(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Zanzot, Jocelyn E.
Grass-roots, community art is typically not discussed in terms of the sublime because it aims to alleviate not provoke feelings of terror or shock, regenerate rather than exploit the disturbing vastness
of landscapes of privation in which it often is made. Whilst much contemporary art co-created with disenfranchised communities is intentionally subversive, designed to overturn stereotypes, preconceptions,
and oppressions; these projects are accomplished over time through interactive processes rather than a single instantaneous insight provoked by an object or image (Kester, 2004). This article suggests that as these community-based projects extend the role of art; the works themselves, the murals, sculpture, gardens, performances, happenings and exchanges may reclaim the sublime from the self-referential, closed narratives of the avant garde, and give it back to everyday people.
Three decades of work by international artist Lily Yeh shine as examples of a co-created sublime, the physical and aesthetic inversion of despair to hope, periphery to center, and mundane to sacred.
The magnanimous scale of the works, their powerful local mythology and dazzling luminosity, made possible by Yeh only through mutual exchange and collaboration, ripple out to the world beyond through images, from starlight to pixels. The photographic representation of these collaborative projects might turn out to be an equally powerful frame for change of the community art movement.
As distillations of larger processes, these powerful aesthetic pieces are capable of provoking an instantaneous insight in to the significance of the work, offering a breathtaking glimpse of an alternate and exalted reality brought to life. To overlook the sublimity of Yeh's work out of partiality
to process over product, or for lack of new direction beyond the avant garde's dead-end, would be to miss attending to one of the greatest living artists and most important modern re-inventions of art.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Mare, Estelle Alma
Two explanations are proposed for the fact that classical scenes depicting a combat between a Greek warrior and an opponent are composed in a restrained way, in that the actual violence of maiming and killing is not explicitly represented. The first explanation is speculative as a visual parallel with the treatment of violence in classical tragedy, while the second is based on a formal, art historical explanation
of a motif derived from Egyptian art. In a concluding section it is pointed out that in Hellenistic art violence becomes explicit in the depictions of war and combat.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Mare, Estelle Alma; Steyn, Carol
In 1909 the composer Gustav Mahler and the sculptor Auguste Rodin, arguably the greatest composer and the greatest sculptor of the time, met in Paris. Both were transitional figures in their respective
fields, representing the end of an era in their creative work. Their respective legacies nevertheless also
inaugurated new ideas and inspired younger composers and sculptors. Rodin sculpted two portraits
of Mahler, one of which — in pure white marble — is the main focus of the article. The refinement and
beauty of this work is different from Rodin's male portraits in that the head is stylised like many of
his female portraits, an ambiguity compounded by the fact that Alma Mahler, the composer's wife,
wrote in her memoirs that Rodin fell in love with his model during the sittings. An understanding of
the marble bust calls for an analysis of the life and work of the composer, fraught with ambiguities - as
reflected in that superb portrait.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Konik, Inge
This article employs certain of the theoretical insights of Jean-François Lyotard and Julia Kristeva to identify the covert, and largely inadvertent, subversive aspects of the mainstream cinematic text Sonzero’s Pulse (2006), namely its thematisation of both the autonomous nature of ‘capitalist technoscience’, and the latter’s detrimental impact upon the subject. In short, this article is principally concerned with demonstrating the value of, and fostering an increased engagement in, the critical appropriation of potentially subversive mainstream cinematic texts, in the interests both of problematising the assumption, propagated via contemporary cultural ‘products’ such as mainstream film, that there is no need to revolt against the dehumanisation that proceeds from the ‘technocentrism’ of postmodernity, and in so doing, of shedding light on the ugly side of sublime technological development.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Van Tonder, Gert J.
The saying by Ludwig van der Rohe, that "less is more", has become a well-known truism about the supposed superiority of minimalism over other design forms, especially decorative compositions.
Here, the avenues of ugliness, beauty and the sublime are used to revisit a key inspiration of minimalism, namely, Japanese landscape design and architecture. In particular, this article is presented from the viewpoint of visual psychology, examining some key aspects of what these
designs offer the human visual system at various neural levels. Knowing on what "diet" of visual signals our perception and cognition flourishes, a comparison of recent examples of minimalist
design [and classical Japanese minimalism reveals key dissimilarities of what] there is more or less of in each case. The conclusion is that, in neural terms, less than the necessary sensory stimulation results in more mental agitation than is necessary, especially
when individuals need to function within a visual environment for an extended period of time.
