And so 'Picasso and Africa', the showstopper of our time has come and gone and we are left to wonder at the strange happenings in which art, for a brief period at least, became something that the general public engaged with: crowds of school kids and adults visited, and the serious and the ill-informed alike debated and discussed almost to the point of tiresomeness.

What are we to make of it now that its obviously powerful physical presence has been fragmented and removed to its respective lenders? Should we judge it not only as the exhibition that it was but also as a much broader phenomenon that served many purposes and a good few agendas? I do not propose to answer these questions here but merely look at one or two aspects of what must be the most important show in South Africa that most of us can remember.

The show itself, both at Johannesburg's Standard Bank Gallery and Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town attracted record crowds. Over 100 000 people visited the two locations and on the final day SANG kept its doors open until 10 pm in order to accommodate the huge crowds.

But how much of this public interest can be truly ascribed to a genuine interest in the art on display and how much on a giant mechanism of expensive, corporate-sponsored marketing and branding? Officials from chief sponsor Standard Bank were reluctant to disclose the actual costs of the exhibition until 'after the closure of the exhibition' and we wait with interest to see how much was actually spent on the production.

Effective marketing is an essential aspect of good gallery and curatorial practice today but it would perhaps be worth considering how much Standard Bank invests in its Young Artist award shows (the Wim Botha show was on at SANG at the same time as 'Picasso and Africa') compared with 'Picasso and Africa'. However, I think it can confidently be stated that it is but a small fraction. Marilyn Martin, co-curator, along with Laurence Madeline of the Museé Picasso in Paris, must be complimented for the way in which the huge funds necessary for this exhibition were acquired. I look forward to seeing how the connections and skills gained will be applied to future projects of Iziko SANG.

Marketing, a brilliant educational programme and general hype brought in the crowds but what can be said of what they made of the exhibition once inside? At the Cape Town showing the exhibition was divided into three rooms: the first containing no art as such but providing an intellectual and historical framework for the work on display, by means of information boards, photographs, a chronology and quotations contextualising Picasso's attitude to Africa.

This led into the Liebermann Room, in which the main part of the exhibition was housed. Centrally placed, and indeed centred conceptually in the exhibition space, was a selection of African art of the sort that Picasso may have encountered in his explorations of African sculpture. Displayed in vitrines and on pedestals, this central display, which was the first thing greeting a viewer, evoked the sort of display that Picasso himself may have encountered when he entered the Museé Trocadero, hungry and lonely, in 1907. This collection of African masks and ritual objects is clearly and unambiguously presented as a contextualising apparatus to the Picasso paintings, sculpture, drawings and prints surrounding them. However it is also clear, both in terms of the method of display and the careful selection of objects, that these artworks are presented in a manner emphasising their status as works of art, not objects of curiosity. This echoes Picasso's own reaction to them. He, unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries, saw the African artefacts sold at Parisian markets and on display in museums as the work of artists in the context of religious practice.

The exhibition itself is really chiefly concerned with Picasso's so-called 'African Period' which runs from 1906 - 08 in its most coherent and important form, with its high-point being the production of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. A few very ignorant critics and commentators have been heard to say that it is a pity that this work was not included in this exhibition. Yes, indeed, but given its status as arguably one of the two or three most important artworks of the last century and the pride of the recently re-opened MoMA in New York, it seems a little churlish to chide Martin and Madeline for not achieving this particular loan! The insurance of this work, conservatively estimated at a quarter of billion dollars, may have unbalanced the budget somewhat.

This 'African Period' is represented by a number of highly significant works including studies for Les Demoiselles of immense historical importance, and the masterpiece Three Women Beneath a Tree of 1907. I was particularly pleased to see another, wonderful work of the same time, also of a tree showing a direction that Picasso obviously toyed with but never fully developed during the later phases of cubism. The tree is seen not only in typically cubist fragmentation and from several angles, but seemingly from above, below, back, front and even through its own foliage. It gave me gooseflesh to realise that Picasso had foreseen, and apparently abandoned a response to his own (and Braque's) discovery that would only be taken up again in the 1970s and 80s by David Hockney.

A few examples of analytical cubist works, the direct result of Picasso's African research and the later synthetic stage (all contextualised by sympathetic African material in the vitrines behind the viewer) gave a thorough and historically sound overview of the chief aspects of Picasso's Cubism. Less convincing are the links made to Picasso's later works. While some African references are obvious, such as to sickness masks and a general symbolic use of line, as mastered by African mask sculptors, far too many of the comparisons appear to be conceits rather than real demonstrable influences.

But to be fair to the curators this is not an explicit intention. I would hate to be guilty of one of the greatest failings of the serious critics of 'Picasso and Africa' and that is to criticise not the show presented but rather the show that they would have liked to have seen presented/would have liked to have presented themselves, etc. At the seminar in the last week of the show at Cape Town this sort of discourse was the order of the day.

The final room gave the public an overview of the astonishing variety and quality of Picasso's prolific and unceasing output. One or two very important pieces could be seen here, such as the Acrobat in white and grey that is a key work of Picasso's surrealistic period.

There was far too much to this exhibition and the surrounding context to do full justice to it in such a short review. I am unconvinced that a member of the general public with minimal art historical knowledge would be able to fully understand the complex curatorial concerns at play here without outside mediation. However, no effort was spared to provide this. Guided tours were an integral part of this exhibition and were well-attended. At times some of the volunteer guides were overly visible. It was virtually impossible to view the show without their intrusive influence being felt but, as noted, their often self-aggrandising presence was an important tool to bring the context of the show to the wisest public possible. In addition, a truly superb catalogue was produced at obviously subsidised cost and this was of great value in understanding the curators' intentions.

Those members of the public who did not sign up for a tour or avail themselves of the catalogue may well have been somewhat at sea and perhaps this is one of the very few places where the curators can be faulted in their actual curation of the show. Perhaps another fault was a certain misrepresentation of the links between Picasso and Africa in the chief period addressed by the exhibition, the 'African'. It would perhaps have been more honest to make a more substantial and direct reference to the influence of pre-Christian Iberian sculpture and medical visualisation of diseases that physically contort the body as possible influences on the sort of discoveries Picasso made during his 'African Period'. But I am aware that, just as with those who demanded that a reproduction of Les Demoiselles be present in the space, this demand on my part would take away from an avowed focus on Picasso and Africa, the true subject of the exhibition. I have several concerns about the greater issues and agendas at stake in this exhibition but in terms of the show itself, its conception and curatorship, I have no doubt. 'Picasso and Africa' was a curatorial tour de force and I am privileged to have seen it.

As to the greater debate, whether the show should have been launched at all, whether it did any good for the arts in South Africa, whether 100 000 visitors means anything at all - I leave these to other critics.

Closed: May 23

Iziko South African National Gallery
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Tel: (021) 467 4660
Email: cquerido@iziko.org.za
www.museums.org.za/iziko
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