Art South Africa Blog

Brett Murray: Visual Retaliation

Wed, 30 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

By Jessa Mary Mockridge.

I vividly recall in our first year Foundation course at Michaelis, Gretchen van der Byl asking us what the greatest example of iconoclasm in the twenty first century was. I managed to momentarily abandon my first year reticence and blurt out the words "nine eleven". I was rewarded with a nod of affirmation. Our introduction to the role of iconoclasm within art revolved around Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996, and its defacement by a Christian with a tub of white paint.

The current Michaelis first years (along with the rest of us) are fortunate to have been admitted front row seats to what Sean O'Toole refers to as the "satirical play" of Brett Murray, The Spear and the President. The audience members are an unruly bunch; they crunch popcorn open-mouthedly, slurp on their beverages, heckle the performers and display indecent public behaviour, none of which is concealed by the dimmed lighting. The hubbub subsumes the stage dialogue, resulting in a fluid, interactive final production.

The role of iconoclasm and culture jamming in critical discourse has been theatrically demonstrated by current events. Brett Murray's painting, The Spear, has spawned numerous offspring. Political cartoonist Jonathon Shapiro, known by his pen name, Zapiro, has reproduced Murray's image in his signature cartoon-style with the addition of a shower-head protruding from the crotch in place of the original offending penis. The recurring iconic shower-head motif represents Zuma's accumulation of offences.

Fast food chain Nandos' notoriously audacious advertising campaigns have penetrated the hoopla as well. On a reproduced image of The Spear, the Nandos emblem appears obscuring the crotch with the accompanying text, "We are not afraid to show our cocks." Another text based poster advertises new flame grilled spears (mielies) smeared in hot peri-peri sauce. They have also released a text-based poster in which all of the text has been blocked out with rectangular black boxes reminiscent of Apartheid-era press censorship. The Goodman Gallery released a similar image of the original artwork with a black, censored block obscuring the phallus from view. Conversely, protesters outside of the Johannesburg High Court last Thursday erected a version of the The Spear that had ostentatiously been "zipped up." Zuma was repainted (in the same Lenninistic stance) with a fastened fly.

My personal favourate response to the Murray/Zuma furor is an image I discovered posted on Facebook by Rouen Smit. On Tuesday morning last week, 22 May, the same morning that Brett Murray's infamous The Spear painting was defaced, an intervention was staged on Murray's public sculpture, Africa, St George's Mall in Cape Town. Each of the seven Bart Simpson heads that protrude from an African "fetish figure", were clothed with knitted woolen hats while the figure was adorned with a scarf around its neck. Rouen had seen the beenied sculpture on his way to work on Tuesday morning and taken a quick photograph. Subsequently I have discovered that the intervention was staged by artist Isabeau Joubert as a part of her ongoing "yarn-bombing" project. (Gavin Younge's nine metre high curving red man outside of the CTICC, Olduvai, has been similarly "bombed" with woolen paraphernalia.)

What the reproduced images share, including the iconoclastic acts on the painting itself, is a welcome duplicity that many of the written responses seem to lack. So far Facebook threads, chat forums and the comments on news websites demonstrate aroused interest but remain ambiguous, in less constructive ways, with regard to the images. The news24 internet phenomenon "I am a racist" and its plethora of responses (including "I am not a racist, but..") demonstrate the more candid arguments (http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/I-am-a-racist-20120522). The current hullaballoo having been stirred in the first place by an image, underscores the power of the visual. Perhaps before the curtains are drawn we should give our actors a round of hearty applause. A few more internet memes may raise a standing ovation.

Jessa Mockridge is an intern at Art South Africa, and will begin a Masters in Art Writing at Goldsmiths University in London in September this year.

Post Comment

Tender hearts and empty heads

Wed, 30 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

By Anthea Buys.

Today at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, gallerist Liza Essers and ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu sat down at the same table and addressed the media. The real world journalists, those who cover things like rhino poaching and the murder and fraud inquisitions that plague the lives of our politicians, were all there – some probably still are – and they no doubt want to get back to breaking real world news. Everyone but the ANC, it seems, wants The Spear Saga to blow over.

And blow over it will, but only thanks to the capitulation of reasonable people who are tired of the unreasonable demands, often accompanied by personal attacks, that have been presented by the ruling political party.