AFRIKAANS: Minder is min of meer meer, perseptuele welstand in minimalistiese ontwerp. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe se stelling dat minder meer is, het 'n aanvaarde vanselfsprekende waarheid
geword wat die veronderstelde meerderwaardighede van minimalisme oor ander soorte ontwerp bevestig, veral oor dekoratiewe komposisies. Aakligheid, skoonheid en die sublieme as temas word
hier aangewend om die belangrikste inspirasies van minimalisme na te gaan, naamlik Japanese landskapontwerp
en argitektuur. In die besonder word hierdie artikel aangebied vanuit die standpunt van visuele psigologie en ondersoek word ingestel na wat genoemde ontwerpe die menslike visuele sisteem
op verskeie neurale vlakke bied. Wetende op watter "dieet" van visuele seine ons persepsie en kognisie floreer, ontbloot 'n vergelyking tussen resente voorbeelde van minimalistiese ontwerp en klassieke Japanese "minimalisme" sleutelverskille van wat daar visueel meer of minder in elke geval van is. Die slotsom is dat, in neutrale terme, minder as die vereiste sensoriese stimulasie meer mentale
agitasie veroorsaak as wat nodig is wanneer indiwidue vir 'n uitgebreide tydperk binne 'n visuele omgewing moet funksioneer.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Mare, Estelle Alma
Response from academics in a variety of
disciplines who have not given up on beauty, but are aware of ugliness and willing to introduce new applications for the sublime in visual artefacts.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Miller, Gwenneth
This article presents a reading of a selection of paintings by Philip Badenhorst (1957-) made during
2007 for the solo exhibition titled A circle had closed; and another had opened again. I briefly revisit
the development of his visual language since 2003 to indicate consistencies and shifts in his approach.
Relevant tenets of the theory of the Romantic sublime as defined by Burke in 1757 and Kant in 1764
are introduced and then applied in an exploration of elements of specific works by Badenhorst. Focussing
on his landscapes and figures, parallels are drawn between Badenhorst's contemporary vision
and 18th century aesthetics to make evident that his works have strong ties with this specific tradition,
yet to indicate that as a contemporary artist his work departs from the paradigms of Romanticism to
arrive at a postmodern sublime. The similarities and differences between Badenhorst's iconic images
created through intuitive painterly mark and the influence of the Romantic painters are highlighted to
reveal new associations, which contribute to a wider understanding of Badenhorst's oeuvre. I suggest
that the artist presents a South African contemporary sublime. This particular analysis of the theory of
sublime-aesthetics has not previously been applied to Badenhorst's work.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Jackson, Iain; Bandyopadhyay, Soumyen
This paper is concerned with two personalities, Le Corbusier and Nek Chand, occupying, as it would
appear, the extreme polarities of the creative spectrum, yet sharing the same geographic space of artistic
production. Following India's independence in 1947, and the untimely death of Matthew Nowicki that
marked the demise of the Mayer-Nowicki plan, Le Corbusier was invited by the first Indian Prime
Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru to design Chandigarh, a city which was to act as the new capital city of the
partitioned state of Punjab. Nek Chand - a self-taught sculptor - who began life as a road inspector
in Chandigarh at a time when the city was being built, constructed the Rock Garden in Chandigarh
- initially illegally and as a private hobby - out of found natural rocks and the fragmented remains
of the villages that once occupied the site of Chandigarh. The Garden set within 18 acres of modified
landscape and ceramic-clad terrain, exists at the edge of Chandigarh's Capitol Complex and consists
of over 3000 sculptures and architectural follies. It was discovered in 1972 and eventually legalised in
1976. The garden is still under development and continues to receive around 2000 visitors each day.
In spite of their widely differing backgrounds - Le Corbusier, already a world renowned architect,
well-travelled and widely read, and Nek Chand, a migrant from what is now the Pakistani part of
Punjab, a road inspector and a self-taught sculptor of limited education and experience - the Capitol
Complex and the Rock Garden share a common ground of aesthetics. As we explore and argue in this
paper, arriving from the opposite ends of the artistic horizon, their shared aesthetics is characterised by
a broad negation of the classical and modernist normative aesthetic tradition and vocabulary and the
embracing of primitivism, a fascination with the grotesque and the unfinished, and a tendency to treat
the identifiable components of the tectonics as elements of the aesthetic. Such an implicit questioning,
we argue, has been a key characteristic of avant-garde art movements from the early-twentieth
century. The two personalities enter the common critical territory from two distinct directions; while
Chandigarh is the result of a significant shift away from Le Corbusier's pre-war approach, that also
made the chapel at Ronchamp possible, Nek Chand began life as a self-taught 'Outsider Artist', whose
work was 'institutionalised' by post-independence Indian politics.
