Abstract art and the contested ground of African modernisms
- Authors: Mumba, Patrick
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2515 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021165
- Description: This submission for a Masters of Fine Art consists of a thesis titled Abstract Art and the Contested Ground of African Modernisms developed as a document to support the exhibition Time in Between. The exhibition addresses the fact that nothing is permanent in life, and uses abstract paintings that reveal in-between time through an engagement with the processes of ageing and decaying. Life is always a temporary situation, an idea which I develop as Time in Between, the beginning and the ending, the young and the aged, the new and the old. In my painting practice I break down these dichotomies, questioning how abstractions engage with the relative notion of time and how this links to the processes of ageing and decaying in life. I relate this ageing process to the aesthetic process of moving from representational art to semi-abstract art, and to complete abstraction, when the object or material reaches a wholly unrecognisable stage. My practice is concerned not only with the aesthetics of these paintings but also, more importantly, with translating each specific theme into the formal qualities of abstraction. In my thesis I analyse abstraction in relation to ‘African Modernisms’ and critique the notion that African abstraction is not ‘African’ but a mere copy of Western Modernism. In response to this notion, I have used a study of abstraction to interrogate notions of so-called ‘African-ness’ or ‘Zambian-ness’, whilst simultaneously challenging the Western stereotypical view of African modern art. I have also related the theoretical and practical analysis of abstraction to scholarly debates on abstraction and ‘African Modernism’, arguing for multiple African Modernisms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Mumba, Patrick
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2515 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021165
- Description: This submission for a Masters of Fine Art consists of a thesis titled Abstract Art and the Contested Ground of African Modernisms developed as a document to support the exhibition Time in Between. The exhibition addresses the fact that nothing is permanent in life, and uses abstract paintings that reveal in-between time through an engagement with the processes of ageing and decaying. Life is always a temporary situation, an idea which I develop as Time in Between, the beginning and the ending, the young and the aged, the new and the old. In my painting practice I break down these dichotomies, questioning how abstractions engage with the relative notion of time and how this links to the processes of ageing and decaying in life. I relate this ageing process to the aesthetic process of moving from representational art to semi-abstract art, and to complete abstraction, when the object or material reaches a wholly unrecognisable stage. My practice is concerned not only with the aesthetics of these paintings but also, more importantly, with translating each specific theme into the formal qualities of abstraction. In my thesis I analyse abstraction in relation to ‘African Modernisms’ and critique the notion that African abstraction is not ‘African’ but a mere copy of Western Modernism. In response to this notion, I have used a study of abstraction to interrogate notions of so-called ‘African-ness’ or ‘Zambian-ness’, whilst simultaneously challenging the Western stereotypical view of African modern art. I have also related the theoretical and practical analysis of abstraction to scholarly debates on abstraction and ‘African Modernism’, arguing for multiple African Modernisms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
The visionary artist
- Authors: Lambert, Moira
- Date: 1980
- Subjects: Blake, William, 1757-1827 Blake, William, 1757-1827 -- Symbolism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2441 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006113
- Description: Reading and personal experiences have often drawn my attention to the exceptionally high incidence of despair, "nervous disorder", alcoholism, nihilism and even suicide, among modern artists. I would like in this work to look at the visionary, Blake, against the problem of 'breaking the sound-barrier' and against the background of disastrous attempts at this by modern artists.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1980
- Authors: Lambert, Moira
- Date: 1980
- Subjects: Blake, William, 1757-1827 Blake, William, 1757-1827 -- Symbolism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2441 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006113
- Description: Reading and personal experiences have often drawn my attention to the exceptionally high incidence of despair, "nervous disorder", alcoholism, nihilism and even suicide, among modern artists. I would like in this work to look at the visionary, Blake, against the problem of 'breaking the sound-barrier' and against the background of disastrous attempts at this by modern artists.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1980
Zundiqondisise!: investigating voice, visibility and agency in the work of Xhosa women crafters who work in community art centres in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Tutani, Zodwa
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Art centers -- Eastern Cape , Community arts projects -- Eastern Cape , Women artists, Black -- Eastern Cape , Ethnic art -- Eastern Cape , Agent (Philosophy) , Art and society -- Eastern Cape , Voice (Philosophy) , Critical discourse analysis , Postcolonialism and the arts , Feminism and art , Curatorship -- Eastern Cape , Art, Xhosa -- Conservation and restoration , Gompo Community Art Centre , Nomzamo Old Age Centre
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146546 , vital:38535
- Description: A curatorial practice, Zundiqondisise! Reclaiming Our Voice is a twofold study comprised of curatorial practice and a written thesis, both of which are interdependent, examining the significance of space, agency, voice, and visibility in the works of Xhosa women crafters from the Eastern Cape. The study explores ways of reading and displaying indigenous art, as well as the archiving and inserting of these essential but neglected creative works of black women into the discourse of South African contemporary visual arts. This scholarship takes into account the social, cultural, and labour conditions that give rise to the perceived voicelessness in the ‘craft’ work of Xhosa women who work from community art centres. Through collaborating with two groups of women from two Eastern Cape art centres, namely Gompo Community Art Centre in East London and Nomzamo Old Age Centre in Ilitha Township, the study undertakes to locate, highlight and authorise these women’s voices and agency. This undertaking is carried out through a textual inquiry and curated exhibition, two interdependent components of this study, working with black feminist and postcolonial theories that enable me to formulate a critical discourse and practice towards a reflective scholarship on black women’s ‘craft’ work. It is a scholarship whose various chapters and curatorial interventions are tailored to excavate ancient Xhosa wisdom found in folklore and cultural practices of the everyday. This scholarship also provides new understandings that demonstrate and appreciate the fertile and significant though marginalised indigenous ways of creative expressions and knowledge production.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Tutani, Zodwa
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Art centers -- Eastern Cape , Community arts projects -- Eastern Cape , Women artists, Black -- Eastern Cape , Ethnic art -- Eastern Cape , Agent (Philosophy) , Art and society -- Eastern Cape , Voice (Philosophy) , Critical discourse analysis , Postcolonialism and the arts , Feminism and art , Curatorship -- Eastern Cape , Art, Xhosa -- Conservation and restoration , Gompo Community Art Centre , Nomzamo Old Age Centre
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146546 , vital:38535
- Description: A curatorial practice, Zundiqondisise! Reclaiming Our Voice is a twofold study comprised of curatorial practice and a written thesis, both of which are interdependent, examining the significance of space, agency, voice, and visibility in the works of Xhosa women crafters from the Eastern Cape. The study explores ways of reading and displaying indigenous art, as well as the archiving and inserting of these essential but neglected creative works of black women into the discourse of South African contemporary visual arts. This scholarship takes into account the social, cultural, and labour conditions that give rise to the perceived voicelessness in the ‘craft’ work of Xhosa women who work from community art centres. Through collaborating with two groups of women from two Eastern Cape art centres, namely Gompo Community Art Centre in East London and Nomzamo Old Age Centre in Ilitha Township, the study undertakes to locate, highlight and authorise these women’s voices and agency. This undertaking is carried out through a textual inquiry and curated exhibition, two interdependent components of this study, working with black feminist and postcolonial theories that enable me to formulate a critical discourse and practice towards a reflective scholarship on black women’s ‘craft’ work. It is a scholarship whose various chapters and curatorial interventions are tailored to excavate ancient Xhosa wisdom found in folklore and cultural practices of the everyday. This scholarship also provides new understandings that demonstrate and appreciate the fertile and significant though marginalised indigenous ways of creative expressions and knowledge production.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Broken vessels : the im-possibility of the art of remembrance and re-collection in the work of Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng
