Archive: Issue No. 59, July 2002

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Wilma Cruise

Wilma Cruise
Three Shades (The Bully Boys I, II, III)
1992/3
Stoneware

Hentie van der Merwe

Hentie van der Merwe
Cape Town Highlanders Officer (1921-1958)
Lt H Hugo Brunt
1999/2000
Cibachrome print
105.4 x 99.8 cm


"Why curate an exhibition about men?"
An essay by Carol Brown, curator of the Durban Art Gallery, based on her curated exhibition 'Male Order' showing at the National Arts Festival

Apartheid has been the dominant discourse for at least half a century in South Africa, and with liberation from this system there has been a general re-examining of roles within our new society where the goalposts have shifted and we all need to re-look at ourselves and our various roles. Masculinity was constructed by a patriarchial system which created white masculinity as dominant. However, as we know from the proliferation of identity studies in recent years, identity is not stable and shifts with time and place. It is also relational. In his study Orientalism, Edward Said writes that the "construction of identity - for identity whether of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, while obviously a repository of distinct collective experiences, is finally a construction - involves establishing opposites and 'Others' whose actuality is always subject to continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their difference from 'us'. Each age and society recreates its 'others."

As a woman I take the role of observer in curating this exhibition. I am interested in the fact that in the early part of the century South African art was dominated by women and now, when men are thrust into new roles, art made by men has come to the fore. I write and curate with an awareness of my role as "other" and hope that this brings a certain objectivity to my observations.

'Male Order' examines the changing role of the representation of male identity in the visual arts in South Africa by artists whose works are in the permanent collection of the Durban Art Gallery. The perspective is one not only of the representation of male identity, but also of curatorial practice. The selection will therefore not be fully representative of the subject but will be coloured by the institutional sanctioning of particular artworks representing contemporaneous ideologies.

Although the focus is on contemporary works it is necessary to place them in a historical context. From 1942 the Nationalist government promoted a particular view of masculinity that occupied the hegemonic position in that political climate. Much of the armour of the apartheid state also served the purpose of institutionalising and validating a specific form of white masculinity. Although one can discriminate between overtly political institutions - such as parliament, compulsory military service, legislation - and those perceived as merely social - such as family structure, occupational future and gendered spaces - it is apparent that both the formal and informal structures implicitly defined and validated a specific white masculinity.

The early 20th century artistic representations of the South African male body were those of the pioneer and soldier. Monuments to various figures of this sort such as Piet Retief and Dick King abound in South African cities. These heroic figures became the sites upon which gender relations were configured. The white male was the dominant force whose masculinity was, to a large extent, constructed in relation to how he saw women and black men. Women were seen as powerless and passive and to be protected. The black male was seen as the "Other" and marginalised in terms of access and opportunity. However with the change in the balance of power in South Africa that started in the 1970s, together with the rise of feminism, the sense of entitlement and heroicisation of the white male is no longer taken for granted.

Power

The recent hearings of the TRC has identified the structures of power with violence and violence is identified with men. A direct and obvious critique of the abuses of power was manifested in the actions of the military. Foucault has defined types of institutionalised power and the army is undoubtedly one of the chief purveyors of power.

Wilma Cruise's Bully Boys bring the issue of brute force into the terrrain of masculine power. They were created as a result of an incident which occurred in 1990 when her nephew, Nicholas Cruise, was blown up by a bomb delivered by right-wing terrorists to the NGO offices where he worked in Durban. These figures depict a particular kind of masculine brutality - they are depersonalised, large, dark, armless figures with no facial features and protected genitals emphasising the image of the body as a weapon, with limbs, which although powerful, are immobile.

Although power through violence can be seen as being perpetrated by one group upon another the work of Hentie van der Merwe brings it into another realm with a sympathetic take on those who are obliged to commit these acts either through patriotism or by virtue of the fact that they are male and expected to fulfil obligations to "king and country". His Ltn Hugo Bunt shows the spectre of the colonial soldier who is defined by the trappings of his uniform in much the same way that Hodgins uses the symbol of the army uniform and medal to suggest a heroicism which could be seen as a travesty. The works question the institution that is the carrier of power and give a different meaning to the word. They examine the trauma and erosion of self-image that were often a consequence of the 'heroic' act.

