Leafing through Hal Foster's book
The Return of the Real recently, I was charmed by a short passage. �Each epoch dreams the next,� Foster writes quoting Walter Benjamin, �but in so doing it revises the one before it�. This comment struck me as quite apt, particularly after having just read that Iziko Museums were piloting an ambitious plan to address the imbalances of the past (South Africa's lack of �examples of significant and groundbreaking public art�) with a new public art commission. But let me not stray here from Hal Foster. �There is no simple
now,� Foster continues, �every present is nonsynchronous, a mix of different times; thus there is no timely transition between the modern and the postmodern. In a sense each comes like sex(uality), too early or too late, and our consciousness of each is premature or after the fact.� Might the same be said of what is going on in South Africa now, our desperate craving to shape the future now, with the past still so visibly amongst us? True, this last comment could be interpreted cynically, which I am not. All I wish to highlight are the glorious difficulties of living in the now, in this nonsynchronous present. Which is why I continue to think Brett Murray's
Africa is such a wonderful feat.
Sean O'Toole
Due to an overwhelming response - and a slight delay in their distribution - we are extending William Kentridge's run as our featured Editions for ArtThrob artist. We are currently offering readers a rare opportunity to acquire an original artwork by this stellar South African art personality, the work in question a chine-colle silhouette image on watercolour paper titled Village Deep.
Next Update: July 1, 2003
