African Arts articles from December 2004

African Arts archives from December 2004

Random thoughts on art: ten years hence.(first word)
December 22, 2004... We in South Africa are still too close to the apartheid era to be able to comment authoritatively about changes that have taken or are taking place. It is therefore difficult to pinpoint radical breaks with our past, the past that appears to be...

Engaging Modernities: Transformations of the Commonplace.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Engaging Modernities Transformations of the Commonplace Anitra Nettleton, Julia Charlton and Fiona Rankin-Smith University of the Witwatersrand Art Galleries, Johannesberg, 2003. Full color, 96 pages, softcover. R120.00,...

Corrigendum.(Correction Notice)
December 22, 2004... Notes inadvertantly omitted from Elsbeth Court's dialogue in the Summer 2004 issue. I acknowledge with deep gratitude the contributions of Johanna Agthe and John Picton in the preparation of these comments. 1. As the first attempt at a...

Frans M. Olbrechts: 1899-1958: In Search of Art in Africa.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Frans M. Olbrechts: 1899-1958 In Search of Art in Africa Edited by Constantine Petridis Antwerp: Antwerp Ethnographic Museum. 2001. 327 pp., plus 153 pages of plates and photos, 129 color plates, 121 black and white photographs, 5 maps. 37.00...

South Africa after Apartheid: introduction.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... An American observer might be somewhat bemused by the number of events (not excluding the present) issue of African Arts) that celebrate South Africa's ten years of democracy--and more surprised, perhaps, to learn that most of them, including...

South Africa's culture of collecting: the unofficial history.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... Since the late 1990s, collectors of southern African art have become increasingly cautious as a result of the growing evidence that this market is being flooded by fakes and copies. In 2002, four prominent collectors of art from this...

The craft industry in South Africa: a review of ten years of democracy.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... The craft industry has seemed to promise much to a transforming South Africa. A sprawling and highly varied collection of activities that straddle the first and third world economies, the cram industry is peculiarly representative of the more...

Re-envisioning Greater Johannesburg: South African heritage development in the first decade of democracy.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... Changes in heritage legislation in South Africa, as elsewhere, speak to the present as much as the past. Thus, South African heritage legislation evolved from the Bushman Relics Protection Act of 1911, which sought to preserve the country's...

After Apartheid: 10 South African Documentary Photographers.
December 22, 2004... The starting point of the exhibition After Apartheid: 10 South African Documentary Photographers (Fig. 1) (1) was Paul Weinberg's expression of the concern felt by his generation of documentary photographers about the unbanning of the African...

Reimagining South African national heritage: two ten-years-of-democracy exhibitions.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... Two exhibitions organized to celebrate South Africa's ten years of democracy raise crucial questions about national heritage, archives, and the role of visual culture in the construction of a new South African cultural identity. The "Democracy...

South Africa from North America: exporting identities through art.
December 22, 2004... South Africa is a player on the world stage and on sports fields. Where once it had to employ any number of bureaucratic tricks to get Zola Budd into the Olympics, it now openly exports Oscar-winning belles. (Bachar 2004:4) Africa, an...

"From the bottom of our hearts": making art in a time of struggle.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... Thamsanga (Thami) Mnyele (1948-1985) devoted his short life as an artist to two politically charged goals, pursuing each with heartfelt sincerity. In the 1970s he depicted the emotional consequences of being dominated. In the 1980s he produced...

Art and politics in a changing South Africa: Bongi Dhlomo in conversation with Michael Godby.(Art and Freedom)(Interview)
December 22, 2004... Bongi Dhlomo is an artist, art educator and art administrator. Trained at Rorke's Drift in the 1970s, she worked in a number of community arts projects in the 1980s. In the 1990s she was involved in the administration and direction of the two...

Sacred fragments: looking back at the art of Paul Stopforth.
December 22, 2004... Even today, Paul Stopforth is best known in South Africa for his graphic anti-apartheid art of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1999, this aspect of his work was also brought to the attention of an American audience through the Liberated...

Tracing: Berni Searle.(Art and Freedom)
December 22, 2004... The story of South Africa's liberation is most often told in the grand narrative of the struggle and liberation of an oppressed people. But what follows that moment of freedom? How do we measure democracy or gauge our transformation over the...

Family Stories of South Africa: Nine Family Histories.
December 22, 2004... Family Stories of South Africa Nine Family Histories National Cultural History Museum, Pretoria March 31, 2004-March 31, 2005 This is not an art exhibition. Using a mode of display which is more common in historical culture history museums...

Congo in Cartoons: 102 Paintings by Tshibumba.
December 22, 2004... Congo in Cartoons 102 Paintings by Tshibumba Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, The Netherlands May 14-October 3, 2004 Thirty years after they were painted, and ten years after Johannes Fabian wrote a seminal...

Musulmanes, Musulmans au Caire, a Teheran, Istanbul, Paris, Dakar.
December 22, 2004... Musulmanes, Musulmans au Caire, a Teheran, Istanbul, Paris, Dakar Parc de la Villette Pavillon Paul Delouvrier Paris, France May 19-November 14, 2004 Urban Islam Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) Tropenmuseum Amsterdam,...

Fang: An Epic Journey.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Fang: An Epic Journey Written and directed by Susan Vogel. Prince Street Pictures, Inc., email: prinstpic@igc .org. 2001.8 minutes, Black and White and Color; NTST/PAL. Living Memory Directed by Susan Vogel; produced by Susan Vogel, Samuel...

Current events.(Calendar)
December 22, 2004... Information subject to change * western states (by closing date) Botanica Los Angeles Latino Popular Religious Art Through February 27, 2005 UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Los Angeles, CA Material...

Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Cote d'lvoire.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Dan Ge Performance Masks and Music in Contemporary Cote d'lvoire Daniel B. Reed Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2003. 214 pp., 18 b/w photos, map, glossary, notes, references, index. $59.95 hardcover, $24.95 softcover. What's a...

Cloth Only Wears to Shreds: Yoruba Textiles and Photographs from the Ulli Beier Collection.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Cloth Only Wears to Shreds Yoruba Textiles and Photographs from the Ulli Beier Collection Rowland Abiodun, Ulli Beier, and John Pemberton Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA; 2004; 128 pp., 23 b/w and 88 color photographs, glossary....

Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Participation in African-Inspired Traditions in the Americas.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Participation in African-Inspired Traditions in the Americas. Randy P. Conner, with David Hatfield Sparks New York: Harrington Press, 2004. 390 pp. $59.95 cloth,...

Moroccan Life.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Moroccan Life Niloo Imami Paydar and Ivo Grammet, general editors. Statement by His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2002. 304 pp.; over 150 color and b/w illustrations, plus maps. $45.00...