Our president, after exhibiting a distinct lack of care with regard to public views and moral implications of his sexual conduct and opinions, has taken great offense to these being commented on in a public forum. His position has been defended by some commentators on the basis of cultural sensitivity, with the broad-sweeping suggestion that the sexual habits of African male leaders ought to be immune to cultural criticism. On behalf of President Zuma, the ANC members who marched to the Goodman Gallery on Tuesday expressed hurt and victimisation: "WHITES HATE BLACKS", one hand-written placard read. No real attention has been paid to the social context to which Brett Murray's "The Spear" refers, even if it does so with a lack of skill or care. Even less has been paid to the content of the exhibition, which presents a far more damning portrait of the ANC's governance in post-Apartheid South Africa.

It has been saddening to watch how, one by one, those in Camp Spear have retreated from the front. The artist himself managed to stay out of the cross-fire, letting his flack jacket, Liza Essers, take all the bullets on his behalf. Essers was next, agreeing to pull The Spear from display at the Goodman Gallery. Still, the ANC fussed and bawled (in court, Zuma's lawyer Gcina Malindi delivered some well-timed sobs) and City Press editor Ferial Haffajee removed an image of the work from the City Press's website. She also issued a clear-headed, if not somewhat backhanded, apology to Zuma and family. Still, the ANC fussed, even after its initial demands had been met and a settlement made, and at Tuesday's march demanded the removal of an image of The Spear from the Goodman Gallery's website. This too has now been done. Thankfully though, the internet never forgets, and a Google image search still turns up Zuma in all his circumcised glory. What next for the ANC, a march against the interwebs?

What all of this has shown is that, ostensibly, when the people speak, institutions and the press listen. But I can't help but question the extent to which this is really "the people" speaking. Surely civilians in South Africa have more pressing concerns than the hurt caused by a B-grade painting in a small exclusive Johannesburg gallery? Why is there not such highly organised and effective activity around service delivery failures, government fraud, unreasonable lags in housing rollout, poor healthcare facilities? The ANC has proven that it easier to play the victim than to face up to what is really at issue: the fact that its leaders live off the fat of the land while very little changes for the better for most South Africans.

Post Comment

The Spear: a paint-by-numbers scandal

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

By Anthea Buys.

The art world thrives on petty scandals like maggots on carrion. This is all the more so in South Africa, where scandal-mongering is as easy as drawing a picture of an important man with his beef hanging out. Pardon my crudeness, but Brett Murray's depiction of Zuma's "generals", as they have been called by some of his associates in the press this week, resembles my mother's beef olives: always surprisingly large; a right mouthful. If I were Zuma, I would thank the artist for his flattery and get on with finding another wife.

Unless you have been on a silent retreat this past week, you will know the story blow by blow: middle-aged, white artist and satirist Brett Murray paints Zuma in a Lenin coat with his penis showing; the ANC freaks out and Murray is given the epithet of "sadist"; Murray's gallery, the Goodman Gallery refuses to remove the painting from its walls; in a bizarre turn of events, two allegedly unacquainted vandals prettily deface the painting, after which a security guard tries some stage-fighting moves on one of the vandals while extras off-stage shout "how could you do that?"; conveniently, an eNews cameraman is standing by and gets the whole thing on camera. What a wonderful chorus of coincidences.

Though people in the art world may be too easily seduced by scandal, we are seasoned rat-sniffers, and this scene has "rat" written all over it. As Art South Africa, the Daily Maverick and the Independent Online reported today, it has been claimed by one of the vandal's lawyer's that the vandals' simultaneous arrival at the Goodman Gallery was an "uncanny coincidence". Similarly the cameraman's presence was completely by chance. Never has the press had such luck, it would seem.

Everyone with a recognised public opinion in the arts sector feels compelled to chip in on the question of Murray's integrity as an artist, the quality of his work, his right to freedom of expression and the art historical convention of depicting nudity (interestingly, not many art historians think this incident significant enough to draw comparison with the great genitals of the past). I will spare you another, and will say only this: an awful lot does not square up.

Watch the video yourself here youtube.com/watch?v=7HHJG2fyktc, and notice how politely the two alleged strangers cooperate in their defacement of the painting. Notice, too, the security guard's unnecessary head-butting of the younger vandal, and their awkward dance as the perpetrator puts up no resistance to his arrest. Why the cross and smear over Zuma's face? Why not just his crotch, since that was the offensive region? This is just something to contemplate, but if Zuma's face were no longer visible in the portrait, the ANC would, technically, not have a legal case against the Goodman Gallery.

There is already some speculation that the defacement was staged; I would put money on this being so, but it is difficult to tell exactly who is in on it. It could just be a stunt pulled by two relative nobodies to cash in on publicity aimed at two relative somebodies. But, when it comes to art world scandal, all bets are off.

Post Comment