Art History and Image Studies

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Europees-historiese vormtaalelemente in die Nederduits-Gereformeerde kerkargitektuur van die Groot-Karoo
(University of the Free State, 1978-01) De Waal, Lydia Magdalena; Teurlinckx, A. A. F.; Roodt, L.
Afrikaans: In die ondersoek na die Europees-historiese vormtaalelemente in die Nederduits-Gereformeerde kerke van die Groot-Karoo en omgewing is bevind dat dié kerke veral deel het aan die herlewingstyle wat in die 19e eeu in Europa ontstaan het. Dit was veral die neo-Gotiek, gebaseer op die hoogtepunt van die Middeleeuse style, en die neo-Klassieke styl wat in die Karookerke neerslag gevind het. Die voedingsbron van die Suid-Afrikaanse variasies is hoofsaaklik die Dietse stamlande en Engeland. Seker die volmaakste voorbeeld van die Engelse Gotiek is die Grootkerk van Graaff-Reinet, gebaseer op die katedraal van Salisbury in Engeland. Die Nederduits-Gereformeerde kerk op Cradock is op sy beurt weer 'n variasie van die neo-klassieke St. Martin-in-the-Fields op Trafalgar Square, Londen. In albei dié kerke is die onderskeie style se vormtaalelemente gevarieer, met in eersgenoemde geval 'n minder suksesvolle toepassing. Die oorvloedige gebruik van sekere Gotiese elemente en detail soos fiale, sterk geprofileerde kroon- en druplyste en beeldhoukunstige dekorasie skep byvoorbeeld aan die symure 'n bont effek. By Cradock se kerk is die toepassing van neo-Klassisistiese elemente - 'n diep portiek, groot pediment en Toskaanse suile - wat met 'n Gotiese toring gekombineer word, baie geslaagd. Wat 'n algemene beskouing van al die Karookerke wat besoek is betref, was dit opvallend dat dié kerke in hulle situering ook 'n Middeleeuse tendens vertoon. Die kerk is op 'n groot plein geleë, direk langs die hoofstraat (Beaufort-Wes, Prins Albert, Murraysburg en Laingsburg) , of vorm 'n "eiland", sentraal in die dorp (Aberdeen en Hanover). In ander gevalle loop die hoofstraat teen die kerk dood (Merweville en Colesberg). Verskeie graftombes kom dikwels binne die kerkterrein voor, wat heenwys na die oud-Europese "kerkhof- rond- die - kerk"-idee. Sprekend van bykans al die kerke is die hoë torings, reeds wat die meeste Europese elemente vertoon, soos steunbere (Nederland), kantele (Engeland) en ander versieringselemente soos fiale, spuwers en hogels wat by die meeste Europees-Gotiese katedrale aangetref word. Naas die torings is die Gotiese spitsboogvensters dié kerke se grootste bate. Vele Karookerke spog met pragtige getraseerde vensters met byvoorbeeld tipiese Engelse drie- en vierpasindelings, soos by Graaff-Reinet en Beaufort-Wes. Ander kerke, byvoorbeeld dié op Steytlerville, Merweville en Prins Albert, het weer goeie voorbeelde van oorsnydende trasering. Die meeste kerke is volgens die Latynse en Griekse grondplantipes gebou. 'n Voorbeeld van 'n oktogonale plan kom in die Bo-Karoo by Colesberg voor. Oordekking van die kerkruimte geskied deur die algemene hanebalk- en stutbalkstelseIs, wat veral tipies is van houtgewelwe in die Engelse Gotiek. Kruisgewelfstelsels in hout, geïnspireer deur onder meer die Engelse Perpendicular Style, waarin die knobbel prominent oor die viering figureer, kom by onder meer Beaufort-Wes en Graaff-Reinet voor. Die meeste ander kerke het nie oop dakstoele nie, maar is deur plafonne afgedek. Die tradisionele Europese ruimte-indeling van die interieur in hoofbeuk, sybeuke, transep en koor word nie volledig in die Karookerke gevolg nie. Veral die koorgedeelte of sanetuarium van die Rooms-Katolieke kerk, ontbreek en word bloot deur die konsistorieruimte vervang. In sommige kerke (Murraysburg, Merweville, Aberdeen en Steytlerville) neem groot dubbele kansels, soms terug in nisse geplaas, ook 'n groot ruimte direk voor die konsistorie in beslag. Die kansels wissel dikwels in vorm en grootte. Behalwe die tribune-tipe, kom ook 'n goeie voorbeeld van 'n tipiese Oos-Engelse kelkvormige kansel op Prins Albert voor. Beaufort- Wes se kerk het op sy beurt 'n pragtige agthoekige kansel op 'n hoë voetstuk. Die kansels het gewoonlik ryklik versierde klankborde waarin een of ander Gotiese motief wat in die interne dekorasie gebruik is, herhaal word. In afwerking en dekorasie sowel aan die interieur as eksterieur is die oorgrote meerderheid van die Karookerke wat besoek is, baie eenvoudig. Die trasering van die vensters, pleister en klipwerk verskaf die nodige dekorasie. Hoewel dié kerke tog, afgesien van gemelde feite, weelderiger as die plattelandse Protestantse kerke van Nederland vertoon, bly hulle in die geheel gesien sober in benadering.
Open Access
Moshweshwe's diplomatic relations with the indigenous chiefs of Southern Africa, 1822-1870
(University of the Free State, 1994) Seboni, Peter; Marais, A. H.
