From De Pierneef to Gugulective: Or Examining the Art (World) in South Africa

From April 15 to October 3, 2010, the Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG), in Cape Town, presented an ambitious retrospective of South African art titled 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective. The object of the exhibition was to present an historical overview of the country’s rich and diverse production of modern and contemporary art, and “to provide insight into the soul of [this] complex nation, from the hilltops of the Union Buildings a hundred years ago to the townships of Cape Town today.”1 1  - From the introductory text of 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective by curator Riason Naidoo, http://www.iziko.org.za/sang/exhib/2010/1910-2010_pierneef_gugulective/curatorial_statement.html. Developed from both the museum’s own collection and works on loan from other institutions, the exhibition displayed an impressive number of very engaging works, from the idyllic landscapes by the painter of Dutch descent, Jacob Hendrik Pierneef (1886-1957), to the sound installation of Gugulective, an artist collective whose members live in Gugulethu, a black township in the Cape Town area. While art is occasionally political, exhibitions, whether we like it or not, are likely always so. As such, an appraisal of From Pierneef to Gugulective offers an opportunity to probe the power relationships that have shaped the art world and its institutions in South Africa.

Organizing an intelligent and coherent retrospective covering a century of a nation’s artistic production is certainly a colossal challenge that entails, besides a general perspective, a fair representation of diverse approaches and voices. The challenge is all the greater in a country like South Africa, which put an end to a white supremacist political system little more than fifteen years ago. Indeed, with the obvious exception of rare pockets of resistance, like the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg, where black and white artists worked side by side, the art world took an active part in racial segregation. Apart from the fact that the country’s major artistic institutions disregarded any art that did not conform to canonical European tradition, they also followed the racist apartheid regime in systematically excluding the black population. Access to museums was tightly controlled, in accordance with “colour bar” rules,² 2 - The “colour bar” was the South African government’s legal classification of racial hierarchy in the apartheid system. and access for Blacks was either restricted or forbidden altogether. Artistic education was also reserved for Whites, who were apparently alone capable of elevating themselves beyond manual labour and, needless to say, had total control of the institutions.