- Authors: Belluigi, Dina Zoe
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: History in art Kiefer, Anselm, 1945- Boltanski, Christian, 1944- Kentridge, William, 1955- Mofokeng, Santu, 1956-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2395 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002191
- Description: This thesis is structured around investigating the philosophical and aesthetic problematics, politics, and possibilities of representing the past for the purposes of demythifying the present as well as commemorating the losses of history, as explored in the artworks of Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. The first chapter begins with Theodor Adorno’s philosophical understanding of myth and history: how he is influenced by and then develops Karl Marx’s critique of society, Sigmund Freud’s critique of reason and its subject, and particularly Walter Benjamin’s ideas of history as catastrophe, the role of the historian and his messianic materialism. The second section looks at Theodor Adorno’s dialectic of art and society: immanent criticism in aesthetic practice, mimesis, and the shift in conceptions of allegory from Walter Benjamin’s understanding to that of Jacques Derrida. The last section of the chapter looks at Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralist theories against boundary-fixing, within that the ethical relation to the ‘other’ and the theorist/artist as psychic exile. The second chapter deals with the politics of remembrance and representation — beginning with Theodor Adorno’s historic interpretation of the Mosaic law against the making of images and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the im-possibility of representing the unrepresentable. The chapter is divided in two parts between the post-Holocaust European artists Anselm Kiefer and Christian Boltanski, and the post-apartheid South African artists William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. It explores, within these artists’ specific contexts, their formal and philosophical approaches to myth and history, and the problematics of image-making, representing the unrepresentable, and commemorating the immemorial. The thesis concludes by considering different conceptions of melancholia as they relate to these artists: the Freudian psychoanalytic approach, Benjamin’s notions of the artist-genius, and Julia Kristeva’s Lacanian reading of the humanist melancholic, concluding with the mythic-historical Kaballist notion of melancholia as the historical burden or responsibility to commemorate loss.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Belluigi, Dina Zoe
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: History in art Kiefer, Anselm, 1945- Boltanski, Christian, 1944- Kentridge, William, 1955- Mofokeng, Santu, 1956-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2395 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002191
- Description: This thesis is structured around investigating the philosophical and aesthetic problematics, politics, and possibilities of representing the past for the purposes of demythifying the present as well as commemorating the losses of history, as explored in the artworks of Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. The first chapter begins with Theodor Adorno’s philosophical understanding of myth and history: how he is influenced by and then develops Karl Marx’s critique of society, Sigmund Freud’s critique of reason and its subject, and particularly Walter Benjamin’s ideas of history as catastrophe, the role of the historian and his messianic materialism. The second section looks at Theodor Adorno’s dialectic of art and society: immanent criticism in aesthetic practice, mimesis, and the shift in conceptions of allegory from Walter Benjamin’s understanding to that of Jacques Derrida. The last section of the chapter looks at Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralist theories against boundary-fixing, within that the ethical relation to the ‘other’ and the theorist/artist as psychic exile. The second chapter deals with the politics of remembrance and representation — beginning with Theodor Adorno’s historic interpretation of the Mosaic law against the making of images and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the im-possibility of representing the unrepresentable. The chapter is divided in two parts between the post-Holocaust European artists Anselm Kiefer and Christian Boltanski, and the post-apartheid South African artists William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. It explores, within these artists’ specific contexts, their formal and philosophical approaches to myth and history, and the problematics of image-making, representing the unrepresentable, and commemorating the immemorial. The thesis concludes by considering different conceptions of melancholia as they relate to these artists: the Freudian psychoanalytic approach, Benjamin’s notions of the artist-genius, and Julia Kristeva’s Lacanian reading of the humanist melancholic, concluding with the mythic-historical Kaballist notion of melancholia as the historical burden or responsibility to commemorate loss.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Idolatry and the artist's role with special reference to the work and thought of Andy Warhol
- Authors: Waterkeyn, Linda Catherine
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: Warhol, Andy, 1928-1987 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2425 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002221
- Description: This thesis uses Hirsch's dual notion of intention, i. e. conscious, intentional meaning and symptomatic, unconscious meaning, in order to avoid a dead end in the critical assessment of Warhol's work. T.S. Eliot's term "objective correlative" refers to a phenomenon whereby "an inner emotional reality" is evoked by its "external equivalent". (Benet, 1965). Thus, given that no work of art is purely self-referential (as distinct from its being autonomous),Hirsch's notion allows that viewerreconstruction of a painting involves shared values and concerns; that a painting reconstructed by a viewer acquires the status of an icon through which the viewer participates in the artist's sacred cosmos. Sociology of art tends on the whole to extrapolate from actual works to the alleged conditions that gave rise to them. That it cannot predict what specific works will arise from given conditions makes it unscientific. However, its usefulness lies in its ability to reveal what values and concerns are shared by artist and viewer. This is vital for an interpretation of Warhol's work. Warhol's biography leads directly into the meaning of his work. The sickly child of an immigrant steelworker, he grew up in Pittsburgh - an epitome of the technocratic-industrial environment - and was exposed from an early age to a violent and ugly world where the disparity between the super-wealthy and the struggling workers was deeply disturbing. That Warhol himself became a multi-millionaire artistic tycoon is significant, for it means that his works, his icons, were participatory in the very cultural myths and neuroses they appear to display or even despise. That his work has meaning and is open to interpretation there is no doubt. For example, a man-made soup can, as a manifestation and containment of the sacred, is coercive. Here the sacred becomes familiar, affordable and disposable. An electric chair, a man-made instrument of death, gives man supremacy over mortality and the divine prerogative of purging the world of all evil. The essay, however, does not attempt to answer the broader questions raised by Fromm and Roszak about the spiritual emptiness of the twentieth century and the existential crises experienced by those who hunger for meaning and fasten greedily onto anything that seems to proffer a glimpse of something beyond. The essay, nevertheless, strives within this context to elucidate the valid in Warhol's work
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1997
- Authors: Waterkeyn, Linda Catherine
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: Warhol, Andy, 1928-1987 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2425 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002221