Moshweshwe's diplomatic relations and foreign policy with many of his contemporary Black chiefs emanated from a notion of being a great ruler and superior chief in and around the Caledon River valley. He entertained this notion in his early life. He wished to be acknowledged as a man of high status and be obeyed without being questioned. That was his ambition. At one stage while being a young boy he is reported to have killed five young boys who infuriated him by not obeying his command.¹ He wanted to command respect and be revered. But he later realized that respect based on fear does not last as it leads to enmity and challenges. It is generally believed that Moshweshwe was born in about 1786. His place of birth was Menkhoaneng near Butha Buthe in northern Lesotho. His father was Mokhachane the second son of Peete. Moshweshwe's people belonged to the Bamokotedi such as Mohlomi, to be blessed.³ Peete, (Moshweshwe's grandfather) took him there for blessings. The ceremony for passing blessings was conducted by uttering some words and rubbing of foreheads. Mohlomi did all these to young Moshweshwe. In about 1805 Moshweshwe was old enough to be sent to lebollong - an initiation school. Boys were sent to this school to undergo training for manhood and adulthood. Memories were tested to see how retentive they were by encouraging the initiates to recite long praise poems of their choice. Reliability, trustworthiness and loyalty were encouraged. Tolerance, patience and leadership qualities were identified.⁴ Circumcision was a rite that was performed here. The trainers or initiators were trusted men of the community. The initiates were given new names symbolizing a new social status.⁵ After returning from the lebollo Moshweshwe felt he was old enough to marry. He needed cattle of his own to enable him to pay the dowry - bohadi. He was proving to be innovative. Together with his lebollo mate, Makuanyane, (who later bacame a general of his warriors) he went for cattle raiding. They attacked the village of Ramonaheng at Kholelong. They captured almost all his cattle. Moshweshwe praised himself for his feat and praised himself in this way: "Ke 'na Moshoeshoe Moshoashoaila oa ha Kali Lebeola le beotseng Ramonaheng litelu."⁶ Literally translated it means: "I am Moshweshwe, the barber of Kali the shaver that shaved the beard of Ramonaheng." All along he was called Lepoqo and after the Ramonaheng incident the name "Moshweshwe" superceded Lepoqo and in the long run this name ceased to be used. With the cattle available his father and grandfather got him a woman to marry. It was the daughter of a man named Seepheephe and her name was Mabela. It is believed that his marriage took place in 1810. A son was born called Mohato and Mabela came to be called 'Mamohato'⁷ - the term means Mohato's mother. Moshweshwe appeared unhappy. He wished to be superior to all other men. His grandfather again took him to Mohlomi who was at Maritoe - near the present day Ficksburg. His anxiety for megalomania made him appear as though he was mentally deranged. According to Peete and Mokhachane he was to be cured of his "madness". Both he and Peete expected the doctor, (Mohlomi) to give him medical treatment and a talisman. To their surprise they were told that Moshweshwe is to be cured psychologically. Mohlomi went on to say: "....it is truly his heart alone that we are changing, his mind that we are curing and resetting anew his medicine is his knowledge and pursuance of peace and justice in his service and relations with all men regardless of their status .... ". Moshweshwe's attitude had to change if he wished to be anything great. According to Mohlomi he was to look at life in a different perspective. Mohlomi had been a great traveller and had built affinal relationships with many chiefs whose daughters or sisters he married. In every country he visited he married somebody there. He had realized the advantage of such a relationship : it keeps countries in harmony. He was the first man in Southern Africa who had an opportunity to form political alliances had such an idea dawned on his mind. But whenever he left the place he had visited he left his newly married wife behind. He did not take any of the women he had married to his country. They, in turn, were free to re-marry and the children born belonged to him as he was the first man to have paid out the bohadi (lobola) cattle to consumate the first marriage.
Open Access
The picaresque tradition feminism and ideology critique
(University of the Free State, 1999) Human, Elsie Suzanne; Van den Berg, D. J.; Visagie, P. J.
English: Calvin Seerveld evocatively uses the literary term 'picaresque' in his transposition into visual and imaginary terms, of the philosopher D. H. Th. Vollenhoven's typology of philosophical conceptions. In this study the more limited use of the term 'picaresque novel' and 'picaresque fictional world' in literary criticism is expanded against the background of Seerveld's categories, in order to arrive at the outlines of a broader 'picaresque imaginary world'. The proposition of such an 'imaginary world' not only aids in accounting for the recurrence of similar metaphors, themes and strategies in cultural products, spanning centuries, but also counters the remnants of a subjectivist 'world-view' philosophy in the idea of the 'typiconic traditions'. 'Motifs' in both visual culture and art historical texts are considered to be dynamic 'motives' within the context of the directive imaginary framework of a 'picaresque imaginary world', generating and divulging its ideological orientations. The metaphoric significance in picaresque visual art, of motifs related to vision, the Fool, foolish bodily postures, and playful narrative emplotments, is scrutinized. The prevalence of the metaphoric association of knowledge and vision in 'ocularcentric' mainstream Western culture at least since Greco-Roman antiquity, make metaphors related to vision important barometers of ideological directive frameworks. Themes and motifs associated with the character of the Fool, are unravelled in order to explore his/her metaphoric role as the epitome of picaresque artistry, performing various functions with and in picaresque texts. After having systematized the types of metaphoric bodily postures and gestures that are related to the playfully subversive nature of the Fool, a few pictorial narratives are considered in order to assess how playful metaphors of actions and events divulge underlying picaresque orientations in narrative contexts. The advantages of viewing feminist art from the perspective of 'typiconic traditions' are considered. In feminist searches for trans-generational links among women - a main concern in feminist scholarship, particularly in literary criticism (I'écriture féminine) but also in art history - female cultural production is often relegated to separate or 'alternative' female traditions, that thus have no relevance for, and can have no enduring impact on patriarchal culture. The proposition of such traditions obscures the analysis of the ways in which women have negotiated and disrupted, and still are negotiating and disrupting, artistic, social and other cultural conventions in order to open up a gender sensitive cultural space. Seerveld's 'cartographic methodology' is the basis upon which the field of a feminist search for commonalities is typologically differentiated. Abandoning the search for monolithic female traditions, attention is redirected to the links and gendered contributions of female art to various age-old cultural traditions in visual culture. This approach aids in removing the spectre of biological and cultural essentialism. A study of picaresque art by female artists, moreover, has the potential of enriching our idea of a picaresque tradition. There are subtle nuances and accents in the use, by recent female artists, of motifs and metaphors related to the gendered body, that have not been exploited by male artists; which have not yet been incorporated into our cultural heritage and assimilated into the idea of a picaresque tradition. Finally 'new' methods of ideology-critical visual analysis are designed and experimented with. Such methods of interpreting visual culture are inspired by the theory of ideology outlined by Johann Visagie and combined with experience in teaching art students who 'think visually'. It entails arguing by means of the visual association and juxtaposition of motifs and their metaphorical meanings within specific contexts. The viability of this method of analysis and its potential to enrich art historical methodologies, are promoted in the light of progress in visual technology that facilitates easy visual reproduction of art. However, it is exactly in the context of the global reproducibility of the image and of the radicalization of the concept of the simulacrum that the ideological power of images can easily be regarded as anodyne, pulverized and ineffectual. In the proposed ideology- critical visual analysis, however, visual motifs are interpreted as communicators of ideological 'motives' as in the rest of the study.
