In 2014, police detained thirteen residents of Songzhuang for “creating trouble” after Wang Zang posted a picture on Twitter of himself holding an umbrella. The umbrella had become the symbol of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators. Police confiscated Wang Zang’s umbrella and took him into custody; still in jail two months later, he suffered a heart attack following sleep-deprivation torture. “Despite all these troubles, I think my husband did the right thing,” his wife said. A vast increase in police in Songzhuang immediately followed the arrest. Artists who had been marketing their work to anyone with funds now shooed away potential buyers. The painter Tang Jianying, who also came under increased surveillance, said that Wang’s error had been to use the Internet. “Among friends, we can speak freely,” he said. “But if you speak freely on the Web, they’ll get you.”
In the spring of 2015, President Xi Jinping said, “Fine art works should be like sunshine from blue sky and breeze in spring that will inspire minds, warm hearts, cultivate taste, and clean up undesirable work styles.” This rather novel description of springtime weather was followed by statements from the State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and TV, which expressed its willingness to relocate artists to rural areas so they could “form a correct view of art,” finding opportunities in the boondocks to “unearth new subjects” and “create more masterpieces.” The message could not have been clearer. As during the Cultural Revolution, artists who refused to self-censor would be sent into punitive exile.
When I wrote my story for the Times in 1993, three of China’s greatest artists—Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and Ai Weiwei—were living in the United States. The artists I encountered in China spoke of them and I met them when I returned home. Ai—artist, poet, architect, activist—is by far the most explicitly political. The son of a poet exiled during the Cultural Revolution, he gained fame for designing the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the 2008 Olympics, but enraged authorities by describing the games as a “false smile” from the Chinese government. Trouble escalated rapidly after he began a “citizen investigation” into the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, most at schools that did not meet building code. He catalogued their names and collected and displayed their little backpacks, deeply embarrassing the government. When he attended the trial of another earthquake activist in 2009, he was assaulted by police officers and beaten until his brain bled. He posted a photo of himself with a tube through his skull to relieve the hematoma and a bag with the draining blood in his hand. Disillusioned with Gaudy Art, he wrote in 2012, “Chinese art is merely a product. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity. The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretense. To me, these are an insult to human intelligence and a ridicule of the concept of culture—vehicles of propaganda that showcase skills with no substance, and crafts with no meaning.”
Ai Weiwei has many detractors within China. “It’s all stunts, phony posturing,” said one curator in Beijing. “It’s not so different from the government’s propaganda, but a type that’s aimed at pulling foreigners’ heartstrings.” Ai said of such critics and artists, “They always stand on the side of power. I don’t blame them. I shake hands, I smile, I write recommendation letters for them, but . . . total disappointment.”
Anger is a corollary of hope, but sorrow is the upshot of despair. Yue Minjun’s countless self-portraits, in all of which he is laughing riotously, are perhaps the most recognizable images to come out of China in these past two decades; he cannot keep pace with collectors’ demands, and counterfeits of his work are all over Beijing flea markets. Yue Minjun is categorized with the Cynical Realists. But one curator said that over time his works have come to exude “a sense of melancholy rather than cynicism.” The poet Ouyang Jianghe wrote of his work, “All immemorial sadness is in this laughter.”
SOUTH AFRICA
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The Artists of South Africa: Separate, and Equal
New York Times Magazine, March 27, 1994
I first went to South Africa in 1992, then returned in 1993. Even in that short time, the change wrought by the waning of apartheid was irrefutable, though that gruesome system was not fully abandoned until the first free elections in 1994. South Africa is the redeeming narrative. The art of protest has shifted somewhat as the occasion for protest has been diminished. For some artists, this has proved liberating; for others, extremely difficult.
I had already covered the art scene in both Russia and China and so thought that a South African assignment would call on relatively familiar skills. Soviet Russia or post-Maoist China, however, had essentially two camps: the “official” circle that benefited from and celebrated the existing power structure, and the counterrevolutionary underground whose members attempted to redeem their own identities from dehumanization. But in South Africa, the authorities had not limited artists to the production of cultural propaganda, so no body of imagery reinforced the apartheid status quo. All the artists I met—black and white—aspired to a just society, even if they did not entirely agree on how it would look.
My own role was discomfiting. In Moscow, no one had supposed that I was a party member, and in Beijing I was never mistaken for a Red Guard, but in Johannesburg, I was white and therefore incriminated. Allowed to go where black people generally couldn’t, I had no claim to innocence. At the least I was a privileged spectator in a country where the majority was brazenly disenfranchised.
This piece had a particularly rough time in the editing process, so I returned to my drafts and notes and reworked it substantially. It felt like cheating to drop the artists who have faded into obscurity, or to call much more attention to the ones who have become superstars. I have therefore tried not to change the perspective from what I perceived then, instead restoring material that was edited out and paring back other passages to reflect my original intentions.