- Description: This thesis uses Hirsch's dual notion of intention, i. e. conscious, intentional meaning and symptomatic, unconscious meaning, in order to avoid a dead end in the critical assessment of Warhol's work. T.S. Eliot's term "objective correlative" refers to a phenomenon whereby "an inner emotional reality" is evoked by its "external equivalent". (Benet, 1965). Thus, given that no work of art is purely self-referential (as distinct from its being autonomous),Hirsch's notion allows that viewerreconstruction of a painting involves shared values and concerns; that a painting reconstructed by a viewer acquires the status of an icon through which the viewer participates in the artist's sacred cosmos. Sociology of art tends on the whole to extrapolate from actual works to the alleged conditions that gave rise to them. That it cannot predict what specific works will arise from given conditions makes it unscientific. However, its usefulness lies in its ability to reveal what values and concerns are shared by artist and viewer. This is vital for an interpretation of Warhol's work. Warhol's biography leads directly into the meaning of his work. The sickly child of an immigrant steelworker, he grew up in Pittsburgh - an epitome of the technocratic-industrial environment - and was exposed from an early age to a violent and ugly world where the disparity between the super-wealthy and the struggling workers was deeply disturbing. That Warhol himself became a multi-millionaire artistic tycoon is significant, for it means that his works, his icons, were participatory in the very cultural myths and neuroses they appear to display or even despise. That his work has meaning and is open to interpretation there is no doubt. For example, a man-made soup can, as a manifestation and containment of the sacred, is coercive. Here the sacred becomes familiar, affordable and disposable. An electric chair, a man-made instrument of death, gives man supremacy over mortality and the divine prerogative of purging the world of all evil. The essay, however, does not attempt to answer the broader questions raised by Fromm and Roszak about the spiritual emptiness of the twentieth century and the existential crises experienced by those who hunger for meaning and fasten greedily onto anything that seems to proffer a glimpse of something beyond. The essay, nevertheless, strives within this context to elucidate the valid in Warhol's work
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1997
The working method of the modern painter
- Authors: Grant, David
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Painting, Modern -- 20th century , Painting -- Technique
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2503 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014984
- Description: [From Introduction]. Prior to 1800 advances made in painting could often be accredited to the advances made in paint technology. Since the beginning of the last century however, paint technology has stabilised, moved into the background and allowed the artist to create with the medium rather than be dictated to by it. This stabilising of art technology has also generated a lack of interest in technique, leading in turn to a number of painting techniques being lost. In some ways we know less today of the oil medium and its correct use than was known to Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and their followers. However, if this lack of concern with technique has produced a large number of valid artistic statements which are unlikely to survive physically, it also means that the hoardes of painters who painted technically perfect paintings with no valid art statement have dwindled as well.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1977
- Authors: Grant, David
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Painting, Modern -- 20th century , Painting -- Technique
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2503 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014984
- Description: [From Introduction]. Prior to 1800 advances made in painting could often be accredited to the advances made in paint technology. Since the beginning of the last century however, paint technology has stabilised, moved into the background and allowed the artist to create with the medium rather than be dictated to by it. This stabilising of art technology has also generated a lack of interest in technique, leading in turn to a number of painting techniques being lost. In some ways we know less today of the oil medium and its correct use than was known to Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and their followers. However, if this lack of concern with technique has produced a large number of valid artistic statements which are unlikely to survive physically, it also means that the hoardes of painters who painted technically perfect paintings with no valid art statement have dwindled as well.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1977
Myth and art : a correlation
- Authors: Matthews, Celeste Deluvia
- Date: 1975
- Subjects: Art and mythology
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2487 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012844
- Description: The word myth evokes the same response as Lawrence's "snake at the water-trough"; the "voice of my education said it must be killed". We do so by confining it to Classicism or any of the diciplines. Myths in Classical language are Roman or Greek stories of fanciful or bawdy content, with naive or picturesque religious significance. A myth is not a story. There are many who interpret and explain myth. The fantasy doctors are applauded by the fantasy consumers. Intro. p. 1.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1975
- Authors: Matthews, Celeste Deluvia
- Date: 1975
- Subjects: Art and mythology
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2487 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012844
- Description: The word myth evokes the same response as Lawrence's "snake at the water-trough"; the "voice of my education said it must be killed". We do so by confining it to Classicism or any of the diciplines. Myths in Classical language are Roman or Greek stories of fanciful or bawdy content, with naive or picturesque religious significance. A myth is not a story. There are many who interpret and explain myth. The fantasy doctors are applauded by the fantasy consumers. Intro. p. 1.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1975
Tempera painting: an investigation of the aesthetic and technical advantages of the medium
- Authors: De Bliquy, Leon Paul
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Painting -- Technique Tempura painting
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2469 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009443
- Description: From Introduction: The balance between practical and theoretic components in the total submission bears relation to the title of this essay where aesthetic advantages are largely theoretical and where technical advantages refer mainly to the practical component. The historical significance of this structure is to be found in the earliest treatises on painting, Cenninni's treatment of painting as a purely practical matter is in accord with medieval tradition. His recipes are aligned according to the various individual techniques, tempera painting being the most significant to this essay. Practical recipes are interspersed with directions for the representation of various pictorial themes, and in the resultant conglomeration, the subdivisions are discernible only as basic premises. In contrast to him, the Renaissance authors beginning with Alberti make a significant innovation in that they divide their material into a theoretical and a practical part . The inter-relationship of practical and theoretical - aesthetic and technical aspects are un-avoidable when it comes down to realities. This is clearly illustrated in the notes of Leonardo da Vinci. Plans for the organization of the treatise are vaguely formulated .
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1986
- Authors: De Bliquy, Leon Paul
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Painting -- Technique Tempura painting
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2469 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009443
- Description: From Introduction: The balance between practical and theoretic components in the total submission bears relation to the title of this essay where aesthetic advantages are largely theoretical and where technical advantages refer mainly to the practical component. The historical significance of this structure is to be found in the earliest treatises on painting, Cenninni's treatment of painting as a purely practical matter is in accord with medieval tradition. His recipes are aligned according to the various individual techniques, tempera painting being the most significant to this essay. Practical recipes are interspersed with directions for the representation of various pictorial themes, and in the resultant conglomeration, the subdivisions are discernible only as basic premises. In contrast to him, the Renaissance authors beginning with Alberti make a significant innovation in that they divide their material into a theoretical and a practical part . The inter-relationship of practical and theoretical - aesthetic and technical aspects are un-avoidable when it comes down to realities. This is clearly illustrated in the notes of Leonardo da Vinci. Plans for the organization of the treatise are vaguely formulated .