Open Access
El Greco's achievement of his personal maniera
(University of the Free State, 2002-12) Maré, Estelle Alma; Van den Berg, D. J.
English: Domenicos Theotocopoulos, generally known as El Greco, was born in Crete in 1541. Before he left his native island he was a competent, late Byzantine painter. In his late twenties, he went to Venice, where he learnt the craft of Western painting, most probably in Titian's workshop. He left Venice in 1570 and became an independent painter in Rome before departing for Spain in 1576, where he may have sought the patronage of Phi lip II, from whom he initially received commissions. After a brief stay in Madrid, he took up residence in Toledo where he practised as a religious painter in the service of the post- Tridentine Roman Catholic Church, and produced his most distinctive paintings in a manner that is unique in the Renaissance tradition. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how El Greco achieved his personal manner of expression or maniera and, more specifically, what this very distinct, personal manner of expression or ultima maniera entailed. Part I (Chapter 1) is an overview of the life of the artist and the contexts in which he acquired his knowledge of ltalian Renaissance artistic practice and his painterly skills. Part II deals with the general ideas and ideals that informed Italian Renaissance art (Chapter 2), and then goes on to focus on those aspects which specifically informed El Greco's apprenticeship in the Western painterly tradition (Chapter 3), as well as his own ideas on the art of painting. To arrive at an evaluation of the development of his personal manner of expression, the Part III is devoted to the analysis of selected paintings executed in Venice and Rome in which the characteristics of his later manner of expression are already in evidence (Chapter 4). A further chapter (5) is devoted to two important works painted during his early years in Toledo in which his manner of expression, although reminiscent of the forms favoured by Italian Mannerist painters, is already uniquely transformed into a personal vision. The main focus of the dissertation is chapter 6 of Part IV which contains an analysis of the angelic figures which are so predominant in El Greco's oeuvre. The selected paintings are dealt with under nine sub-headings in which the actions of the depicted angels are broadly categorised. The analyses focus on the distinctive forms of the angelic figures, their interaction with other figures and the meanings that the compositions acquire through the way in which they are represented. In this regard, some of El Greco's most renowned paintings, such as the Burial of the Count of Orgaz and two versions of the Baptism of Christ, are reinterpreted and re-evaluated. While he does not deviate radically from traditional iconography in the representation of most of his themes, El Greco's most innovative contribution to sixteenth-century painting is the expansion and transformation of the formal qualities he derived from Mannerism. With increasing skill he infused angelic and many human figures with movement by turning them into open-ended, elongated spiral forms, and creating the verticality characteristic of his compositions. This manner of representation acquires a symbolic meaning in which religious and artistic concerns are unified. As such, El Greco's angelic figures exemplify a key element of his manner of expression and artistic vision. They become metafigures, as stated in the concluding chapter which summarizes the characteristics of his ultima maniera.
Open Access
Kreatiwiteit as sistemiese faktor in die visuele kuns: 'n kritiese kunsteoretiese besinning
(University of the Free State, 2004-11) Janse van Vuuren, Lukas Marthinus; Van den Berg, D. J.