It is important to stress from the outset that the aim here is not to 'compare and contrast' the
two creative outputs. There are, of course, many areas where Le Corbusier has received criticism
(some of which we have discussed elsewhere Jackson 2003; Bandyopadhyay and Jackson 2007),
and Nek Chand's work has been positioned as an involuntary critique of Le Corbusier's Chandigarh
(Prakash 2002; Jackson 2003) however, the aim here is more delicate. It is the areas of overlap and
the superimposition of the creative processes of Le Corbusier and Nek Chand that will be discussed,
beginning with the natural rock collections and Le Corbusier's sketches, before considering the larger
built fabric. The Rock Garden is almost as old as the city of Chandigarh; the first objects were gathered
around 1958, a year before the city Edict was published. It has developed alongside the city, integrally
part of it and fabricated using the same materials, yet remaining distinct and peripheral. Leah Ulansey
in her review of Peter Burger's much celebrated work, 'Theory of the Avant-Garde', suggests that
Burger managed to recast, '. . . in the form of general theory of art some of the Avant-Garde's specific
concerns . . . : 1) the role of engagement (political commitment) of art; and 2) the self-critique of
art as an institution and the problematization of art's claim to autonomy, a claim . . . finding its apex
in 19th century Aestheticism' (Ulansey 1984: 1192). We suggest that the latent avant-gardism in Le
Corbusier's late work and the 'Outsider Artist' in Nek Chand, arriving from two opposed directions,
equally display political commitment and above all, question some of the established notions of
aesthetics.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Hurst, Andrea
It is a commonplace among philosophers that we actualize our humanity most fully by “living a creative
life,” and that creativity is the response to desire or passion. In this article, I argue that Plato’s
“cave allegory,” important limitations notwithstanding, provides the paradigm for a philosophical understanding
of what this means, and by extension, how this call to be passionately is a call to live
life as a work of truth-telling techné (art). To demonstrate that Plato’s characterization of passionate
living remains viable as a structure for understanding the artist’s task, despite his notorious dismissal
of certain forms of art, I consider how Heidegger confirms and updates it via his more contemporary
existential analyses of “everydayness” and “anxiety” in Being and Time. Importantly, however, Plato’s
conception of the “truth” that we ardently seek, and desire to share through truth-telling techné,
is open to challenge. One may justifiably disagree with his articulation of “truth” and transcendent
beauty on grounds of the shift from transcendence to immanence in ontology, and the correlative shift
from economy to complexity in understanding “truth.” This is where the notions of “the beautiful,”
“the ugly,” and “the sublime” come into play. It is disagreements concerning the nature of the ultimate
object of human passion that fuel disagreements concerning the truth to be told in truth-telling techné
and, arguably, the kind of techné most suited to this task. Yet there is widespread agreement concerning
the perspicacity of Plato’s distinction between “truth-telling” techné and the mere imitation of
what already exists. This distinction is used here to round out the above account of what it means to
live a creative life by contrasting such a life with its opposite, which one may call “kitsch.”
