How Few Silver Pieces Buy the Artful Heart and Mind?
by Melvyn Minnaar
Wasn't the lack of debate about the Brett Kebble Awards curious?
Just how easily does art sell itself out - and down the moral morass?
Whether it was proper to dine and jive in the most elaborate fashion at the handing over of cheques and ornaments to a few fit-the-bill, squeaky-PC artists, seems not to have bothered breathless new K acolytes. (How much effort does it take to outwit otherwise sussed moral highwaymen like Mike van Graan?)
Whether it was decent for artists to participate at all, given the context and the all-too-obvious propaganda purpose of the whole project, seems to have mattered not one jot.
Could it be that none of those who took the money (and, obviously, those who didn't get it) ever questioned whence it came? What the purpose of it all is? Does it simply take a good, treat-'em-nice party to get artists to chuck all consideration to the wind - even if they had heard about the Kebbles' business, legal and court goings-on?
Those keen judges, soft-soaped on breezy aeroplane trips and cushy five-star hotel beds - did they ever ponder their role in the grand scheme of the whitewash drama, the carefully choreographed spin (one of the finest such plots ever concocted in South Africa)?
Is that hoary maxim really true that 'money can buy anything'?
Didn't anyone notice how the image of the poverty-stricken artist got a kick in the teeth with the extravagant expenditure on the trimmings? Did they scurry back to their studios, giddy from the attention and fabulous fete, to go and do better?
'Ha', mumble those who felt a prick of conscience: 'Think of the past and the bad Medicis and those terrible robber barons who did so much for art and artists...'
The point to ponder - now that it has been announced that the booty has been upped, and a decent 'curator' appointed - is whether this is doing South African art really any good.
Contemporary art practice, especially in South Africa, is and should be much more soundly anchored in morality than ever. One could argue that all of today's art partakes to some degree in ethical discourse.
How do the Brett Kebble Art Awards measure up to this?