English: The aim of this project is to develop an art theoretical model which can be applied in higher education context in order to give an account of the way according to which creativity is established as a systemic factor in the visual arts. The purpose with this model is: (a) to critically analyse the disparate contents attributed to creativity in the visual arts and (b) to formulate sober ideas and categories in opposition to the deficiencies of existing or conventional speculations regarding creativity. The resistance of modern and post modern art practices to systemic forms of analysis results in a detachment of subjects and objects, events and conditions from their relational binding. As an alternative to these art practices and in reaction to present research on creativity in the visual arts, this project focuses on a hermeneutical approach in order to account for the interactive nature of creativity. Instead of linking it to the productive powers of the individual, creativity is viewed as systemically dependant on networks, based on creative interaction between artworks, artists and viewers as well as the ideological alliances of these parties with world views and traditions. Relational analyses of this systemic dependency, demonstrate how artists in the production of their works are interactively involved in the finding and transformation of visual imagery with metaphoric potential, the revision of intentions and the discovery of new alternative and creative communicative strategies. Contrary to modernist beliefs concerning the artist as autonomous creator of meaning in works of visual art, individual analyses conducted in this research project rather gave evidence of the artist acting as an kind of attendant, finally bringing together the various causal links surrounding the artwork. The multiplicity of changing and competing combinations of insights being actualised in the artwork during the creative process, is indicative of creative mutual interactions between the artist and the evolving artwork, in stimulation and in anticipation of viewers’ re-creative responses. Relational analyses also showed that the appreciation of products destined for creative interaction demand appropriate re-creative responses in the tracing of the implicit artist’s supposed creative strategies. Results of the analyses subsequently confirmed among others that viewers’ participation in the actualisation of the imaginary component, product or action require the finding, appropriation and critical consideration of unforeseen possibilities, as well as the ability to improvise with limited information and to ingeniously transform visual ideas. In reply to the passive aloofness endorsed by the traditional aesthetic principle of disinterestedness, this study establishes viewers’ creative participation in the actualisation of the aesthetic object as a complimentary equivalent of the artist’s creative making process. As participants in these mutually complimentary processes artists and viewers are ideologically influenced by their respective world views, determining the nature of their creative discourse. In anticipation of humankind’s predictable inclination to furnish artworks with their own cultural burden, interests and prejudices, artists’ creative initiatives are realised in the way that they ironize, expose and challenge this self-interest by means of strategies like contradiction, indefiniteness and an abundance of alternatives. Creative participation in the imaginary worlds of artworks among others also requires flexible divergent thinking, tolerance for disparate visual statements, an ability to distinguish ideology-laden interests from aesthetic interests, and to critically and introspectively reflect on the limitations of self-centred ideologies. This study subsequently establishes that creative participative relations in the visual arts surpasses cultural boundaries and enables participants involved in these relations to achieve self-understanding on the basis of moral understanding attained through the viewpoints of others.
Open Access
Melancholy constellations: Walter Benjamin Anselm Kiefer, William Kentridge and the imaging of history as catastrophe
(University of the Free State, 2007-05) Schoeman, Gerhard Theodore; Van den Berg, D. J.
This dissertation is a study in representation. More specifically, it is a study in the representation of art and of art history as melancholy representation. The latter is produced or opens up, because objects of art — pictures, images, or Bilder (read “likenesses”) — have a tendency to withdraw or turn away from view. Objects of art, which may be thought of as “thinking objects” or “living images”, that is, as quasisubjects, negate complete ownership. Like living things, objects of art are infinitely incomplete; they arise out of an ongoing process of becoming and disappearance. As such, our relationship with them may be said to be one of “mutual desire”, want and lack. Moreover, as Michael Ann Holly (2002) has argued, the study of art history is bedevilled by lost, obscure, or obsolete objects; cloudy, shadowy, ghostly, even corpse-like objects that deny total acquisition or last words. It is in this sense that one can say art history — perhaps like any history — is a melancholic science. It is also from this melancholy perspective that this dissertation reflects, in various ways, on the imaging of history as catatastrophe or as catastrophic loss — as this is figured in the work of Walter Benjamin, Anselm Kiefer, and William Kentridge. How then do we write about art and the history of art, when the objects of our study are both too close and too far away, mutually absent and present — fleeting, yet seemingly permanent? How can one “image” the catastrophic debilitation of melancholic disavowal or death of self, without succumbing to its debilitating attractions? Following on from Max Pensky’s (2001) tracing of the historical image of melancholia as dialectical, the aim of this dissertation is to delineate a discursive space for perception and reflection; a critical space within which to think of the melancholic im-possibility of representation qua possession, as essentially negatively dialectical: futile and heroic, pointless and necessary. Finally, this dissertation asks: how can one write about the imaging of history as castastrophe, as this is figured from within different historical frameworks: that of an early twentieth century German-Jewish philosopher, a late twentieth/early twenty-first century German artist, and a late twentieth/early twenty-first South African-Jewish artist? How can one hope to relate their essentially melancholy work without becoming culpable of ahistoricity or even pastiche? No easy answers have been forthcoming during the writing of this dissertation. However, it is my delicate contention that reading and picturing their work in and as a melancholy constellation whose parameters shift depending on one’s point of view, as opposed to submitting their similarities and differences to rigorous systematic analysis, has revealed surprising and enlightening elective affinities. In the final analysis, visual and philosophical analogy has the last say. And this seems fitting, especially where one encounters a writer and two artists whose thinking in images tirelessly challenge our thinking “logically” in words alone.
Open Access
Selfaanbieding: Rembrandt en die gebroke-kosmiese tradisie
(University of the Free State, 2009-03) Joubert, Jeanne Annette Jacqueline; Van den Berg, D. J.