Land

Although the military is perhaps the most overt manifestation of power in the Apartheid era it must be noted that Apartheid was predicated upon the separation of people through a number of means. In particular the control of movement of people and the separation of population groups into different areas. The system of Bantustans was put into place in order to segregate the population and grant ownership of land in accordance with race. The earlier history of the country was one where the Dutch and British colonisers took control of the land and therefore the economy and the power. This was artistically represented in landscapes which showed an uninhabited terrain which was there to be surveyed and conquered by the white settler. No cognisance was given in these representations to the indigenous inhabitants of the land.

The work Golden Gate by Pierneef is typical of this attitude. The artist has been seen as a promoter of Afrikaans Nationalism in that his works perpetrate the idea that, until the white man arrived, the land was uninhabited and open to the conquering gaze. The work is very typical of the Nationalist attitude of the time that gave supremacy to the white male and reinforced his power. This metaphorical use of body/land is taken to a more direct level with Meissenhamer's Plot te Koop where the discomfort and fear of the white Afrikaner male is evident. His comfortable lifestyle, symbolised by the very specific Cape-Dutch architecture of the homestead, is threatened and his discomfort is evident in his bodily pose that is counterbalanced by the ubiquitous guard dog (a symbol of aggression) meant to protect and ensnare. Both land and body are under threat.

Land and body are more directly conflated in Clive van den Berg's Pool Above the Water where the landscape is embodied by an organic mass arising out of the sea. The land, due to its anatomical quality and phallic form can be read in Freudian terms as masculine, but is now also rendered as vulnerable. The form is placed in a very specific environment over which it takes precedence in terms of an uneasy perspective. The viewpoint is unstable and the viewer, by being given no physical location, has a sense of dislocation. Van den Berg worked in Durban at this time and the work depicts the sea with a distant vision of the Bluff. The Bluff is an image used potently by many Durban artists and in this instance locates the picture in a specific geographical context. It is also a gendered space in that it was previously an army barracks, the site being ideal for overlooking the city from a safe vantage point. It thus expresses the unease or dis-ease of the body within nature. The land has been colonised as has the body which, appropriated and depersonalised, is seen as uncomfortable in the landscape.

Body

The works linking the body directly to land were part of the process that started during the 1970s with transgressive artists starting to divest the masculine figure of its authority and placing it under scrutiny. The political circumstances began raising an awareness that the white male would not necessarily retain his power and artists began to question the social order. This was achieved in an oblique manner as there were stringent censorship laws in place which precluded direct political comment. A work which illustrates this process is Patrick O'Connor's Prometheus Variation showing an X ray image of a body using myth to express political reality.

Less oblique is Paul Stopforth's Elegy depicting the body of Steve Biko on a stretcher. The body is presented as anonymous and bloated with its flesh made transparent, opening the anatomical structure to the gaze of the viewer. The space is an uneasy one and intrudes into that of the viewer. The subject is removed from a specific context and the body itself is mapped putting it under the same scrutiny as the early colonisers mapped the territory. The body is made into a contested site onto which social symbolism is imprinted.

It is noteworthy that these two artists chose to manipulate the gaze of the viewer into the interior of the body thus divesting it of psychological interpretation and examining an interiority which one assumes was meant to negate skin colour and invest the masculine body with the representation of universal suffering. One senses that these two artists were attempting to express a solidarity with certain black, male victims. However given the context of the particular political situation at the time, this solidarity was problematic. The black man who was beginning to rebel against the system, was the victim whereas the white man was still in a privileged position in an artistic social, political and social sense. The attempt to express a universalised form of masculine suffering lacks credibility.