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1986
Petits récits: creative perspectives of Chinese encounters in Zambia
- Authors: Mwaba, Stary
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Personal narratives , Lyotard, Jean-François, 1924-1998 , Art and society -- Zambia , Social practice (Art) -- Zambia , Art and globalization -- Zambia , China -- Relations -- Zambia , Storytelling in art , Colonization in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146355 , vital:38518
- Description: This mini-thesis, which supports my MFA exhibition Black Mountain, articulates on-the- ground creative perspectives of the Zambia-China discourse, through the representation of little narratives - les petits récits - connected to personal experiences. Through my creative production as an artist, I respond to perceptions of the Chinese presence in Africa. I utilize historical and contemporary personal narratives to complicate existing perceptions of Chinese presence in my home context of Zambia. “Petit récits”, or “little narratives”, in Francois Lyotard’s term, refers to personal stories of individuals that subvert dominant master-narratives and their legitimization in social-cultural structure. In the case of China’s presence in Zambia, I refer to the dichotomized narratives in the media as metanarratives which pay little attention to the people on the ground and propose the approach of “little narratives” to foreground the lived experiences of Zambians who have individual encounters with Chinese in various social spaces. By employing the narratives of my family members through installations, paintings, and drawings, I intervene in a broader China-Africa discourse that is often driven by economics and politics, and I attach importance to the little narratives. In my thesis I divide my material into three chapters; each chapter grows out of an encounter with the presence of China (and Chinese people) in Zambia in relation to the very personal narratives of family members - Zoë my daughter, my grandma, and Ngolo my cousin. The first chapter focuses on my work Chinese Cabbage as my entry point to this topic, which is based on a school experiment I did with my daughter Zoë. In this chapter I also discuss the current discourses around China’s presence. Chapter two revisits the Zambian-Chinese historical encounters in memory of my grandma’s insaka stories about the construction of TAZARA Railway, and thus my works discussed in this chapter attach importance to the individual engagements from a historical perspective. Chapter three discusses in particular the controversial issues around Black Mountain and the works inspired by my cousin Ngolo’s stories of mining in Black Mountain and dealing with the Chinese traders.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Mwaba, Stary
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Personal narratives , Lyotard, Jean-François, 1924-1998 , Art and society -- Zambia , Social practice (Art) -- Zambia , Art and globalization -- Zambia , China -- Relations -- Zambia , Storytelling in art , Colonization in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146355 , vital:38518
- Description: This mini-thesis, which supports my MFA exhibition Black Mountain, articulates on-the- ground creative perspectives of the Zambia-China discourse, through the representation of little narratives - les petits récits - connected to personal experiences. Through my creative production as an artist, I respond to perceptions of the Chinese presence in Africa. I utilize historical and contemporary personal narratives to complicate existing perceptions of Chinese presence in my home context of Zambia. “Petit récits”, or “little narratives”, in Francois Lyotard’s term, refers to personal stories of individuals that subvert dominant master-narratives and their legitimization in social-cultural structure. In the case of China’s presence in Zambia, I refer to the dichotomized narratives in the media as metanarratives which pay little attention to the people on the ground and propose the approach of “little narratives” to foreground the lived experiences of Zambians who have individual encounters with Chinese in various social spaces. By employing the narratives of my family members through installations, paintings, and drawings, I intervene in a broader China-Africa discourse that is often driven by economics and politics, and I attach importance to the little narratives. In my thesis I divide my material into three chapters; each chapter grows out of an encounter with the presence of China (and Chinese people) in Zambia in relation to the very personal narratives of family members - Zoë my daughter, my grandma, and Ngolo my cousin. The first chapter focuses on my work Chinese Cabbage as my entry point to this topic, which is based on a school experiment I did with my daughter Zoë. In this chapter I also discuss the current discourses around China’s presence. Chapter two revisits the Zambian-Chinese historical encounters in memory of my grandma’s insaka stories about the construction of TAZARA Railway, and thus my works discussed in this chapter attach importance to the individual engagements from a historical perspective. Chapter three discusses in particular the controversial issues around Black Mountain and the works inspired by my cousin Ngolo’s stories of mining in Black Mountain and dealing with the Chinese traders.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
The digital and the hyperreal, with reference to artwork by Signe Pierce and Lauren King
- Authors: King, Lauren Pascal
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Women in art , Femininity in art , Figurative art , Cyberspace -- Social aspects , Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) , Online identities , Photo-realism , Computer art , Virtual reality in art , Reality in art , Art, Modern -- 21st century , Feminist art criticism , Pierce, Signe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147939 , vital:38688
- Description: This MFA is a visual art critical investigation of digital representations, manipulations, and exploitations of feminine figures in cyberspace. The particular focus of this study is centred on the work of self-titled reality artist Signe Pierce, as well as my own practical body of work: The Digital Feminine. Case studies of Pierce’s practice include Big Sister (2016), Halo (2018), American Reflexxx (2013) and Reality Hack (2016). Through these case studies I examine the nature of identity formation online as underscored by notions of performativity as well as arguments for the use of feminine aesthetics as feminist critique, specifically through the use of the ‘Venus Flytrapping’ method. Jean Baudrillard famously theorised the hyperreal and the simulacra, claiming that human experience is a simulation of reality1. My MFA thesis addresses contemporary concerns relating to issues of reality, perception, the gaze, and identity in an increasingly virtual world. The 20th century witnessed massive changes in technology, and its subsequent commercialisation marked new territories for mass media, politics, entertainment, social life, and the art world. Avant-garde modern art movements shattered previously held standards of traditional artistic production, thus ideas surrounding the ‘art object’ and the role of artists themselves were fundamentally changed. In a postmodern world where nothing is sacred and life is experienced through the simulacra of the screen, the hyperreal takes over. I investigate how real-world socio-political issues, particularly those related to gender, transcend into the digital realm of cyberspace through discussions of Donna Harraway’s ‘cyborg feminism’ and Judith Butler’s ideas of gender performativity, as well as Erving Goffman’s ideas of everyday performativity. My final body of work for the professional art practice component of this MFA is realised in the form of an immersive installation that straddles the virtual and the real. Influenced by digital and hyperreal aesthetics (such as VapourWave), this installation also explores various expressions of femininity that an individual can express both online and in real life.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: King, Lauren Pascal
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Women in art , Femininity in art , Figurative art , Cyberspace -- Social aspects , Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) , Online identities , Photo-realism , Computer art , Virtual reality in art , Reality in art , Art, Modern -- 21st century , Feminist art criticism , Pierce, Signe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147939 , vital:38688
