Some settings encourage a certain amount of poetic licence. You can say things around a braai that wouldn’t pass muster in an art history seminar. A column like the one you are reading falls somewhere between these opposing ends of the spectrum, which grants the columnist a dangerous freedom. Passing thoughts develop into rhetorical positions, staked out with temporary conviction, only to be contradicted a week later (or within the space of a few paragraphs).
Here’s a claim that you probably won’t come across at a braai, or at an art history seminar for that matter: descriptors such as “African modernism” and “black modernists” are, to some degree at least, tautological. You may well wonder what I mean by that. Well, think about it: in the world of visual art, does modernism as we know it exist without Cubism, Fauvism or Expressionism? Without Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Klee, Braque?
If the answer is no, then modernism itself — in its many and varied manifestations — was made possible by black African artists. Each of the movements and artists mentioned above was profoundly influenced by the diverse styles and forms of different African artistic practices. The European artists of the late 19th and early 20th century who sought to break from their forebears, to make something “new”, turned to the “old” arts traditions of Africa.
Thus, Africa and blackness are baked into what we call modernism, even though it is normatively associated with the West and with whiteness. We don’t modify the term or concept of modernism by talking about “Western modernism” or “white modernists”. But perhaps we should?
OK, end of lecture. As I climb off my soapbox, however, allow me to mention in passing that this is not a case of angels-on-a-pinhead pedantry. The terminology matters because it is linked to a hundred years and more of commercial exchange on the art market. The degree to which modernism is inherently “raced” has material consequences.
Ideological pontification aside, there are practical considerations. How do you categorise artists such as Gerard Sekoto, Dumile Feni, George Pemba, Peter Clarke and David Koloane? Auctioneer Strauss & Co, presenting works by these artists to go under the hammer in its upcoming Johannesburg Auction Week, rightly describe them as “important black African modernists”.
The label is necessary, useful and, ultimately, not inaccurate. But our appreciation of the works in question is enriched by an awareness of the complicated relationship between modernism, Africa and blackness.
A fascinating example is Feni’s Blue Suede Shoe, which is expected to fetch R2m-R3m. This mixed media colour drawing, as the informative auction catalogue notes, is full of the “existential heft of his traumatised iconography” even as it adopts a satirical stance towards “shopworn clichés from Western art like the Madonna and Child motif”. Feni borrows from both European and African artistic conventions, but (in the words of Ivor Powell) he remains “incandescently different” and “never merely repeats an inherited historical formula”.
The catalogue also quotes Anitra Nettleton’s observation that Feni’s artistic achievement was “won from exile” — a difficult experience, but one that yields insights from a life “in which boundaries are blurred and positions are unstable”. The condition of exile also shaped the careers of other seminal black SA artists, including Sekoto (though in his case, this was not for the better).
It may be enlightening to draw connections between the work of these “black modernists” and their contemporaries in Paris, London and New York, but the 104 lots in this Strauss auction encourage us to compare them with prominent “white modernist” compatriots such as Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser and Alexis Preller.
Arguably, our country’s most significant contemporary artist, William Kentridge — who names Feni as an early influence — can be seen as a figure in whom these “black” and “white” SA arts legacies collide. But Kentridge is only one among dozens of celebrated artists included in this sale. For collectors with means, or interested observers, it promises to be a landmark event.
• Strauss & Co’s Live Virtual Auction Modern and Contemporary Art will take place on May 16 at 7pm. Walkabouts are open to the public on May 13 and 14 at 10am (89 Central St, Houghton Estate, Johannesburg).
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