AA 2012 Supplementum 1

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http://hdl.handle.net/11660/2480

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Browsing AA 2012 Supplementum 1 by Subject "Historiography"

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    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.
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    Indigenisation and history: how opera in South Africa became South African opera
    (University of the Free State, 2012) Roos, Hilde
    English: In South Africa, the exposure of opera to local cultures and circumstances has in time resulted in a number of opera productions that have departed from Western aesthetic norms and prompted innovations to the genre. These innovations can be traced in newly created operas as well as in the production of a number of operas from the standard canon that have been ‘translated’ to local contexts and social realities. This article explores the historical trajectory of opera production in South Africa from 1801 to the present through the lens of indigenisation and shows that, in its most subtle form, this phenomenon can be traced in local opera productions long before the issue of the reflection of indigenous cultures in opera became relevant. In constructing this history, the author hopes to identify moments when one musical element became another, or changed sufficiently to become a similar, but different element. Clearly, in discovering the South African roots of opera and understanding the many projects that currently characterise the opera scene in this country, the issue is not only one for cultural or textual analysis, but also, very pertinently, a matter for historiography.