- Description: This MFA is a visual art critical investigation of digital representations, manipulations, and exploitations of feminine figures in cyberspace. The particular focus of this study is centred on the work of self-titled reality artist Signe Pierce, as well as my own practical body of work: The Digital Feminine. Case studies of Pierce’s practice include Big Sister (2016), Halo (2018), American Reflexxx (2013) and Reality Hack (2016). Through these case studies I examine the nature of identity formation online as underscored by notions of performativity as well as arguments for the use of feminine aesthetics as feminist critique, specifically through the use of the ‘Venus Flytrapping’ method. Jean Baudrillard famously theorised the hyperreal and the simulacra, claiming that human experience is a simulation of reality1. My MFA thesis addresses contemporary concerns relating to issues of reality, perception, the gaze, and identity in an increasingly virtual world. The 20th century witnessed massive changes in technology, and its subsequent commercialisation marked new territories for mass media, politics, entertainment, social life, and the art world. Avant-garde modern art movements shattered previously held standards of traditional artistic production, thus ideas surrounding the ‘art object’ and the role of artists themselves were fundamentally changed. In a postmodern world where nothing is sacred and life is experienced through the simulacra of the screen, the hyperreal takes over. I investigate how real-world socio-political issues, particularly those related to gender, transcend into the digital realm of cyberspace through discussions of Donna Harraway’s ‘cyborg feminism’ and Judith Butler’s ideas of gender performativity, as well as Erving Goffman’s ideas of everyday performativity. My final body of work for the professional art practice component of this MFA is realised in the form of an immersive installation that straddles the virtual and the real. Influenced by digital and hyperreal aesthetics (such as VapourWave), this installation also explores various expressions of femininity that an individual can express both online and in real life.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Restitution : seeing past loss and abandonment
- Authors: Greenway, Paul Wayne
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Digitally printed materials Bereavement in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001579
- Description: This dissertation is concerned with loss and abandonment, and together with the practical component, titled Restitution, forms part of a Master of Fine Art degree submission. Both loss and abandonment can take many forms, from the straightforward deterioration, departure or removal of objects to the more complex deterioration of memory, responsibility and dignity. It seems though, that the question, “What has been lost?” is one that is always asked once it is too late. The loss becomes irretrievable and one is left only with fragments and traces. In Chapter 1 issues of liminality and the precariousness of being between states is addressed. Dignity of the ‘other’, in this case the deceased pauper, is interrogated especially with reference to complicity, forensic investigation and the forensic aesthetic. Chapter 2 outlines photographic representation, with attention given to posthumous portraiture, the punctum and memory in the service of permanence and authenticity. Chapter 3 considers the ambition and purpose of the artist through a critique centred on contemporary photographic artist, Sally Mann. Throughout the thesis and exhibition, I am concerned with loss as it relates physically to objects. Metaphorically, I investigate loss and abandonment in relation to dignity and responsibility. In so doing I view death as being the ultimate form of loss, as there is physical loss of the body, as one part of the whole that makes up ‘the person’, as well as the psychological and emotional loss that attends the passing of life. The delayed burial of the deceased therefore is seen to be evidence of abandonment at its extreme. I end by positioning my conclusion around a stop animation series in which I dug a grave and buried a pauper at Mayfield cemetery.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Greenway, Paul Wayne
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Digitally printed materials Bereavement in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001579
- Description: This dissertation is concerned with loss and abandonment, and together with the practical component, titled Restitution, forms part of a Master of Fine Art degree submission. Both loss and abandonment can take many forms, from the straightforward deterioration, departure or removal of objects to the more complex deterioration of memory, responsibility and dignity. It seems though, that the question, “What has been lost?” is one that is always asked once it is too late. The loss becomes irretrievable and one is left only with fragments and traces. In Chapter 1 issues of liminality and the precariousness of being between states is addressed. Dignity of the ‘other’, in this case the deceased pauper, is interrogated especially with reference to complicity, forensic investigation and the forensic aesthetic. Chapter 2 outlines photographic representation, with attention given to posthumous portraiture, the punctum and memory in the service of permanence and authenticity. Chapter 3 considers the ambition and purpose of the artist through a critique centred on contemporary photographic artist, Sally Mann. Throughout the thesis and exhibition, I am concerned with loss as it relates physically to objects. Metaphorically, I investigate loss and abandonment in relation to dignity and responsibility. In so doing I view death as being the ultimate form of loss, as there is physical loss of the body, as one part of the whole that makes up ‘the person’, as well as the psychological and emotional loss that attends the passing of life. The delayed burial of the deceased therefore is seen to be evidence of abandonment at its extreme. I end by positioning my conclusion around a stop animation series in which I dug a grave and buried a pauper at Mayfield cemetery.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Closed doors: gendered power relations and the use of mature themes in Eurocentric fairytales
- Authors: Sawyer, Kathleen Patricia
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5971 , vital:21003
- Description: Established critics, such as Jack Zipes, assert that the subject matter of fairytales shows evidence that the Westernised 'classics' (by authors such as Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers) were influenced by the cultural norms of their contemporary society and served as a pedagogical tool for mass socialisation. Often authors writing for younger audiences deliberately inserted a moralising function into these tales, in order to normalise and further disseminate certain gender ideals. Their presentation of adult or mature themes (such as sexuality) is often problematic, with some references presented quite naturally and others excluded entirely. This paper investigates modern retellings of Eurocentric fairytales, and speculates on the significance of the perpetuation or complete elision of such themes, and what their selective invocation might intimate about the culture in which the story is produced. It argues that the way in which the fairytale narrative engages with mature themes is demonstrative of its contemporary ethos and its associated cultural bias, which is conveyed unconsciously through the vehicle of the text. Through a critical analysis of relevant literature, the paper explores the maintenance of socio-cultural norms in fairytales as being emblematic in their establishment as cultural relics.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Sawyer, Kathleen Patricia
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5971 , vital:21003
- Description: Established critics, such as Jack Zipes, assert that the subject matter of fairytales shows evidence that the Westernised 'classics' (by authors such as Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers) were influenced by the cultural norms of their contemporary society and served as a pedagogical tool for mass socialisation. Often authors writing for younger audiences deliberately inserted a moralising function into these tales, in order to normalise and further disseminate certain gender ideals. Their presentation of adult or mature themes (such as sexuality) is often problematic, with some references presented quite naturally and others excluded entirely. This paper investigates modern retellings of Eurocentric fairytales, and speculates on the significance of the perpetuation or complete elision of such themes, and what their selective invocation might intimate about the culture in which the story is produced. It argues that the way in which the fairytale narrative engages with mature themes is demonstrative of its contemporary ethos and its associated cultural bias, which is conveyed unconsciously through the vehicle of the text. Through a critical analysis of relevant literature, the paper explores the maintenance of socio-cultural norms in fairytales as being emblematic in their establishment as cultural relics.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
These aesthetics are not new: Post-Internet conditions and their effect on contemporary ideas of representation in Painting
- Authors: Grecia, Callan