English: This research ensued from a prior thesis — Artist's portrait and self-portrait: the art historical traces of artistic self-presentation (M.A. University of he Free State, 1992) — and was supplemented by a growing interest in Rembrandt van Rijn’s self-presentations and the possible role of the troubled cosmic tradition therein. The four paintings by Rembrandt that were chosen as core illustrations for the research — The elevation of the Cross (ca.1636), Self-portrait with Saskia (ca.1635), Self-portrait as St Paul (1663) and Bathsheba (1654) — are exceptional examples of self-presentation and depict profound human brokenness (or troubledness) to which the artist relates very personally. In The elevation of the Cross Rembrandt sets himself within the central event in the history of salvation, in intimate proximity of the crucified Christ. In Chapters 3 and 5 the central visual examples focus on intimate relationships with women in the painter's life, set within Biblical context. In Chapter 4 the visual centre is a self-portrait as the apostle Paul, one of the key figures in the New Testament. The Scriptural passages on which the paintings are based indicate that God is not “dead” and that healing remains a reality, particularly in the troubled world in which we live. The introductory chapter explores the field of study. The second chapter deals with the manner in which radical brokenness embodies the troubled human spirit by means of chiasmic mobility — from Rembrandt's Crucifixion Scenes (1631-39) to Jane Alexander’s The sacrifices of God are a troubled spirit (2002-2004). The dynamics of the troubled cosmic tradition are highlighted with reference to various perchronic relationships, transmission by conversion and maturation, the possibilities of typiconic enrichment through different traditions and the extension through dialogue between different traditions. In Self-portrait with Saskia the focus will be on human imperfection: the inappropriateness of the theme of the Prodigal Son as marriage portrait, of Saskia’s position in the painting, of the laughing face of the artist and of the back view of the two figures. The apostrophic turning of both figures towards the viewer may stimulate a radical chiasmic shift both in the painting and in the mind of the observer. The implied/external artist, as well as the implied/external viewer, play constituent roles to realise the suggested inversion. Rembrandt's approach to the inversion of radical affliction is typiconically contrasted with Francis Bacon’s escapism through mystic motivations. When Rembrandt depicts himself as the apostle Paul he may allude to Paul’s dim/dark mirror, which implies brokenness. This chapter explores the problems that arise and persist when, during the Romantic Period, Rembrandt is characterised as a gifted, suffering hero based on the view of artistic calling in the nineteenth century. In keeping with the Letters of St Paul, human vulnerability is rather chiasmically embodied in Rembrandt’s Coram Dei approach together with the suggestion of family ties and a continual shift between sin and grace in self-representation. The painting of Bathsheba (1654) seems to fall outside the theme of self-presentation. However, I wish to demonstrate that even in the case of imaginary human absence the external painter may be present implicitly, in which case biographical information could be meaningful in the interpretation of the painting. The human focus of a troubled cosmic hypothesis is particularly actualised by a naer't leven consciousness and a person-to-person relationship, which is sustained mainly by the dynamic of a God-man relationship Self-depiction may expose the subjectivity of the artist. Post-modern debates present the possibility of returning chiasmically to themes and approaches that have apparently lost their applicability today. Interpretation by means of a troubled cosmic reference could be used to apply such approaches in a new way, with different aims, to offer a regenerated vision of art historiography and of being an artist.
Open Access
The image and the brazen serpent: division, mediation and the translatability of cultures
(University of the Free State, 2010) De Villiers-Human, Suzanne
English: This article confronts possible effects of the crisis of intercultural communication by investigating the transforming power of images to reorient or transfigure accepted cultural meanings. With current image theorists such as W J T Mitchell and Hans Belting it emphasises that the image’s power to self-create or to possess a life, presence or soul of its own – that aspect of the image that makes it seem animated and able to trap or immerse – is not merely a relic of ritual, cultic or idolatrous comprehensions, but may rather be one of the constant features in ontologies of the image.
Open Access
Art historiography and Bild-wissenschaft: new perspectives on some objects by the Venda sculptor, Phutuma Seoka
(University of the Free State, 2012) De Villiers-Human, Suzanne
English: It is argued that the apparatus of western art history has been sharpened by the current media consciousness. Typical art historical tools are self-consciously harnessed in the process of scrutinising objects which resist and expand these methods and theories. The focus is on some objects of Venda polychrome sculpture which “took the South African art world by storm” in the 1980s when these specimens of rural craftsmanship in wood were deemed fit to enter the gallery circuit. An analysis of the Venda sculptors’ religious and social knowledge of the use of patterned decoration on ritual tools in wood, and of performances by firelight of myths of origin with wooden dolls during initiation rituals, informs my alternative interpretation of the modern polychrome sculptures steering away from issues of cross-cultural aesthetics, the dialectic of modernism and traditionalism and post-colonial studies. Rather, I interpret the works as medium-self-conscious objects which extend their own cultural and social agency to communicate more widely to a non-initiate audience which may include visitors to an art museum. This shift of focus from a history of art to a history of media effects an altered perspective on the objects themselves and on the methods used to interpret them.
Open Access
Preface
(University of the Free State, 2012) Human, Suzanne
Abstract not available
Open Access
Voorwoord = Preface
(University of the Free State, 2012) Van den Berg, Dirk
Abstract not available
Open Access
Luc Peire’s Mwinda Mingi (1955): a Belgian abstract painting on the Congo
(University of the Free State, 2012) Vermeulen, Julien
English: As a young artist Luc Peire (1916-1994) was influenced by expressionism, but by 1955, when he painted Mwinda Mingi, his work had become predominantly abstract. The Lingala-title suggests this shift may have taken place during his journey in the Congo and critics have often claimed that the painter’s perception of African village life had a decisive impact on his new style. This assumption however requires a profound analysis taking into account the broader context of Belgian colonial art, Peire’s contacts with modernist artists, the circumstances of his isolated life as a painter-in-residence, the gradual development of his abstract idiom and the ambivalent reception of his new work among expatriates and Belgian critics. The catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre mentions 1398 oil paintings, sixty of which have been inspired by Africa.
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Retrospektiewe vervreemding van tegnologiese media: animasieprosesse by William Kentridge
(University of the Free State, 2013-01) Opperman, Johannes Arnoldus; Van den Berg, Dirk J.