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Steyn, Carol
A 17th century Armenian manuscript, a Gospel Book, has been in Pretoria in what is now the National
Cultural History Museum since 1897 and has never been displayed or studied. It is a particularly
luxuriously illustrated manuscript that was bought by Pres. Kruger and his executive committee
from an Armenian fugitive. Its presence in South Africa is surprising since there has never been
more than 200 Armenians in the country. The history of the manuscript is explained and the manuscript
is examined in detail in the context of similar Armenian Gospel Books elsewhere in the world.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Raubenheimer, Landi
The possibility of a "digital sublime" is investigated in this paper mainly as it may appear in a Cibachrome
print entitled Pureland by Japanese artist Mariko Mori (Weintraub 2003). The pleasant appearance
of the image is striking and seems to allude to the affirmative character of mass media images
describing beautiful natural scenery. Sentimental images also appear in Japanese manga and anime, and
in Western popular media such as Hollywood films. Furthermore Pureland seems reminiscent of landscape
traditions that relate to idyllic yearning or nostalgia. It appears as if something is omitted from
the image, however. This may indicate that what is not depicted (something un-pleasant?) may also be
relevant, and is investigated as allusion to the digital sublime lurking beneath the smooth appearance,
manifesting in brief moments of "presence" as Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (2004) interprets it. I derive what
I understand as the "digital sublime" from Jean-Francois Lyotard's (1984: 36-43) sublime. The sublime
as aesthetic concept is investigated in the context of the mystic landscape tradition which is fundamentally
opposed to affirmative (idyllic) tendencies in both art and popular culture, which may be present
in Pureland. The co-existence of conflicting idyllic and mystic strands in the image is investigated
throughout as an uneasy relationship which may rupture to reveal the digital sublime. Pureland may be
a hybrid image, not only digitally composited from existing visual material, but also comprised of traces
of disparate Japanese and European visual traditions and conventions. This is dicussed in conclusion.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Steyn, Gerald
This article was motivated by a claim in literature that migrants are ruralising Third World cities. It
investigates the impacts of migration - the fact that all residents are from somewhere else - on the
form and function of an informal settlement, using an illegal shantytown in Mamelodi, Tshwane, as a
case study, by exploring the relationships between (1) the demographic profiles of migrant households,
including their origins and expectations, (2) the form of a squatter settlement, and (3) how it actually
functions as a setting for social and economic activities. Illegal settlement making is finally tentatively
explained with a theory developed from the ruralisation hypothesis.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Coetzer, Nicholas
The Cape Dutch architectural revival at the time of the Union of South Africa in 1910 points to more
than just an emerging interest in building preservation and the Arts and Crafts rural ideal germane to
English architectural circles of the time. Cape Dutch architecture, and the gable of Groot Constantia in
particular, was used as a symbol to establish a common European heritage that could transcend the animosities
of English and Afrikaans South Africans and help forge a new white 'nation'. A closer reading
reveals that Cape Dutch architecture, as history and as style, was appropriated by English architects at
the Cape as the contribution South African architecture could make to the British Empire.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Britz, Sonja
Research into wildlife rhetoric in sub-Saharan Africa has led to the supposition that wildlife representation
in contemporary visual culture resides in media representation and wildlife tourist industries
rather than in the fine arts. Tourist industries contribute, to a large extent, to what constitutes the notion
of wilderness and wild animals. This paper argues that cinematic and photographic technologies
and colonial views on animals are sometimes organically conjoined in a complex network binding
together and governing the way these discourses mutually affect each other. Contemporary discourse
in animal studies challenges reductionism and anthropological views held on animals: central to the
ethical debate surrounding animals and animal representation is the acknowledgement of a choice to
be made between either dominion or stewardship of the animal.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Haywood, Mark
Re-wilding is an important way in which certain land managers, nature conservationists, national park
authorities and others envision the future state of landscapes and nature reserves under their control. In
some instances areas of land are allowed to revert 'naturally' to form some type of 'semi-natural' landscape.
In others, specific land management practices, sometimes classed as 'traditional' are reintroduced
to establish the preferred state of wildness. I have coined the term hyperwilderness to describe private
re-wilding ventures which simulate 'wilderness' in an artificial tourist driven context. In South Africa,
particularly in the malaria free zones of the Eastern Cape, there has been a rapid recent increase in the
number of private re-wilding projects as white farmers shift from cattle farming to various forms of tourism
based on indigenous wildlife. Inevitably this has also led to rising social tensions - Provincial Land
Affairs and Agriculture Minister, Gugile Nkwinti has described game farms as "elitist" and said there
had been a 're-colonisation of the countryside'. [Groenewald: 2005]. The paper considers the history
of re-wilding sites based on former 1820 Settler farms, or 'manors'. Many Settlers migrated to South
Africa after losing their traditional commonlands in the British Isles through the Enclosure Acts and the
Highland Clearances. In the latter peasants were evicted from their smallholdings in order to create large
grouse and deer hunting estates. In South Africa re-wilding, whilst ecologically desirable, can appear
socially contentious by attempting to erase the history of colonial occupation, through yet another manifestation
of the colonial gaze. The land reverts to indigenous bush, indigenous species are reintroduced,
the farmer becomes invisible as the farm disappears, but so too do indigenous people, who are either
excluded by game fences and economics, or become semi-invisible servants working in lodges which
are often Hollywood inspired versions of colonial fantasy architecture.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Hurst, Andrea
In this article, I investigate the hypothesis that the notions of “the beautiful,” “the ugly,” and “the sublime”
articulate the incompatible dimensions of what it means to live the kind of passionate life that
most befits humankind. If Plato describes the ultimate object of our passion as a “beautiful cosmos,” a
closer look, via Lacanian psychoanalysis, reveals instead an irreducible complexity in its conception,
precisely because this ultimate object remains a fundamental delusion. Since humans hope to restore
not what they know to be the truly Real, but what they want it to be, one might quite legitimately propose
that the truly Real is a state of chaos (the ugly), or paradox (the sublime). The link suggested here
between the object of the passions and the notions of “the beautiful,” “the ugly,” and “the sublime”
takes some explaining. For this purpose I have drawn upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Taking
account of the complexity of both the passion as an act and the passion’s object, I have articulated a
Lacanian account of human subjectivity as a complex configuration of passions, which can be applied
as a heuristic for making sense of the diversity that goes under the name of “truth-telling” techné today.