* * *
At the first artistic gathering I attended in Johannesburg in the summer of 1993, the talk was all about Barbara Masekela’s flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Masekela is Nelson Mandela’s personal assistant, and one gains access to the great man through her; she is among the most powerful women in the African National Congress (ANC): a bright, tough, accomplished person who stands out in any context for her sheer force of personality. Yet when the flight attendant came through the first-class cabin with the in-flight meal, she served first the white man on Masekela’s right, then the white woman on Masekela’s left, then the people in the row behind. When Masekela complained, the attendant seemed genuinely startled and apologized profusely, explaining that she “just hadn’t seen you sitting there.” She literally hadn’t registered Masekela, as though the upholstery had camouflaged her black face. The white artists with whom I dined argued that while their work couldn’t make white people like black people or vice versa, it needed to address this invisibility.
Two weeks later, I found myself with one of the same artists and some of his friends at a beach near Cape Town. The breeze was hot, the sun was fierce, the sea was icy, and the landscape was stunning. We were lying on the sand when an old colored man (colored was the apartheid catchall for people of mixed race) approached with a crate of ice cream, so heavy he could hardly carry it. He wore a suit with long sleeves and long trousers, and he was sweating profusely in the sun. “God, ice cream,” said one of our group. “Who wants some ice cream?” Of course we all wanted ice cream. “It’s on me,” said someone, and we all chose our flavors, took the ice creams from the man, opened them, and began to eat. “Eight rand,” said the man, and the one who’d volunteered to treat us all checked the pocket of his shirt. “Damn!” he said. “I’ve only got five rand.” No one else had brought any money to the beach. “I’ve got some money in my car,” said one of our company. “If I see you later, I’ll give you the rest.” No one suggested that he go and get the money.
No one looked embarrassed. No one apologized. Uncomplaining, the old man picked up his crate and stumbled down the beach in the blazing sun.
The Old South Africa is going strong, even among those who profess to regret it.
But the New South Africa can be equally troubling. I went to the launch of the National Arts Initiative (NAI), which was set to introduce a new era of artistic freedom to the country. Mike van Graan, an ANC member and the general secretary of the NAI, who is colored despite his Afrikaans name, had arranged a program attended by noteworthy artists, writers, and musicians. He suggested that the proceedings take place in English since everyone there spoke English; but several representatives demanded that the proceedings also take place in their native languages. The whites who were on hand sat nervously and submissively through the long monologues in Zulu and Xhosa, with attentive looks fixed politely on their faces. The representatives who had made this demand had understood the speeches when they were first delivered; they chatted merrily throughout the translations, apparently satisfied to have prevailed. As the translations meandered on, some delegates, obviously bored, simply got up and left. The reckless waste of time, money, and energy was stupefying.
Pictures, Concepts, and Beads
The conflicting priorities and mutual insensitivities of the South African art world were being played out in microcosm in the National Gallery of South Africa when I was there. Five years ago, the National Gallery was a dead loss: pictures by Henk Pierneef, the “great” Afrikaner painter, of conquering Boers in lush landscapes hung gloomily beside third-rate works by second-rate American and European artists. Marilyn Martin, the dynamic new director, swept in like the west wind and changed all that. The gallery now houses a permanent collection of work by many of the best artists working in South Africa along with historical material by the liberal white and radical black artists of the past forty years.
This is great progress—especially when one considers that in “free” Namibia, for example, the national museum shows old pottery alongside models of mating rhinoceroses and dioramas with black mannequins clad in “native dress.” Confusion about what art is and what its purpose may be can make even the designation art museum feel suspect. At the National Gallery, I found in one room a large installation by the middle-aged, white conceptualist Malcolm Payne, built up with shopping carts, ancient and new ceramics, light projections, and a text full of such words as appropriation and deconstruct. The piece made no concessions to the possibility that some viewers would be unversed in the international discourse of contemporary art. In the room beyond was an exhibition called “Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape”; in the corner sat two Xhosa women, Virginia and Lucy, who beaded quietly all day unless asked a question through their translator.
It is fashionable in South Africa to call craft “art,” especially if it’s very good craft. Very good craft is very good craft—not less than art, but different. “We have freed ourselves of the shackles of such Eurocentric definitions,” Marilyn Martin said in a bluntly PC manner—though she holds to the Eurocentric principle of the museum. Yet the Xhosa beadwork in the museum’s gift shop, where I bought some milk pails, is not an imitation of the work in the museum; it is that work. In contrast, the Pierneef postcard that I bought at the same time is not a Pierneef, but a representation of a Pierneef. There is good and bad art, and good and bad craft, and some work that falls between these categories. This does not mean that the categories are irrelevant.
The presence of Virginia and Lucy in the museum also points to this unacknowledged distinction. Marilyn Martin insisted that Virginia and Lucy were there to demonstrate that the historical tradition continues, a point made elsewhere simply by the inclusion of contemporary material. Of course, Martin had not asked a German expressionist to sit all day and paint in the gallery showing German expressionism, nor had Malcolm Payne been invited to sit in the middle of his installation and conceptualize. Putting the ladies in situ was meant to elevate their craft, but it felt only patronizing; Malcolm Payne compared it to the nineteenth-century European enthusiasm for putting Hottentots on show for the public.
