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Papers by Lize van Robbroeck

By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained there... more By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in ... more In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in white South African writing on modern black art. I trace the genealogy of the dominant discursive practices of the apartheid era to the cultural discourses of the colonial era, which in turn had their origins in the Enlightenment. This genealogical tracing aims to demonstrate that South African art writing of the 20th century partook of a tradition of Western writing that was primarily intent upon producing the Western subject as a rational Enlightenment agent via the debased objectification of the colonial Other. In the process of the deconstruction, I identify the most significant discursive shifts that occurred from the 1930’s, when the first publications emerged, to the 1990’s, when South Africa’s new political dispensation opened up a different cultural landscape.

South African Journal of Science, 2012

The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of t... more The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of the dominant canon of White art history during the apartheid years. Exhibitions on the lives and artistic output of Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba come to mind, as does 'ReVisions', which showcased Bruce Campbell-Smith's superb collection of work by South Africa's historically unsung artists. This retrospective of Peter Clarke at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, a collaborative effort between art historians Elizabeth Rankin and Phillipa Hobbs, is another such revisionist project.

In his influential book, Do South African’s Exist? Ivor Chipkin1 questions the possibility of a c... more In his influential book, Do South African’s Exist? Ivor Chipkin1 questions the possibility of a cohesive South African nation. Given our traumatic colonial and apartheid past and the occult instability (to use Frantz Fanon’s famous phrase)2 of the African post-colony in general, Chipkin argues that a common telos, or a shared sense of unfolding, progressive time (ie: history as destiny), so vital to a sense of national identity, is practically unobtainable in this society that is radically divided along race, class and cultural lines. This begs the question: how do you write a history of South African art if South Africans (as a body of citizens with a semblance of unity) don’t exist? Who do you pitch it to? Who do you get to write it? Which artists do you include/exclude? Whose version of history do you base it on? Other global epistemological questions are just as pertinent: why write broad national histories at all, given our disillusioned era’s radical postmodern skepticism abou...

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteVisuele Kunst

material is based upon work financially supported by the National Research Foundation. Without th... more material is based upon work financially supported by the National Research Foundation. Without this backing, I would have struggled to find the time to complete this project. I also wish to thank my supervisors, Sandra Klopper and Paul Cilliers, for the guidance I received. Last, but not least, I want to thank my parents for their sustained faith in me (sometimes against the odds) and my sisters for their

Higher Education Hauntologies

Sabine Marschall's Community Mural Art in South Africa constitutes a comprehensive genealogy ... more Sabine Marschall's Community Mural Art in South Africa constitutes a comprehensive genealogy of mural painting from the 1980s to the present day. Marschall collected and collated an astonishing amount of material for this project: the text is densely packed (and, as I will discuss later, possibly a bit too cluttered) with photographic records, interviews and contextual background information.

I have felt for some time now that no one in the field of art history deserves an honorary doctor... more I have felt for some time now that no one in the field of art history deserves an honorary doctorate more than Elsa Miles. This independent researcher spent the past few decades quietly and painstakingly scouring archives and conducting interviews to piece together ever-more comprehensive histories of modern black art practice in South Africa. Most in the know would agree that this heritage historically received short shrift from art historians. Since the 1930s, when the first white responses to the emerging phenomenon of modern black art appeared in newspapers and magazines, writing on this topic was inclined to reveal more about the presuppositions of the authors than it did about the practice of the artists.

The Campbell Smith Collection comprises over 470 works, mostly by black South African artists, as... more The Campbell Smith Collection comprises over 470 works, mostly by black South African artists, assembled over a period of 20 years. ReVisions was an exhibition of a selection from this collection curated by Hayden Proud at the Iziko / South African National Gallery. The catalogue accompanying this exhibition is a hefty hardcover publication of 360 pages with high-resolution, glossy colour reproductions.

Critical Arts, 2015

Abstract In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler... more Abstract In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler colony such as South Africa, to engage the colonial archive in a redemptive manner. I do so by investigating the visual and discursive strategies employed by Keith Dietrich in three art projects that probe aspects of the colonial encounter in South Africa. I ask, via Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault, whether a redemptive aesthetic rereading of archival materials such as that which Dietrich attempts, is a kind of sublimation and, if so, whether it is accompanied by some form of erasure that empties history of its sufferings. In my analysis of Dietrich's work, I conclude that his acknowledgement and aesthetic transfiguration of the wounding discourses that shaped the colonial past, purge them of their claims to truth and offer a form of redemption that promises no absolution, but redeems through the notion of a shared humanity founded on difference, pain and displacement.