English: Although the South-African artist, William Kentridge has practised his creativity in many domains (as observer, activist, artist, storyteller and thinking director) in a wide range of media (including land art, sculpture, etching and stage and theatre productions), it is chiefly his large charcoal drawings in process (drawings for animation) and his unique, short, handmade, animated films and their projection that have given him international fame. The question has arisen how technological media underwent a process of retrospect-tive alienation in William Kentridge’s animation processes. The development of Kentridge’s large wall drawings to drawings for animation and projection is discussed, while mark making, montage and editing within the greater filmic whole, are emphasized. For Kentridge his drawings for animation (1988–1996) and drawings for projection (1996 to the present) remain central themes in all the new media and multimedia performances. In this study research was done to determine which methods and techniques Kentridge used, as a film director to edit a sequence of drawings into an animated film. Consequently, his dramatic, narrative and critical combination of interdisciplinary media like drawing, language, photography and film, video and theatre productions are emphasized. The drawing as an image creating process and Kentridge’s agency (his sleight of hand, drawing actions, unique mark textures, gramma and graphein, mark making and superimposition) were explored in order to create a unique image. The emphasis has been on how Kentridge made his drawings by means of charcoal, pastel and an eraser by making marks on paper, then erasing certain marks and again making new marks over those previous ones, while constantly filming the creation process (his so-called stone age animation). The focus has been on his use of the drawing hand as an intelligent, mark making and mark changing tool (performance). Through his use of outdated film and animation technologies, techniques and technological media which he transposed to a contemporary environment and current technological infrastructure and made comments on, he exhibited the meta-referential and expressive features of his medium. Kentridge has created art that connects with the new media concepts through his skilful integration of the charcoal drawing medium with existing technologies. By means of editing, montage, special effects and film tricks he opened new possibilities to animation as an art and cinematic form that would eventually be projected as an imaginary artwork (animated fiction). Even after nine films in the Drawings for projection series Kentridge still used his unique stone age animation technique and made new films. After some time Kentridge started to make existing literary works, dramatic texts and librettos his own and gave it an African flavour. His use of projection technology and various projection techniques contributed to the success of the visual narrative element. Kentridge’s expression of the shadow as image, profile image drawings and his moving silhouette processions are discussed. From the late 1980s William Kentridge added projection to his Drawings for projection, his animated film and video images. By means of some old (for example Baroque theatre) and contemporary theatre technology (like projectors and computers) he projected his animations in galleries, on miniature theatre models, the stage space, stage décor and screens, while live actors, opera singers, puppets, marionettes and their manipulators, as well as mechanical dolls/automata performed in the foreground of the multimedia stage productions. By adding marionettes and automata to his animated drawings, he created full-fledged narrative and dramatic artworks. Kentridge’s appropriation of discarded and outdated visual technologies, “retrospec-tive alienation” of various processes of visualizing and medializing (in the early stages of the history of modernism of the Western visual media) and their addition to animation procedures have become distinctive of his art.
Open Access
Beyond spectatorship: an exploration of embodied engagement with art
(University of the Free State, 2014-10) Lauwrens, Jennifer; Van den Berg, D. J.
English: According to proponents of the so-called ‘sensory turn’ the varied layers of a person’s experience of the social and material world produced via the senses of taste, touch, hearing and smell have largely been neglected in academic research on art. It is precisely because a person’s embodied and sensual engagement is increasingly being recognised as co-constitutive of the dynamic relationship occurring between people and art that dealing with the visual alone has been found to be insufficient and has brought about a shift in interest toward the other senses. Working between the disciplines of art history and visual culture studies, this research engages with art in ways that exceed the visual in order to understand the embodied and engaged interactions at work between a person and art. I argue that scholarly investigations of the visual field have, until recently, often avoided explorations of the affective, multisensorial body of a viewer in relation to what s/he sees even though many art practices invite the engagement and participation of the whole body beyond spectatorship only. In a close analysis of two installations, a land art piece, one video and one entire participatory exhibition the possible ways in which to theorise the involvement of the whole person in aesthetic experience and not only the mind, intellect or consciousness are explored. It is argued that a re-conception of art and spectatorship as embodied interaction provides a far more nuanced understanding of people’s experiences of art than ideologically and interpretative driven ‘readings’ only. The theme of embodied spectatorship and contemporary art is approached in particular through the lenses of the sensory turn, the pictorial turn, the corporeal turn, empathy theory, affect theory, phenomenology and aesthetic embodiment and engagement. By placing various examples of contemporary art in dialogue with these theoretical perspectives the limitations of traditional notions regarding aesthetic spectatorship are exposed. This leads to the beginning of a broader conversation about the role and status of a whole embodied sensual being in her/his encounter with specific materialities of art. My basic theoretical standpoint is that a person’s embodied and engaged experience is the starting point from which investigations of art can productively proceed. In other words, by means of a predominantly phenomenological approach that describes aesthetic situations and encounters, it is argued that direct experience does not simply contribute to, but rather has a primacy and authority in encounters with art, and should, therefore, be investigated.
Open Access
A (Tall) Tale of Two Sisters: Integrating rhetorical and cognitive-pragmatic approaches to explore unreliable narration in film
(University of the Free State, 2015) Kriel, Johanet
There is a sustained debate in the academy about the role of narratology in film studies. This article forms part of this larger debate in exploring the application of the concept of unreliable narration to films, specifically to Jee-woon Kim’s little-known but exceptional film A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). A dispute surrounding this narratological device has centred on how readers or viewers determine that the narration deviates from diegetic truth. Two major strands of narratology have given divergent answers to this question: the rhetorical approach has been in favour of aligning diegetic truth with an “implied author”, while the cognitive approach has called the implied author into question, instead focusing on the viewer’s construction of the diegetic truth. This paper investigates the possibility of integrating the two approaches in terms of the viewer’s construction of ethical judgements and cued inferences, which would open up a new avenue for considering this narrative device.