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Art and the internet , Digital media -- Philosophy , Technology and the arts , Aesthetics , Painting -- Philosophy
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/46333 , vital:25601
- Description: These Aesthetics Are Not New draws inspiration from the effect of digital technological progress on a consumer society. The Internet as a source of ubiquitous imagery reaffirms the idea that in a Post-Internet age there is nothing new, only conditions affected by a networked way of life. In this thesis I attempt to question contemporary ideas of representation and art making, specifically within the medium of oil paint, in a digitally consumed culture of instantaneous access. I interrogate the repetitive imagery that pervades our online experiences, and I speak about how I use my grasp of painterly knowledge and lexicon to replicate digital conditions in the real world to further cement my position that contemporary aesthetics, (digital, physical or both) are not new. I first introduce the reader to the idea of the Post-Internet, exploring the digital’s encroachment on our physical spaces and it’s relation to the politics of the medium of Oil Paint. I then address the concept of the Image-Object, and unpack this idea by comparing and contrasting emoji’s in relation to gestural mark making and the ascription of meaning through iconographic methods in Oil Painting. This culminates in an analysis of my physical practice in relation to these ideas, and concludes with my observations on the future of our ways of seeing, as affected by the Internet and technological progression.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Grecia, Callan
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Art and the internet , Digital media -- Philosophy , Technology and the arts , Aesthetics , Painting -- Philosophy
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/46333 , vital:25601
- Description: These Aesthetics Are Not New draws inspiration from the effect of digital technological progress on a consumer society. The Internet as a source of ubiquitous imagery reaffirms the idea that in a Post-Internet age there is nothing new, only conditions affected by a networked way of life. In this thesis I attempt to question contemporary ideas of representation and art making, specifically within the medium of oil paint, in a digitally consumed culture of instantaneous access. I interrogate the repetitive imagery that pervades our online experiences, and I speak about how I use my grasp of painterly knowledge and lexicon to replicate digital conditions in the real world to further cement my position that contemporary aesthetics, (digital, physical or both) are not new. I first introduce the reader to the idea of the Post-Internet, exploring the digital’s encroachment on our physical spaces and it’s relation to the politics of the medium of Oil Paint. I then address the concept of the Image-Object, and unpack this idea by comparing and contrasting emoji’s in relation to gestural mark making and the ascription of meaning through iconographic methods in Oil Painting. This culminates in an analysis of my physical practice in relation to these ideas, and concludes with my observations on the future of our ways of seeing, as affected by the Internet and technological progression.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
An investigation into nineteenth century book illustration with reference to the movement towards total collaboration in the works of Charles Dickens and his major illustrators
- Authors: Crowe, Richard J J
- Date: 1980
- Subjects: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Illustrations Illustrators llustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2467 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009433
- Description: It is necessary to state clearly at the outset of this essay that the field comprising Book Illustration is extremely complex. This is not difficult to appreciate when one considers that the term "Book Illustration" covers both the highly developed art forms such as are found for example in the Book of Kells; and at the same time such cheap and shallow examples as are found in magazines and books that are churned out for the million. Therefore it becomes necessary to draw a sharp distinction between what could be called "inferior" and "superior" quality of Book Illustration. (a) I see this dividing line being drawn between two fundamentally divergent attitudes: the one involves a purely external and decorative approach which lacks real artistic value; (b) and the other, which is the result of the dynamic collaboration between an author and an artist to produce work founded on deep and rich artistic principles. (c) For the sake of clarity I wish to take this idea of a division a step further, and to suggest that within the "superior" bracket there is also a continuing scale of improvement and bettering, which culminates in an idealised state which could be called "TOTAL COLLABORATION" between an author and an artist.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1980
- Authors: Crowe, Richard J J
- Date: 1980
- Subjects: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Illustrations Illustrators llustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2467 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009433
- Description: It is necessary to state clearly at the outset of this essay that the field comprising Book Illustration is extremely complex. This is not difficult to appreciate when one considers that the term "Book Illustration" covers both the highly developed art forms such as are found for example in the Book of Kells; and at the same time such cheap and shallow examples as are found in magazines and books that are churned out for the million. Therefore it becomes necessary to draw a sharp distinction between what could be called "inferior" and "superior" quality of Book Illustration. (a) I see this dividing line being drawn between two fundamentally divergent attitudes: the one involves a purely external and decorative approach which lacks real artistic value; (b) and the other, which is the result of the dynamic collaboration between an author and an artist to produce work founded on deep and rich artistic principles. (c) For the sake of clarity I wish to take this idea of a division a step further, and to suggest that within the "superior" bracket there is also a continuing scale of improvement and bettering, which culminates in an idealised state which could be called "TOTAL COLLABORATION" between an author and an artist.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1980
Forms and techniques of modern painting
- Authors: Ning, Cui
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Painting, Modern
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2418 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002214
- Description: In this thesis, I have made an attempt to discuss and comment on oil painting from the "angle of concepts, forms, both traditional as well as more recent techniques of modern painting
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Ning, Cui
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Painting, Modern
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2418 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002214
- Description: In this thesis, I have made an attempt to discuss and comment on oil painting from the "angle of concepts, forms, both traditional as well as more recent techniques of modern painting
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
The relationship between the concept 'art' and its institutionalisation during the period 1850-1871 in South Africa
- Authors: Steyn, Pieter Andrew
- Date: 1985
- Subjects: Art, South African -- 19th century Art -- Political aspects Art and society -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2438 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005626
- Description: This research evolved as part of a personal struggle to understand my role as 'art' student. As such the essay is concerned with both the theory and practice of 'art', and the relationship between the two. It is, however, my experience of the lack of an analysis of the concept 'art' as a social and historical phenomenon, and the suppression of the politics of culture in most fine art courses, that has led me to concentrate on theoretical and political issues, rather than the formal aspects of painting. This essay is therefore not concerned with individual 'works of art', but with the general category 'art' as an organisational form. Despite its limitations, the essay goes beyond the personal by exploring some of the social, political, economic and cultural processes that form the broader social context in which the examination of 'art' should take place.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1985
- Authors: Steyn, Pieter Andrew
- Date: 1985
- Subjects: Art, South African -- 19th century Art -- Political aspects Art and society -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2438 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005626