Third Text, 2003

The appropriation and reformulation of a modern artistic idiom by black South African artists in ... more The appropriation and reformulation of a modern artistic idiom by black South African artists in the twentieth century elicited anxious and ambivalent responses from white art historians and critics. Their attempts to frame, categorise and contain the art of the pioneer and later generations of black modernists reveal the extent to which an emerging African cultural modernity threatened the social and cultural hierarchies of the apartheid era. A critical deconstruction of these writings exposes the white perception of African cultural modernity as a dangerously grey ‘undecidable’1 that defied secure classification, and that posited enormous hermeneutical challenges. In addition, the emergence of African cultural modernity coincided, not incidentally, with the rise of African nationalism, and as such posed a threat to the co-emerging Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid state.2 By transgressing the boundaries of cultural territory reserved for Africans in the colonial binary of barbarism and civilisation, the modern black artist brought to the inner circle of European cultural modernity an uncomfortable difference and an even less digestible sameness. This experience of the black artist as the uncomfortably proximate ‘stranger’, or ‘the bearer and embodiment of incongruity’3 led to the development of discursive strategies and the invention of numerous taxonomies to deny proximity and coevalness and to re-establish spatial and temporal distance. It will be postulated that apartheid-era discourse in this field adapted and redeployed a modernist/colonialist obsession with progress, civilisation and race to contain the threat and incongruity posed by an emerging modernity of African nationalism.4 The texts discussed in this article were written between 1967 and 1992 by white academics, artists and journalists.5 All these writings deal with the concurrent artistic production of largely urbanised black artists.

South African Journal of Science, 2012

The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of t... more The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of the dominant canon of White art history during the apartheid years. Exhibitions on the lives and artistic output of Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba come to mind, as does 'ReVisions', which showcased Bruce Campbell-Smith's superb collection of work by South Africa's historically unsung artists. This retrospective of Peter Clarke at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, a collaborative effort between art historians Elizabeth Rankin and Phillipa Hobbs, is another such revisionist project.

By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained there... more By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in ... more In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in white South African writing on modern black art. I trace the genealogy of the dominant discursive practices of the apartheid era to the cultural discourses of the colonial era, which in turn had their origins in the Enlightenment. This genealogical tracing aims to demonstrate that South African art writing of the 20th century partook of a tradition of Western writing that was primarily intent upon producing the Western subject as a rational Enlightenment agent via the debased objectification of the colonial Other. In the process of the deconstruction, I identify the most significant discursive shifts that occurred from the 1930’s, when the first publications emerged, to the 1990’s, when South Africa’s new political dispensation opened up a different cultural landscape.

South African Journal of Science, 2012

The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of t... more The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of the dominant canon of White art history during the apartheid years. Exhibitions on the lives and artistic output of Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba come to mind, as does 'ReVisions', which showcased Bruce Campbell-Smith's superb collection of work by South Africa's historically unsung artists. This retrospective of Peter Clarke at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, a collaborative effort between art historians Elizabeth Rankin and Phillipa Hobbs, is another such revisionist project.

In his influential book, Do South African’s Exist? Ivor Chipkin1 questions the possibility of a c... more In his influential book, Do South African’s Exist? Ivor Chipkin1 questions the possibility of a cohesive South African nation. Given our traumatic colonial and apartheid past and the occult instability (to use Frantz Fanon’s famous phrase)2 of the African post-colony in general, Chipkin argues that a common telos, or a shared sense of unfolding, progressive time (ie: history as destiny), so vital to a sense of national identity, is practically unobtainable in this society that is radically divided along race, class and cultural lines. This begs the question: how do you write a history of South African art if South Africans (as a body of citizens with a semblance of unity) don’t exist? Who do you pitch it to? Who do you get to write it? Which artists do you include/exclude? Whose version of history do you base it on? Other global epistemological questions are just as pertinent: why write broad national histories at all, given our disillusioned era’s radical postmodern skepticism abou...