Performance art, particularly by male artists, which gained international currency during the 1970s but has reached a popular level in this country only post-democracy, represents an attempt to engage directly with the body and bring it into the real space that has so often been distorted in the various masculine depictions. The majority of performance art happens in spaces outside the gallery and by this the artists reclaim a space for a different masculinity and conquer new territories of urban areas. They also challenge the traditional hegemonic view of masculinity as evidenced in our monuments and history books and present challenges to the concept of the "hero" or the Calvinistic ideal of the male as heterosexual and patriarchal. Performance art also forces one to re-examine the role of representation. Traditionally representation is achieved by the mediation of the artist who imposes his own set of values on a subject. In performance art there is no mediator and the artist represents his/herself. There is a fluid relationship between subject and viewer and the power of the gaze which was bestowed on the viewer now gives equal power to the viewer and artist.

The exhibition acknowledges the important role of performance in the works by Peet Pienaar and Greig Coetzee. Although there are only two performance art pieces represented in the show they function in a wider context. The Durban Art Gallery has shown performances by Wayne Barker, Steven Cohen, Peet Pienaar and Barend de Wet, Brett and Beezy Bailey and others. Both Steven Cohen and Peet Pienaar have used their bodies as sites for violation and change. In Cohen's 1998 Vita Award submission Living art my life he wears costume which implies a cross over between masculinity and femininity. This can be seen as an attempt to break down the constructs formed by our accepted power structures which impact on society. In his various performances such as OutRage Us and Tradition he breaks down the barriers between inside the body and outside by allowing his body to bleed, defecate, and be pierced. Peet Pienaar's Untitled circumcision and Sunbed and Psychologist performances deny his sexuality where he keeps his penis tucked between his legs giving him a neutrality.

One needs to look at the representation of bodies exposed to apartheid violence such as that of Biko and ask the question of why white artists are now expressing their disempowerment by violating and denying their own bodies? Do they intend to portray themselves as victim or are they denying their masculinity in order to absolve themselves of the guilt of their fathers? Is it a reclamation of the agency which was previously considered to be denied to the black man or even the white male who was possibly forced into certain actions due to his colour (as with Hentie van der Merwe's work)?

The Self

These issues of self-examination and, maybe, flagellation are symptomatic of the new wave in masculine representation. Now less concerned with a collective responsibility or social commentary than an individual reaction to the new post-Apartheid society the issues are those of personal empowerment and self identity. The broader struggle has taken a back seat while the mirror is turned on to the personal. Zwelethu Mthethwa comments on the self-reflection of the male whose identity is contructed in terms of media representation. The public image and the vagaries of fashion take their toll on how one sees oneself and how one is seen.

Langa Magwa's work examines how an identity that was previously constructed through ritual scarification and the wearing of certain objects such as skin bracelets has now been supplanted by marks of surveillance such as the barcode identity number. There is a sense of loss. Individual identities have been swallowed up by a systems of mass measurement and control.

Sexual identity is also more in the forefront. Issues that were previously covered up are now out in the open. The 1996 Constitution is one of the most liberal in the world and one in which for the first time in South Africa's history, freedom of sexual expression was encouraged. In Erotic Interiors Andrew Verster uses the convention of the body and its place in a landscape to interrogate those issues. The work shows the back of the male figure looking out from a domesticated interior to a pool and lounger symbolising hedonism and private space.

The journey from the ordered uninhabited territory of Pierneef seems to have come full circle where the male has now integrated himself into the land. It is also about the move, in many respects, from a rural to an urban context. With urbanisation has come a new order.

Symbols in the works dealing with identity such as suits, uniforms, barcodes, refer to the city and the new order where the channels of communication have equalised the various forms of masculinity. Benedict Anderson has written about 'horizontal companionship' which suggests alliances and collaborations across divisive boundaries, and with the collapse of the Group Areas Act, space has changed our perceptions of self making the claim to individuality a prime focus of the new masculinities. However this reclamation of space and identity is a process that is unfolding and hopefully the works on this exhibition will raise more questions than divulge answers.

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