NOVEMBER 14 - 26
Friday, November 14
Collector Henry Buhl is throwing a party tonight to honour the artists of 'Looking Both Ways'. His apartment is a penthouse in Soho high above Prince St, with ornately furnished reception rooms on a generous scale. The focus of Buhl's collection is on artwork of hands. Ceramic fists protruding from the wall grasp lighted tapers, photographs of hands hang on the wall, and a bronze by Louise Bourgeois of a pair of hands on either end of a wrist, one hand closed, the other open, lies on the table next to the party snacks. To enhance visitors' appreciation of the collection, at the entrance to the furthest room, a catalogue illuminated by a reading lamp on a lectern at the entrance shows all the artworks.
Curator/editor of NKA Salah Hassan is here. This is the first time we have met since we were in Venice in June, at a lunch to celebrate the opening of the African show on the Biennale. An intense discussion follows on the rights and wrongs of that show and the criticism, constructive and destructive which ensued. Afterwards, I wish I had asked Salah, as a key member of the Forum for African Arts, curators of the African show at Venice, more about the plans for the next one.
Saturday, November 15
It's the panel discussion on 'Looking Both Ways' at the Museum for African Art today. Artists facing the art audience, answering questions about their motivations, that sort of thing. Curator Laurie Ann Farrell is in the chair. An early question from the back, asking how the influence of an African background manifests itself in the artists' work unleashes some comments from the artists showing just how imprecise the description "African" is sometimes considered.
Says Hassan Musa, "I discovered I was African when I came to France. Growing up in Sudan, there were Egyptians, Ethiopians and so on. In France, when I said I was Sudanese, I was told, No, you are African. I do not know that I can identify with the continent of Africa."
Egyptian-born Ghada Amer concurs, murmuring, " I was Arabian ...", and Zineb Sedira agrees that for her, her Arabian identity is stronger than the African.
Yinka Shonibare: "I was 17 when I came to London. At art school my tutors said to me,
'So, you are African? Why don't you make authentic African art?' " Shonibare's response was to go to Brixton market to buy batik fabrics to use as the raw material for his work. He comments that something perceived as African is already considered hybrid.
Kendell Geers see the act of recycling existing materials in art as evidence of an African background. " I am not making something new - but turning something around," he says,
adding later that in the question of African identity, "I am reminded of Count Dracula - we carry around a little coffin of soil with us, always proving how African we are. We lose ourselves in the question of where we come from rather than what we are making."
Wangechi Muta talks of going to museums and "finding remnants of my culture - these objects could represent an entire group."
Tuesday, November 18
Curator Danielle Tilkin comes over to Brooklyn for tea today, and we discuss Sunday's proceedings. Danielle says she is surprised at how emphatically the African identity was disavowed by the artists. After all, someone from France is French, but also European, and has no problem in being regarded that way.
This is true, but thinking that through later, I imagine a conversation in which someone says to a French person, "No, you are not French. You are European." I reflect that it is highly unlikely that one's French citizenship would be denied in this way. In Hassan Musa'a example, one can see that it is the refusal to regard Africa as anything but an undistinguishable, and by inference, inferior, mass that is insulting.
Meet Okwui Enwezor for late supper following the Dia Center launch of Hans Ulrich Obrist's new book on his conversations with art world figures. Okwui always wants to know everything that is going on in the South African art world. He was coming to visit in December, but a family injury forced a change of plans. He tells me he is considering planning a conference event in South Africa in 2005, to mark ten years since the first Johannesburg Biennale.
Wednesday, November 19
The Guggenheim is holding a retrospective of James Rosenquist's paintings. Identified strongly with the pop art movement, Rosenquist has never seemed as interesting as compatriots like Andy Warhol, for instance, but the Guggenheim with its spiralling white walls is an ideal space against which to view these highly colourful collage images. The earlier works, with their political and consumeristic comments have more to hold the attention than later, more decorative pieces. Side galleries show how the artist planned even the largest extravaganzas from small, pasted up collages, gridded up in pencil for later enlargement onto canvas. The influence on the current paintings of Jeff Koons of Rosenquist's working methods in the mixture of images and techniques within a single work also becomes very clear.
New York magazine said this week that you are not a New Yorker unless you have at least one item in your home picked up off the street. My best etching tray, a lovely baked blue enamel item, came to me this way. Today, leaving the Guggenheim with my friend Joe Bacal, my eye falls on a discarded Manhattan Yellow Pages, neatly tied for disposal.
Just what I need to track down the electric glass engraver I want to buy! We rip out the electric tools and jewellery supplies sections, and over lunch, make some phone calls. A subway ride later, I am looking at a magnificent powerdriven tool with a flexible shaft and a set of 15 needles which complete, will cost the price of four needles in Cape Town.
Wednesday, November 26
A week later. Back in Cape Town. Very jet lagged and still on New York time. Going to bed at 4 a.m. and awakened by the birds two hours later. Must get up though - today is the last day of Wim Botha's show at Michael Stevenson, and I wouldn't like to miss it. Botha is the co-recipient of the first Tollman award for R100 000 to a deserving young artist, and this show, 'Speculum', makes it clear why. Botha combines a sensitive sculptural hand with a strong conceptual sense. On top of that, the work is quite playful. Take Generic Self Portraits, a series of five busts of the artist, cast in artificial marble with a little red velvet cushion beneath each. Subtitled ... as a statesman, as a magnate, as a landowner, as a hero, as an anti hero, Botha has announced the edition of the busts is infinite �as the cast deteriorates, so will the chiselled detailing on the busts.