Open Access
Exploring the imagination in the wake of Surrealism
(University of the Free State, 2015-10) Van den Berg, Corneli; Human, E. S.; Du Preez, A.
English: This thesis reports an exploration of various interrelated facets of human imaging and imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as catalyst. The ‘wake of Surrealism’ – a vigil held at the movement’s passing, as well as its aftereffects – indicates my primary focus on ideas concerning the imagination held by members of the Surrealist movement, which I trace further in selected artworks of a cluster of women surrealists active in Latin‐America as well as select artists in the South African context. The Surrealists desired a return to the sources of the poetic imagination, believing that the so‐called ‘unfettered imagination’ of Surrealism has the capacity to create unknown worlds, or the potential to envision often startling and strange realities. Not only did members of Surrealism have a high regard for the imagination, they also emphasised particular involuntary actions and unconscious functions of the imagination, as evidenced in their use of the method of automatic writing, dreams, play, objective chance, alchemy and so‐called primitivism. In this investigation I follow digital‐archival procedures rather than being in the physical presence of the artworks selected for interpretation. Responding to this limitation and to the current interest in image theory, I elaborate a method of art historical interrogation, based on the eventful and affective power of images. This exploration of the imagination into Surrealism’s wake therefore also functions as a ‘pilot study’, to determine the viability of this approach to image hermeneutics. I appropriate and expand W.J.T. Mitchell’s notion of ‘hypericons’ to develop the proposed concept of ‘hypericonic dynamics’. The hypericonic dynamic transpires in ‘hypericonic events’, through the cooperative imaging and imagining eventfulness of the interaction between artist and spectator, mediated by artworks. The dynamic is especially prominent in artworks with a metapictorial tenor. With hypericonic dynamics and metapictorial thematics as my heuristic method, I investigate artworks by three women surrealists – Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington – living and working in Latin‐America after the Second World War, and after the French Surrealist movement had already experienced its decline. Against the backdrop of indigenous visual culture their distinct individual styles are also related to Magical realism in the Latin‐American literary context, a style which overlaps and intersects with Surrealism. I expand upon insights gained in investigating the women in Mexico, to determine whether select South African artists, Alexis Preller, Cyril Coetzee, and Breyten Breytenbach belong in the wake of Surrealism. The central aim of my exploration of the imagination is to gain a deeper understanding of the everyday human imagination and its myriad operations in daily life, for the greater part conducted below the threshold of consciousness. The imagination is a universal human function, shared by all, yet also operational at an individual level. It also performs a unique function of image creation in the specialised domain of the fine arts. I understand the imagination to be irreducible, while often working in a subconscious, involuntary, and supportive, but nevertheless primary manner in everyday human life.
Open Access
Verkennende verbeeldingswêrelde: die ontsluiting van die Willem Boshoff Argief
(LitNet, 2017) Van Wyk, Josef; De Villiers-Human, Suzanne; Van den Berg, Dirk
The South African artist Willem Boshoff recently donated his digital archive, which serves as the source as well as the documentation of his artworks, to the University of the Free State in order to make it more accessible to researchers. Thus far (in the current interpretations of his artworks) the historical and philosophical complexity of Boshoff’s thought world, which is connected to his artworks and is becoming accessible through his archive, has not been interpreted. In the national and international research domain parts of the Willem Boshoff Archive have been explored, but the Archive has not been contextualized generally within archival discourses. The Archive has also not been interpreted as a meaningful cultural technique and has not been compared with other visually based intellectual projects. Therefore this article serves as the first contextual exploration of the Willem Boshoff Archive. Through this article we also suggest further research possibilities. Comparable archival projects include the work of various contemporary artists who have also been influenced by “archive fever” (Derrida 1995) and the “archival impulse” (Foster 2004) as well as various cultural thinkers of the 20th century, e.g. Gerhard Richter’s (1932–) Atlas (1962–), Hanne Darboven’s (1941–2009) Kulturgeschichte (1880–1983) (1980–1983), Horst Haack’s (1940–) Chronographie Terrestre (1981–), Ydessa Hendeles’s (1948–) Partners – The Teddy Bear Project (2004), David Goldblatt’s (1930–) Intersections (2005) and other exhibitions, Pippa Skotnes (1957–) and her leading role at the Centre for Curating the Archive,Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, Katie Paterson’s (1981–) Framtidsbiblioteket or Future library (2014–2114), Ernst Haeckel’s (1834–1919) Kunstformen der Natur (1904), Karl Blossfeldt’s (1865–1932) Urformen der Natur (1929), Aby Warburg’s (1866–1929) Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–1929) and Walter Benjamin’s (1892–1940) archive and writings, e.g. Das Passsagenwerk (1927–1940). Willem Boshoff’s archive is a unique example of experimental and conceptual archiving and imaginative, digital curating which involves a disciplined, thorough, systematic approach, but which is at the same time alternative, creative, open, playful, informative, performative, artistic and sensory. In the current academic environment digital archives and imaging records accompanied by texts are considered recognised forms of scientific practice and inquiry of which museums, academies, laboratories, observatories, test centres and publication networks are examples. In this article we refer to Paul Ricoeur’s insightful views on fiction and imagination, especially as expressed in his article “The function of fiction in shaping reality” (1979). We refer to the thoughts expressed there in order to unleash the creative and conceptual nature of the archive. This leads to the comparison of the archive with specific archival collections like Wunderkammern as an early modern phenomenon, as well as with later intellectual projects like those of the German cultural thinkers Aby Warburg (Mnemosyne Atlas, 1924–1929) and Walter Benjamin (Das Passagenwerk, 1927–1940, Der Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels, 1925) and the