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteVisuele Kunst

material is based upon work financially supported by the National Research Foundation. Without th... more material is based upon work financially supported by the National Research Foundation. Without this backing, I would have struggled to find the time to complete this project. I also wish to thank my supervisors, Sandra Klopper and Paul Cilliers, for the guidance I received. Last, but not least, I want to thank my parents for their sustained faith in me (sometimes against the odds) and my sisters for their

Higher Education Hauntologies

Sabine Marschall's Community Mural Art in South Africa constitutes a comprehensive genealogy ... more Sabine Marschall's Community Mural Art in South Africa constitutes a comprehensive genealogy of mural painting from the 1980s to the present day. Marschall collected and collated an astonishing amount of material for this project: the text is densely packed (and, as I will discuss later, possibly a bit too cluttered) with photographic records, interviews and contextual background information.

I have felt for some time now that no one in the field of art history deserves an honorary doctor... more I have felt for some time now that no one in the field of art history deserves an honorary doctorate more than Elsa Miles. This independent researcher spent the past few decades quietly and painstakingly scouring archives and conducting interviews to piece together ever-more comprehensive histories of modern black art practice in South Africa. Most in the know would agree that this heritage historically received short shrift from art historians. Since the 1930s, when the first white responses to the emerging phenomenon of modern black art appeared in newspapers and magazines, writing on this topic was inclined to reveal more about the presuppositions of the authors than it did about the practice of the artists.

The Campbell Smith Collection comprises over 470 works, mostly by black South African artists, as... more The Campbell Smith Collection comprises over 470 works, mostly by black South African artists, assembled over a period of 20 years. ReVisions was an exhibition of a selection from this collection curated by Hayden Proud at the Iziko / South African National Gallery. The catalogue accompanying this exhibition is a hefty hardcover publication of 360 pages with high-resolution, glossy colour reproductions.

Critical Arts, 2015

Abstract In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler... more Abstract In this article, I question whether it is possible for white artists in a (post-)settler colony such as South Africa, to engage the colonial archive in a redemptive manner. I do so by investigating the visual and discursive strategies employed by Keith Dietrich in three art projects that probe aspects of the colonial encounter in South Africa. I ask, via Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault, whether a redemptive aesthetic rereading of archival materials such as that which Dietrich attempts, is a kind of sublimation and, if so, whether it is accompanied by some form of erasure that empties history of its sufferings. In my analysis of Dietrich's work, I conclude that his acknowledgement and aesthetic transfiguration of the wounding discourses that shaped the colonial past, purge them of their claims to truth and offer a form of redemption that promises no absolution, but redeems through the notion of a shared humanity founded on difference, pain and displacement.

Third Text, 2003

The appropriation and reformulation of a modern artistic idiom by black South African artists in ... more The appropriation and reformulation of a modern artistic idiom by black South African artists in the twentieth century elicited anxious and ambivalent responses from white art historians and critics. Their attempts to frame, categorise and contain the art of the pioneer and later generations of black modernists reveal the extent to which an emerging African cultural modernity threatened the social and cultural hierarchies of the apartheid era. A critical deconstruction of these writings exposes the white perception of African cultural modernity as a dangerously grey ‘undecidable’1 that defied secure classification, and that posited enormous hermeneutical challenges. In addition, the emergence of African cultural modernity coincided, not incidentally, with the rise of African nationalism, and as such posed a threat to the co-emerging Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid state.2 By transgressing the boundaries of cultural territory reserved for Africans in the colonial binary of barbarism and civilisation, the modern black artist brought to the inner circle of European cultural modernity an uncomfortable difference and an even less digestible sameness. This experience of the black artist as the uncomfortably proximate ‘stranger’, or ‘the bearer and embodiment of incongruity’3 led to the development of discursive strategies and the invention of numerous taxonomies to deny proximity and coevalness and to re-establish spatial and temporal distance. It will be postulated that apartheid-era discourse in this field adapted and redeployed a modernist/colonialist obsession with progress, civilisation and race to contain the threat and incongruity posed by an emerging modernity of African nationalism.4 The texts discussed in this article were written between 1967 and 1992 by white academics, artists and journalists.5 All these writings deal with the concurrent artistic production of largely urbanised black artists.

South African Journal of Science, 2012

The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of t... more The last two decades have seen a spate of retrospectives of artists who had been written out of the dominant canon of White art history during the apartheid years. Exhibitions on the lives and artistic output of Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba come to mind, as does 'ReVisions', which showcased Bruce Campbell-Smith's superb collection of work by South Africa's historically unsung artists. This retrospective of Peter Clarke at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, a collaborative effort between art historians Elizabeth Rankin and Phillipa Hobbs, is another such revisionist project.