Art Criticism in South Africa
by Virginia MacKenny
At this year's National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, the visual arts were given a slightly higher profile than usual. Festival Director Lynette Marais proved immensely supportive of the various projects facilitated by the Festival. However, the Festival newspaper Cue, published on a daily basis with crits and reviews, gave it cursory treatment, assigning 'critic' Clive Lawrence, whose knowledge of contemporary art proved no more informed than the average, unschooled, lay person.
Lawrence managed to dismiss the richness of Standard Bank Young Artist Berni Searle's exhibition in a short criticism in which he described the work Float as a piece where "things remain superficial, or, on the surface, which is the ultimate purpose of conceptual art". After delivering this broadside he quickly covered himself with some rear guard action by saying: "although those in the inner region of art arenas may disagree".
While Lawrence revealed his own unsuitability to the task at hand in other crits, delivering quips of unintended irony ("Holy paintbrush, I've missed the point!"), it was his voice that remained one of the main mediating platforms to the visual arts throughout the time of the Festival.
Such an anecdote serves to illustrate some of the problems for art criticism in South Africa - even at the National Festival of Arts the visual arts are not taken seriously. It seems strange that, in a town which has a University Fine Art Department, no effort was made either by the editor of Cue or by the Fine Art Department itself to fill the gap more responsibly. It is often at this point that frustrated individuals step in.
Often artists, they might never have been trained as critics, but respond because they are passionate about their field, and wish to add some small dialogue to the larger debate, one that doesn't just dismiss the current complex production that is South African contemporary art.
This is rarely as self-serving as it may at first seem. Hungry for engagement and eager to expand the visibility of their own field, their [artist's] participation also highlights the paucity of opportunities for professional art critics - those who actually get paid for the job they do. While Art South Africa has contributed considerably to the terrain, a critical opportunity once every three or four months hardly constitutes sustainability for the practitioner. So the field tends to remain in the hands of 'amateurs' (those who do it, as the Latin root of the word, amore, implies - for love). (ArtThrob itself ran for nearly a year without most of its editors and contributors being paid).
What constitutes an art critic? How do you get to be one? There are no degrees qualifying one for the appellation in this country though students may attend courses on art criticism and write critical essays on contemporary art. And then there is always the question if one attempts to engage in it of how to pitch it ? At what level? And to whom? Is its function education of the audience or the furthering of the discourse? In this country such questions are still nascent.