- Description: This research evolved as part of a personal struggle to understand my role as 'art' student. As such the essay is concerned with both the theory and practice of 'art', and the relationship between the two. It is, however, my experience of the lack of an analysis of the concept 'art' as a social and historical phenomenon, and the suppression of the politics of culture in most fine art courses, that has led me to concentrate on theoretical and political issues, rather than the formal aspects of painting. This essay is therefore not concerned with individual 'works of art', but with the general category 'art' as an organisational form. Despite its limitations, the essay goes beyond the personal by exploring some of the social, political, economic and cultural processes that form the broader social context in which the examination of 'art' should take place.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1985
Representing the unrepresentable: an exploration of gendered experiences of mental disorder
- Authors: Futcher, Charis Catheryn
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Mental illness in art , Women -- Mental health , Art, South African -- 21st century -- Exhibitions , Sculpture, South African -- 21st century -- Exhibitions , Women in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/42957 , vital:25252
- Description: Inspired by personal lived experiences of mental disorder; this thesis attempts to explore the representation of these complex conditions as they are deeply embedded in trauma, guilt, and stigma. The accompanying exhibition, The Inheritance, figures my own tendencies to contain and conceal my disorder, through the assembling of sculptural containers and their disordered contents. The work, presented as something surreal, comments on the complexities of being a woman with a disorder, as well as on the disease I experience in relation to a history of patriarchal ideologies and psychiatric containment that has informed understandings of ‘female madness’. Grounded in my interests in abjection and containment, the artistic processes of trying to express deeply personal experiences of distress allow for the resurfacing of underlying trauma, in regards to the memory of my mother’s struggle with Bipolar disorder and her subsequent estrangement. Instead of catharsis, the exhibition represents an inevitable failure to represent the unrepresentable, an experience inextricably bound to the history of gendered oppression and the repression of subjectivity by dominant powers of belief and control. Through my practice as research, I have ultimately grappled with my reluctance to represent my experience, precisely because the topic of mental disorder, though pervasive, is lived and felt by varying groups of people in different ways. As such, my intention is to avoid a reductive and narrow framing of what mental disorder entails. Similarly, I aim to avoid restrictive and presumptuous definitions of gender – recognizing that, historically, femininity is a contested category that has silenced many individuals who are not white, heterosexual or gender conforming. My literary research has been limited by these norms and silences, in that most texts detailing the historical visual treatment of disordered subjects fail to recognise the possibility of gender categories that transcend the binary masculinity and femininity. With these limitations in mind, my practice has allowed me to reflect upon the distress of generations of people who have been pathologised based on gender.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Futcher, Charis Catheryn
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Mental illness in art , Women -- Mental health , Art, South African -- 21st century -- Exhibitions , Sculpture, South African -- 21st century -- Exhibitions , Women in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/42957 , vital:25252
- Description: Inspired by personal lived experiences of mental disorder; this thesis attempts to explore the representation of these complex conditions as they are deeply embedded in trauma, guilt, and stigma. The accompanying exhibition, The Inheritance, figures my own tendencies to contain and conceal my disorder, through the assembling of sculptural containers and their disordered contents. The work, presented as something surreal, comments on the complexities of being a woman with a disorder, as well as on the disease I experience in relation to a history of patriarchal ideologies and psychiatric containment that has informed understandings of ‘female madness’. Grounded in my interests in abjection and containment, the artistic processes of trying to express deeply personal experiences of distress allow for the resurfacing of underlying trauma, in regards to the memory of my mother’s struggle with Bipolar disorder and her subsequent estrangement. Instead of catharsis, the exhibition represents an inevitable failure to represent the unrepresentable, an experience inextricably bound to the history of gendered oppression and the repression of subjectivity by dominant powers of belief and control. Through my practice as research, I have ultimately grappled with my reluctance to represent my experience, precisely because the topic of mental disorder, though pervasive, is lived and felt by varying groups of people in different ways. As such, my intention is to avoid a reductive and narrow framing of what mental disorder entails. Similarly, I aim to avoid restrictive and presumptuous definitions of gender – recognizing that, historically, femininity is a contested category that has silenced many individuals who are not white, heterosexual or gender conforming. My literary research has been limited by these norms and silences, in that most texts detailing the historical visual treatment of disordered subjects fail to recognise the possibility of gender categories that transcend the binary masculinity and femininity. With these limitations in mind, my practice has allowed me to reflect upon the distress of generations of people who have been pathologised based on gender.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
A survey of San paintings from the southern Natal Drakensberg
- Authors: Steynberg, Peter John
- Date: 1988
- Subjects: Art, San Rock paintings -- Drakensberg Mountains Cave paintings -- Drakensberg Mountains Art, Prehistoric -- Drakensberg Mountains Art, Prehistoric -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2437 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004918
- Description: From Introduction: The study of San rock art has undergone several different phases in approach to the interpretation of art. Two approaches are currently in use. The first emphasises the art as narrative or literal representations of San life and its proponents may be called the "art for art's sake" school. Adherents to the second approach make detailed use of the San ethnography on the belief system of these people and are highly critical of the literalists because they provide no such context. The second approach has rapidly gained ascendancy and replaced the "art for art's sake" school over the last twenty years. The watershed came with the researches of Vinnicombe (1967) in the southern Drakensberg and Maggs (1967) in the Western Cape who both embarked upon programs of research which had quantification and numerical analysis at their core, so that they could present "...some objective observations on a given sample of rock paintings in a particular area..." in order to compare and contrast paintings from geographically different areas. What Vinnicombe's numerical analyses clearly showed was that the eland was the most frequently depicted antelope and that it must have played a fundamental role "...in both the economy and the rellgious beliefs of the painters...", which opened up the search for what those beliefs might be and how they could be related to the rock art itself. In order to understand what the rock art was all about it was recognised that researchers had to meaningfully contextualise the art within the social and religious framework of the artists themselves. Without the provision of such a relevant context, as many different interpretations of the paintings could be made as there were people with imaginations. Such a piecemeal approach provides a meaningless jumble of subjective fancy which tells us something about the interpreters but nothing about the rock art. It is unfortunate that the advent of this explicitly social and anthropological approach marks the end of the amateur as a serious interpreter of San rock art, for the juxtaposition of the ethnography with the rock art requires a proper training in which the intricacies of symbol and metaphor can be recognised.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1988
- Authors: Steynberg, Peter John
- Date: 1988
- Subjects: Art, San Rock paintings -- Drakensberg Mountains Cave paintings -- Drakensberg Mountains Art, Prehistoric -- Drakensberg Mountains Art, Prehistoric -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2437 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004918