The Bag Factory and Others
A London-based patron opened the old Speedy Bag Factory to Johannesburg artists in mid-1991; it contains nineteen studios now, occupied by black and white artists. On Fridays, they have lunch together. To many outsiders, this place seems a miniature utopia, where racial barriers have been eliminated, but closer examination shows painfully vivid gaps.
Several of the leading lights of the black art world are at the Bag Factory: David Koloane, Durant Sihlali, and Ezrom Legae, as well as younger artists such as Sam Nhlengethwa and Pat Mautloa. The distinctive and poetic styles of such artists as Koloane and Sihlali reflect a courage and self-determination not relevant to the work of white artists. This does not make the black work better (it’s often ingenuous), but it does make it different. “It’s very politically correct,” said Sam Nhlengethwa, “not to write the race of murder victims in the newspapers. But you can always tell—from the names, the place of the murder, how much space it gets in the paper. It may seem gracious not to mention the race of the artist, but you can always tell the difference.” That is to say that while you are advised to treat the art equally, you should not treat it equivalently.
I was talking to Nhlengethwa at the Bag Factory when one of the white artists burst through the door. “I’ve been waiting for you for three hours,” he said to me angrily, though I had said simply that I would be at the building from noon onward and would hope to see a number of people. “If you don’t come now, I’m going home.” No apologies were offered to Nhlengethwa: he was as invisible as Barbara Masekela had been on the plane. I was rather embarrassed by this affront, but Nhlengethwa said, “Go ahead. I’m in no rush.” When I came back to Nhlengethwa’s studio, I apologized for the confusion. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’s really trying. He’s a good guy. He’s just still a white South African.”
The white artists at the Bag Factory are young, the trendiest crew in South Africa, a trendiness manifest in clothes, mannerisms, reading materials, and racial attitudes (“that testosterone-dripping avant-garde,” Malcolm Payne called them). Joachim Schönfeldt presents his pieces under the banner of “Curios and Authentic Works of Art,” playing with Eurocentric definitions of “native” African production. In subtle, funny, and disconcertingly beautiful carvings, always made from the wood of blue gums (the most politicized trees in Africa, introduced by settlers to build struts for the mines), Schönfeldt combines an Afrikaans sense of kitsch with a cynical approach to those questions of art versus craft that the National Gallery prefers to finesse. Alan Alborough works with boundaries, crossable and inviolable, and has done a particularly powerful series in which children’s games become metaphors for social definition and exclusion. Belinda Blignaut’s formalist production makes a point of not engaging with politics. Kendell Geers’s art often includes the materials of violence—broken glass, barbed wire, the tires used for “necklacing” (the practice of vigilante execution with a burning rubber ring)—and incorporates poststructuralist and modernist conceits. The effect is often powerful and occasionally pretentious. The work of these youngish artists is sometimes too sophisticated; they fail to realize that nothing is more provincial than denying your own provincialism. Their work can feel confused when it tries to fit in with, but misunderstands, the international art world, and derivative when it grasps it more accurately but fails to add much to it.
For someone engaged in political work, Geers can be strikingly insensitive. “I’ve had as hard a time as anyone in this country,” he complained when I mentioned oppression. “It’s damned hard to be a white South African, especially if you’ve grown up without a lot of money and privilege.” Though it can be unpleasant for whites in South Africa to be constantly reminded of others’ suffering, to be denied a right to any sadness that is not empathetic, Geers’s life has not been as difficult as myriad others’ in South Africa; t
his kind of competitive self-aggrandizement is deeply troubling.
The competitive tension between black and white artists at the Bag Factory is hard to overlook, much as the residents deny it. Foreign critics and curators tend to focus on black artists even though the work of white artists is generally accessible to them and the work of black artists is often more reliant on local context for its meanings. “It’s pretty unfashionable to be white here,” Kendell Geers said. Wayne Barker, who likes to play the enfant terrible, conflates personal, formal, and social concerns in highly theatrical and often angry work. He submitted a work to a 1990 drawing competition under the black-sounding pseudonym Andrew Moletsi, and it achieved some renown. He suggested that all white artists should work in this way to break down the existing barriers.
Among the younger Cape Town artists who work in a similar mode to the Bag Factory group, Beezy Bailey—whose captivating, hyperexpressive, loosely conceptual, highly imagined, pink-and-orange-and-green work had had some success but had never entered the top echelon of South African galleries—took Barker’s challenge to heart. In 1991 he submitted work to the prestigious Cape Town Triennial. One piece went in as the work of Beezy Bailey, and three others he submitted as the work of Joyce Ntobe, a domestic worker. No one paid much attention to the Bailey work, but Ntobe’s work was purchased by the National Gallery. He revealed the ruse only months later. Bailey and many other white artists believe that the buying of black work because it is black does more in the long run to erode black self-esteem than to increase it. Bailey subsequently mounted a “collaborative” exhibition of work by himself and Ntobe; he continues to promote his work along with that of his black alter ego, claiming that only by trying to live with both a black and a white vision can one be an artist of the New South Africa. The white liberal community was outraged at Bailey’s ploy, but many black artists applauded his courage.
Far and Away: Reporting From the Brink of Change Page 17