Interview with Roger van Wyk

The Founding Editor of ArtThrob talks to Roger van Wyk about ‘Dada South?’, an exhibition which is being hailed as a major curatorial achievement and which closes on February 28.

Sue Williamson: Roger, you are the chief curator of ‘Dada South?’, the international exhibition which opened at the National Gallery in Cape Town on December 12 last year. I believe the idea for the show was yours, and you have been working on it for… how many years?

Roger van Wyk: The idea for the Dada project started in 2001 with an exhibition called ‘Soul of Africa’, a collection of African Art from the Völkerkunde Museum of the University of Zürich curated by Prof Miklós Szalay.  I was responsible for designing and displaying this collection at the SANG and at the Durban Art Gallery.

This amazing collection features artworks collected by Han Coray between 1916-1928. Coray was a dynamic educator and gallerist who staged the first exhibition of Dada artworks in Zürich in 1917. African artworks (including several Baule figures) were displayed alongside modernist artists. He was a close friend of the original Dada group, including Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings. After some research, it turned out that several of the works in this collection may have been personally owned by Tzara. Working intimately with these objects, as one does doing an exhibition, I became interested in this influence of African art on Dada.

SW: What was it in particular that sparked this interest?

RvW: I was convinced that this African influence on Dada held significance beyond the thesis we know so well concerning the modernists, Picasso, Braque et al. For one thing, Dada was essentially performative, and the groups often emphasized collective actions. African music and poetry deeply influenced their actions and process. Emphasizing non-linear structures such as cyclical drum patterns and foregrounding chance as a strategy were genuine attempts at freedom from Western rationalism.

I was also mindful of the dominant influence of Dada on South African art in the 80s when I was active in art and politics. This influence of Dada in South Africa is evident in the experimental work of the 1960s and remains present in contemporary practice. This was evident in so much of the work I was seeing. So this idea of  two-way influences that span the period of a century began to take shape.

SW: And how did this develop into the current exhibition?

RvW: I engaged in discussions with academics here and in Switzerland.  I was encouraged to pursue the idea by Raimund Meyer, the editor of the catalogue for the exhibition 'Dada Global' produced by the Zürich Kunsthaus in 1994. This exhibition traced a wider influence of Dada globally. On the strength of an encouraging meeting with him, the proposal developed as a serious concern. Around the same time, I got news that the former Cabaret Voltaire, the legendary little club in the old town of Zürich where Dada began in 1917, had been squatted by youth. It was in danger of being redeveloped for commercial use and the squatters were demanding it be sponsored as a public historic cultural centre.

They were successful in their demands and I got in communication with the curators of the space, who at the time was Jury Steiner (later it was Adrian Notz). This discussion led to plans for collaboration and exchange with their small gallery and performance space. It was hoped to mount the exhibition ahead of the major Dada exhibition arranged by the National Gallery, Washington, curated by Leah Dickerman and hosted in Paris, Pompidou; New York, MoMA; and Washington, National Gallery. I had occasion to see the show in New York and got in communication with Leah to discuss the ideas for a ‘Dada/Africa’ exhibition (this was the working title before the Picasso and Africa exhibition took that idea). Leah offered good advice in terms of the process for approaching and working with European loan institutions. 

Further research then led to planning a trip to meet with academics and research original dada collections in Germany, Switzerland and France. It was then that I noticed the great essay Kathryn Smith did for the Walter Battiss retrospective for the Standard Bank Gallery. She had done research into his relations with international avant-garde practices that had been neglected in the usual scholarship. This question of an 'avant-garde' art in South Africa interests her and it was a point of connection that got us talking about tracing these lesser-known South African art histories.

SW: Thank you for giving us this illuminating background, Roger. And now, to change the subject a little, which are some of the institutions which have lent work to the show?

RvW: International loan institutions include: Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart, who leant the incredible 32 original Hannah Höch collages; Berlin Gallery, Berlin, who loaned many of the reconstructed items from the 1920 Berlin Dada Fair; John Heartfield Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin; Kunsthaus Zürich who generously loaned many important pieces; and the Pompidou, National Collection, Paris which loaned three important pieces, including the original Marcel Janco mask and two Man Ray sculptures.

Local works have been drawn from private and public collections including Iziko South African National Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Wits University Art Galleries, BHP Billiton and many others.

SW: And finally, which piece – or pieces - on ‘Dada South?’ are you most pleased to have brought here as part of the exhibition?

RvW: Of the original Dada works, it is wonderful to have the Marcel Janco drawing of the African figures from Kunsthaus Zürich that was part of the invitation graphic for Coray’s first Dada exhibition in Africa for the first time. This hangs alongside his mask and beadwork by Sophie Taeuber Arp which shows the influence of Africa and Hopi Indian design.  The Dada publications are also wonderful to have on show, as much of the spirit of Dada was carried also in text.

We also brought to South Africa for the first time Babel Series, the seminal video work of Candice Breitz, who is now based in Berlin. Hosted and beautifully installed by Blank projects in their new space in Woodstock, this is as vital now as when it was made almost exactly ten years ago. Candice still thinks of this work as key to the development of much of her subsequent video-based work.

SW: Thank you, Roger. In these times of severe financial constraints in the art world, which so limit what we can see here in South Africa, it is amazing to have a show of this calibre on our doorstep. 

I hope as many people as possible see it before it closes.