- Description: From Introduction: The study of San rock art has undergone several different phases in approach to the interpretation of art. Two approaches are currently in use. The first emphasises the art as narrative or literal representations of San life and its proponents may be called the "art for art's sake" school. Adherents to the second approach make detailed use of the San ethnography on the belief system of these people and are highly critical of the literalists because they provide no such context. The second approach has rapidly gained ascendancy and replaced the "art for art's sake" school over the last twenty years. The watershed came with the researches of Vinnicombe (1967) in the southern Drakensberg and Maggs (1967) in the Western Cape who both embarked upon programs of research which had quantification and numerical analysis at their core, so that they could present "...some objective observations on a given sample of rock paintings in a particular area..." in order to compare and contrast paintings from geographically different areas. What Vinnicombe's numerical analyses clearly showed was that the eland was the most frequently depicted antelope and that it must have played a fundamental role "...in both the economy and the rellgious beliefs of the painters...", which opened up the search for what those beliefs might be and how they could be related to the rock art itself. In order to understand what the rock art was all about it was recognised that researchers had to meaningfully contextualise the art within the social and religious framework of the artists themselves. Without the provision of such a relevant context, as many different interpretations of the paintings could be made as there were people with imaginations. Such a piecemeal approach provides a meaningless jumble of subjective fancy which tells us something about the interpreters but nothing about the rock art. It is unfortunate that the advent of this explicitly social and anthropological approach marks the end of the amateur as a serious interpreter of San rock art, for the juxtaposition of the ethnography with the rock art requires a proper training in which the intricacies of symbol and metaphor can be recognised.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1988
South African art, the romantic principle and the Grahamstown group
- Authors: Clark, George Phillip Haven
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Art, South African , Art -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2501 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014638
- Description: The purpose of this essay is to examine the "rumblings in the belly of Leviathan from which we are able to diagnose his disease" (Comfort). Adopting a cyclical idea of art, it aims to point out that South African art has degenerated to a state where the much publicised so-called leaders of art are simply using charm techniques to woo the consent of a society whose metaphysics are derived from twentieth century collective materialism. The South African situation is examined, as is the Romantic principle underlying all genuine artistic activity. It is proposed that the cure lies in a reinstatement of this principle and in a readjustment of the concepts of reality and unreality. Finally, the Grahamstown Group is propounded as an embodiment of the Romantic principle with its implicit concept of artistic reality.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1977
- Authors: Clark, George Phillip Haven
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Art, South African , Art -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2501 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014638
- Description: The purpose of this essay is to examine the "rumblings in the belly of Leviathan from which we are able to diagnose his disease" (Comfort). Adopting a cyclical idea of art, it aims to point out that South African art has degenerated to a state where the much publicised so-called leaders of art are simply using charm techniques to woo the consent of a society whose metaphysics are derived from twentieth century collective materialism. The South African situation is examined, as is the Romantic principle underlying all genuine artistic activity. It is proposed that the cure lies in a reinstatement of this principle and in a readjustment of the concepts of reality and unreality. Finally, the Grahamstown Group is propounded as an embodiment of the Romantic principle with its implicit concept of artistic reality.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1977
The life and work of Robert Paul
- Johnson, Christopher Charles Bonsall
- Authors: Johnson, Christopher Charles Bonsall
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Paul, Robert, 1906-1980 , Artists -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2510 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018631
- Description: [From Introduction] When Robert Paul died in 1980, his daughter Colette Wiles gave her father's art materials to an artist who was very close to both Robert and his wife in their last years - Dian Wright. The materials consisted of five different pigments and brushes cut into different shapes to suit the artist. This is remarkable when one considers his proficiency in a variety of media and his accurate portrayal in the far reaching studies he executed of the Zimbabwean landscape. Yet, it is characteristic of his resourcefulness that Paul could make 'something out of nothing'. Paul welcomed the opportunity of new landscape when he arrived in Rhodesia in 1927. Against the backdrop of a chosen isolation from the British Isles, Paul developed his own personal tracks in spite of any early influence through John Piper with the English Southern Landscape idioms of the 1920s. This was a fruitful isolation where the creation of his art retained influences but were manipulated according to his needs and unleashed with a proficiency sometimes equal to his peers, who later found fame under the term 'Neo-Romantics'. Paul remained an individual in Africa. My intention in this essay is three-fold; first, to illustrate the effects and influences of 'chosen' and 'enforced ' isolation on his work. Secondly, I wish to determine the extent of the influence that Piper and the Neo-Romantics had on Paul and to illustrate mostly with anecdotes his life and life-style. He was no mean character. His life-long obsessions with art, alcohol and women were played out with a flair and dry humour which few emulated in his era. Although a strictly academic approach can be applied to the assessment of his work, his life followed thoroughly unorthodox lines. As Bradshaw noted when he wrote the forward to the Catalogue of Paul's Retrospective in 1976, he (Paul) had no historical interests in the accepted sense of the word. , ABBYY FineReader 12
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1986
- Authors: Johnson, Christopher Charles Bonsall
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Paul, Robert, 1906-1980 , Artists -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2510 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018631
- Description: [From Introduction] When Robert Paul died in 1980, his daughter Colette Wiles gave her father's art materials to an artist who was very close to both Robert and his wife in their last years - Dian Wright. The materials consisted of five different pigments and brushes cut into different shapes to suit the artist. This is remarkable when one considers his proficiency in a variety of media and his accurate portrayal in the far reaching studies he executed of the Zimbabwean landscape. Yet, it is characteristic of his resourcefulness that Paul could make 'something out of nothing'. Paul welcomed the opportunity of new landscape when he arrived in Rhodesia in 1927. Against the backdrop of a chosen isolation from the British Isles, Paul developed his own personal tracks in spite of any early influence through John Piper with the English Southern Landscape idioms of the 1920s. This was a fruitful isolation where the creation of his art retained influences but were manipulated according to his needs and unleashed with a proficiency sometimes equal to his peers, who later found fame under the term 'Neo-Romantics'. Paul remained an individual in Africa. My intention in this essay is three-fold; first, to illustrate the effects and influences of 'chosen' and 'enforced ' isolation on his work. Secondly, I wish to determine the extent of the influence that Piper and the Neo-Romantics had on Paul and to illustrate mostly with anecdotes his life and life-style. He was no mean character. His life-long obsessions with art, alcohol and women were played out with a flair and dry humour which few emulated in his era. Although a strictly academic approach can be applied to the assessment of his work, his life followed thoroughly unorthodox lines. As Bradshaw noted when he wrote the forward to the Catalogue of Paul's Retrospective in 1976, he (Paul) had no historical interests in the accepted sense of the word. , ABBYY FineReader 12
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- Date Issued: 1986