Black South African artists have typically had their work labeled "African art" or "township art," qualifiers that, when contrasted with simply "modernist art," have been used to marginalize their work both in South Africa and internationally. This is the The first book to fully explore cosmopolitan modern art by black South Africans under apartheid.
A revelatory and informative presentation of the anti-apartheid posters created by Medu Art Ensemble Formed in the late 1970s, Medu Art Ensemble forcefully articulated a call to end the apartheid system’s racial segregation and violent injustice through posters that combined revolutionary imagery with bold slogans. Advocating for decolonization and majority (nonwhite) rule in South Africa and neighboring countries, Medu members were persecuted by the South African Defense Force and operated in exile across the border in Botswana. The People Shall Govern! features nearly all the surviving posters that Medu created between 1979 and 1985. These objects are exceedingly rare, as they were originally smuggled into South Africa and mounted in public places, where they were regularly confiscated or torn down on sight. Offering new insight into the conceptual framework of Medu’s working practice and featuring a beautiful silkscreened cover, this volume examines the continuing relevance and impact of its poster production.
This unique interview book stems from the days when South Africa`s notorious Apartheid regime collapsed. It was written in January of 1988 and I present the talks as they were recorded then. It brought me straight into the heart of the cultural resistance while simultaenously revising anthropological research, too. I looked at the contribution the Arts could play in terminating racial segregation and asked respondents if they would use their creative activity in this regard rather than practicing Art-for-Arts-sake? The book includes a detailed bibliography, a comprehensive set of footnotes and a black and white photo of respondents.
"Resistance Art" was Sue Williamson s classic account of the visual art against apartheid. First published in 1989, it soon became a bestseller. Editions were sold in the United States and the UK, and the South African edition sold out within a few years. Because of continuing demand, this landmark work has now been reprinted with a new preface, so as to make the art of the 1980s and 1990's available to a new generation of readers and art lovers.
From 1952 to 1981, South Africa’s apartheid government ran an art school for the training of African art teachers at Indaleni, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal. The Art of Life in South Africa is the story of the students, teachers, art, and politics that circulated through a small school, housed in a remote former mission station. It is the story of a community that made its way through the travails of white supremacist South Africa and demonstrates how the art students and teachers made together became the art of their lives. Daniel Magaziner radically reframes apartheid-era South African history. Against the dominant narrative of apartheid oppression and black resistance, as well as recent scholarship that explores violence, criminality, and the hopeless entanglements of the apartheid state, this book focuses instead on a small group’s efforts to fashion more fulfilling lives for its members and their community through the ironic medium of the apartheid-era school. There is no book like this in South African historiography. Lushly illustrated and poetically written, it gives us fully formed lives that offer remarkable insights into the now clichéd experience of black life under segregation and apartheid.
During the second half of the twentieth century, various artists and activists sought to educate and influence the American public about the institutionalized oppressive system of segregationist policies and white supremacy that was practiced in South Africa. "Art against Apartheid" explores ways that artist-activists and their artworks contributed to anti-apartheid solidarity networks and activism in the United States from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Special attention is paid to the ways that art, both its production and the artwork itself, fostered solidarity between transnational activist communities. Connections between Americans and South Africans, together struggling for liberation movements in South Africa, are traced and analyzed. Activist and artist memoirs, organizational documents, print media, popular culture materials, and various artworks reveal how anti-apartheid art contributed to alternative ideologies about Africa and black Africans; provided new cultural and political spaces for activists; helped to foster activist networks in an international arena; and inspired artists and activists to sustain activist efforts. The dissertation is based on the premise that scholars should study cultural production while examining the international struggle against apartheid because artists and activists deploying art helped to forge the necessary foundations and solidarity networks that made it possible for events in South Africa to resonate in the United States. The study argues that art proved a fruitful avenue for activists in at least two ways. First, art helped to make transformations possible by providing alternative images and narratives. Art, in other words, functioned as a tool for creating knowledge and public persuasion. Second, art helped build a movement, created solidarity networks, and sustained a movement culture. It also helped to create a supportive base and to foster solidarity in a transnational arena. Following the introductory chapter, this dissertation is divided into five chapters and a conclusion. The chapters are organized chronologically to illustrate the transformation of a movement within the United States which grew from a handful of concerned individuals to an outpouring of support. The first two chapters provide a foundation for the dissertation by focusing on discussion related to political and cultural context and the emergence of international anti-apartheid activism, including that which developed in the United States. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters examine the work of specific artist-activists and activists deploying art against apartheid during the late 1940s and into the 1960s. For instance, "Chapter Three" illustrates how Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), acted as a precursor for the growth of anti-apartheid support and provided alternative ideologies about black South Africans. Furthermore, "Chapter Four" investigates the work of George Houser, Mary-Louise Hooper, and Lionel Rogosin, who went to South Africa during the era of the Treason Trial and returned to the U.S. with anti-apartheid messages. In chapter five, the work of exiled South Africans, including Miriam Makeba and Dennis Brutus, and their collaboration with American activists like Harry Belafonte and organizations such as the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and the United Nations (UN) is examined. The conclusion discusses how early anti-apartheid artist-activists and activists inspired and connected by art built foundations making it possible for anti-apartheid activism in the United States to gain popular support.
South African artist Irma Stern (1894–1966) is one of the nation's most enigmatic modern figures. Stern held conservative political positions on race even as her subjects openly challenged racism and later the apartheid regime. Using paintings, archival research, and new interviews, this book explores how Stern became South Africa's most prolific painter of Black, Jewish, and Colored (mixed-race) life while maintaining controversial positions on race. Through her art, Stern played a crucial role in both the development of modernism in South Africa and in defining modernism as a global movement. Spanning the Boer War to Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa and into the contemporary #RhodesMustFall movement, Irma Stern's work documents important twentieth-century cultural and political moments. More than fifty years after her death, Stern's legacy challenges assumptions about race, gender roles, and religious identity and how they are represented in art history.
From 1952 to 1981, South Africa's apartheid government ran an art school for the training of African art teachers at Indaleni, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal. The Art of Life in South Africa is the story of the students, teachers, art, and politics that circulated through a small school, housed in a remote former mission station. It is the story of a community that made its way through the travails of white supremacist South Africa and demonstrates how the art they made together became the art of their lives. The Art of Life in South Africa proposes a radical reframing of apartheid era South African history. Against the dominant narrative of apartheid oppression and black resistance, as well as recent scholarship that explores violence, criminality and the hopeless entanglements of the apartheid state, this book focuses instead on a small group's efforts to fashion more fulfilling lives for themselves and their community through the ironic medium of the apartheid-era school. There is no book like this in South African historiography. Lushly illustrated and poetically written, it gives us fully formed lives that offer remarkable insights into the now cliched experience of black life under segregation and apartheid.
