. In all the biographies on this artist, which were mainly written by Afrikaner sympathizers, these years were omitted because it would have tarnished Van Wouw's image as the foremost sculptor of Afrikaner life if his supporters had known that he had collaborated with what they considered to be the "enemy" shortly after the Anglo-Boer War. This collaboration was, however, very lucrative and helped him not only to establish himself as an architectural sculptor of note, but also furnished him with the means to devote four years of his life entirely to his art.