Thus, while driven by conflicting passions, many contemporary artists exemplify the notion that art
is truth-telling techné, and in their various ways offer insight into what it means to live life as a work
of art.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Viljoen, Russel Stafford
This article investigates the first and only visit of the British artist George French Angas to the Cape
Colony in 1847 with specific reference to four Khoikhoi individuals he had sketched. These sketches
were later published in his book, The Kafirs Illustrated (London, 1849). Although Angas had made
field sketches of these Khoikhoi people which were lithographed later, these sketches are not only seen
as popular works of art, but opened a window into the social and cultural world of the Genadendal
Khoikhoi community during the mid-19th century. The fact that Angas supplied the names and surnames
of three of the four characters, allowed historians to reconstruct a brief biography of each individual.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Whelan, Debbie
The trading store is a critically understudied phenomenon, dotted around the varied landscapes of
Southern Africa, often marking out physical borders, cognitive boundaries and spatial edges. The
emergence of the store in itself is a story of pattern making. These structures formed the spatial centre
of communal nodes, with radiating patterns and markings leading to the periphery of their influence,
forming a web of connections. The realization that the store itself was immediately identifiable as an
iconic structure in the rural landscape was more due to its strong architectural language and latterly
to the artistic and colourful resolution of its gables, parapets and end walls. The semiotic architectural
form itself drove me to this study. Understanding that this modest structure was as important in the
ideas of cognitive pattern making and identification in KwaZulu- Natal as the symbols of a mission
church steeple or the elevated magistrates court up on the hill, prompted further research. The landscape
and buildings themselves are described from an architectural point of view, and their interconnectedness
from an artistic stance articulated, before the reflections on their mutations in the age of
globalised societies.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Olivier, Bert
Is it possible to articulate an aesthetic of the beautiful today, at a time when what Kundera’s character, Sabina, describes as the ‘uglification’ of the world, has become pervasive, on the one hand, and when, on the other, social reality has become so complex that the harmonies required by the beautiful,
conceived of as belonging within aesthetic space, can no longer be systematically justified in aesthetic terms? The answer given to this question here is negative, and goes hand in hand with the claim, put
forward by Lyotard, that after Auschwitz one can no longer cling to the metanarrative of the universal emancipation of humankind. Similarly, it is argued, although beauty may still be experienced at an everyday, intuitive level, at a reflective, aesthetic-theoretical level it cannot be systematically sustained, given the complex, interrelated character of historical events, culture and social reality. It is further
pointed out that Lyotard’s claim, that the aesthetic of the modern as well as the postmodern amounts to an aesthetic of the sublime, albeit of different kinds, casts light on the reasons why, today, when one is
surrounded by so much ugliness in the form of pseudo-beautiful kitsch, one cannot escape an aesthetic of the sublime, and several artists’ work is alluded to, to substantiate this argument.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2007) Gamble, Jennifer M
Discussions of architecture inevitably involve assessments of visual pleasure / displeasure. In relation to contemporary memorial space, such discussions rarely venture into the territory of the negative critique in the phase after construction. Little dialogue occurs in the public domain
about anything other than the merits of any new project. The reasons frequently relate to political exigencies. However, there are additional reasons that people seldom elaborate and that may have far-reaching consequences for those who use those spaces to mourn. Even in a memorial space that challenges the educated eye of artists and architects, mourners may experience states
that verge on the sublime. Beauty and the sublime in such a context have diverse meanings. That which is visually ugly may have a place that renders them beautiful. With reference to the work of psychoanalytic theorist Donald Winnicott, this paper shows why this situation arises and operates
as an exemplar for the apprehension of other designed spaces that some perceive as beautiful, some as downright ugly and others who perceive them to reside in the domain of the sublime.