British artist Damien Hirst (1965–) in order to illuminate the distinctive nature and meaning of the Willem Boshoff Archive. Through these comparisons we argue that these intellectual projects not only offer new descriptions of reality, but also reveal new insights and dimensions of knowledge. We argue that the collections of Willem Boshoff, as in the case of these figures, originate in the spirit of the critical reconsideration and questioning of thresholds, transitions, turning points and cultural-historical crises. By comparing the diverse imaginary worlds created by each of these remarkable figures we highlight facets of Boshoff’s individual enterprise in comparison to theirs. We argue that the ways in which Boshoff and other creators of fictitious worlds highlight specific idiosyncratic concepts to explain the meaning and structure of their distinctive collections are comparable. With the Willem Boshoff Archive it is the persona of the Druid, created by Boshoff as a figure of artistry, around which Boshoff’s conceptualisations of cathexis, catharsis, chiasm and chance revolve. In comparison with Walter Benjamin it is primarily his concepts of the ruin or the relic and allegory, and with Aby Warburg it is his innovative concepts of pathos formulae and Mnemosyne (Nachleben der Antike in the collective memory) which summarise the rationale of each of their projects. The performative ways in which each of these imaginative worlds generate new concepts and knowledge are investigated comparatively. In the article we first provide a brief overview of the Willem Boshoff Archive. The archive’s fictional, imaginative and creative nature and its capacity to create interrelated imaginative worlds make it historically comparable with early modern Wunderkammern. This comparison highlights specific dimensions of Boshoff’s archival fictitious world. We refer to the more recent analysis of fundamental archival concepts by Jacques Derrida (1995), Wolfgang Ernst (Parrika 2013) and Ernst van Alphen (2014a), which contribute, to our argument that a Wunderkammer mentality is relevant to contemporary society. The concepts of fiction and imagination aid us with a comparative study of Boshoff, Warburg, Benjamin and Hirst when we discuss and compare each of these creators’ fictions and imaginary worlds. Boshoff’s archive provides a fictitious world that consists of various elements from diverse fields of knowledge; it includes: digital photographs of plants taxonomically ordered, various music recordings, dictionaries that he has written and photographs of his artworks. Reality is redescribed and a new dimension of reality is revealed by the intertwining of these elements through the fiction of the Druid and the continuous hard work and determination of the artist. This fictitious world can be interpreted und understood in terms of the “submedial space” of archives to which Boris Groys refers. According to Groys (2012:10), paper, films and computers are usually seen as the carriers of data and media in the archive, but they are also technical equipment forming part of the archive. “Behind” the carriers of data and media lie diverse production processes, electrical networks and economic processes. But what lies “behind” these networks and processes? The answers become vague among the various options: nature, history, reason, desire, a series of events, serendipity, subjects and dust. This is the obscure “submedial space” to which Groys refers where hierarchies of sign systems sink into dark, cloudy spaces. This “submedial space” is the das Andere of the archive. It is probably behind these material carriers of media and data, networks and processes and in the dark, cloudy spaces of the archive that fictions, fictitious worlds and the conceptual nature of Boshoff’s archive exist. This is where the researcher finds the Druid tending to the fictitious world of Boshoff’s mind.
Open Access
Ceremonial cinema: world-creation and social transformation through film as ritual
(University of the Free State, 2021-11) Janse van Rensburg, Rudiker; Rossouw, Martin; Kriel-de Klerk, Johanet
The journey to the cinema and our experiences there form part of what is effectively a screening ritual geared toward affecting audiences. The power of cinema largely derives from being removed from general society – presenting an ideal traditional ritual space of liminality. Within this space and in familiar patterns, viewers’ attention and emotions are guided and synchronised by the film, which are pre-determined by canonical codes like narrative logic and generic features. Ceremonial thresholds separate but also connect, and in cinema, they serve to initiate and encode spectators’ experience as part of a fundamentally social activity. When we visit the cinema to watch a film, the encounter is not only shaped by exciting moving pictures or engulfing sound, but also by the people watching with us, as we become part of a social ritual. This study aims to identify and explore the various connections and unavoidable entanglements between the spheres of film and ritual, particularly in terms of the ritualistic aspects that extend beyond the cinema before and after the screening. This includes basic phenomena that Ritual Studies take as its domain of inquiry – thresholds, liminality, collective effervescence and communitas, symbols, etc., and the broader effects or functions of these phenomena such as social identity, social structure, social cohesion, and social transformation. The diverse experiential qualities, effects, and broader influences of film may seem disconnected, but they share a deeper commonality that this study argues is the source of film’s profound social influence: each presents an instance or aspect of what is here called ‘film as ritual.’ It aims to explore the robust presence of film production and film spectatorship beyond the physical location of the cinema and considers viewer engagement in terms of pilgrimages and participation within an extended media landscape and its related narratives of symbolic significance. Ultimately, the study addresses film’s transformational power and influence by mapping it onto social ritual theories and exploring its worldbuilding capacities. The global fascination with films, which clearly includes social viewing experiences and encounters with film beyond the confines of the cinema, establishes film as ritual as a highly extended and culturally diffuse phenomenon. Film as ritual relates to collective identity creation and social relations through extensions of the cinematic experience beyond a mere physical place that provides the opportunity to watch a movie. The notion of film as ritual helps us come to terms with how films affect and influence people, their actions and their way of looking at the world – essentially transforming them, in some or other way.

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