Beyond Aesthetics: Political Contemporary Art in South Africa
Supervisor: Mikki Stelder
Second Reader: Hanneke Stuit
Table of Contents
Introduction……….3
Chapter 1……….5
1.1. William Kentridge: An Encounter with South Africa………..5
1.2. More Sweetly Play the Dance: Setting the Stage……….8
1.3. Glued or Emancipated? Barthes and Rancière in Dialogue………...18
Chapter 2………...27
2.1. Lizza Littlewort: Artistic Resistance in South Africa………27
2.2. A Reliable History of the Spice Trade: A Monograph………...30
2.3. History and Historical Perspective: A Trajectory………..37
2.4. History and Agency: Towards a Different Perspective……….43
Conclusion………50
MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis 15 June 2016
Beyond Aesthetics: Political Contemporary Art in South Africa
The other, then, the one whom I may not know, is always my neighbour, living by my side, living ‘with’ me. The other is the ‘stranger neighbour’: she is distant in the sense that I cannot assume community or communality with her, and yet she is close by, so that she will haunt me, stay with me, as a reminder of the unassimilable in my life, or that which cannot be assimilated into the ‘my’ of ‘my life’. The pain of the other’s nearness suggests that encountering
the other opens the self to the world, an opening that touches the self, makes it feel… (Ahmed 138, my italics)
Sara Ahmed’s quotation points out beautifully the contradictory nature that characterises the encounter with the ‘other’; a contradiction that is based on binary opposites. The other is near, but also far; she is the visible neighbour, but also the haunting ghost. These polarities not only indicate the complexity of the self/other relation, but also highlight the concept of space as a defining feature of that relationality. Further, the encounter with the other has a powerful effect on the own subject position. Standing in the presence of the other presents a different world, a different narrative to the self. The confrontation with this world consequently opens up a gap between the old and the new and challenges the self to assimilate the two. Ahmed believes the assimilation to be ultimately impossible, but she underlines the
emotive response that characterises the encounter with the other. The encounter does something to the self, and that something is closely linked to affect.
This insightful description of what defines the encounter of the self with the other serves as a starting point for my research project. Although Ahmed focuses her discussion on situations that arise as a consequence of increasing globalisation between ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’, her analysis offers valuable parallels for my exploration of the encounter between spectator and artwork. Like the experience of meeting a stranger that sets up the divide between my self and her other ‘self’, the aesthetic experience is in the first instance characterised by the binary opposition between subject (spectator) and object (artwork). Yet, similar to Ahmed’s assertion, I argue that art can create a gap, a space in-between these two polarities, which “opens [the spectator] to the world” (138). This opening is intimately connected to the affective force of art “that touches [the spectator], makes [her] feel” (Ahmed 138). However, to touch the spectator does not only, or even necessarily signify emotive identification, empathy. It rather bespeaks the power of art to activate something within the spectator, which, in turn, challenges her to reconfigure her own subjectivity. In order to substantiate my argument I will analyse two art pieces by two contemporary South African artists.
The first artwork is the installation More Sweetly Play the Dance by William Kentridge, the second Lizza Littlewort’s painting A Reliable History of the Spice Trade. While at first sight the two art pieces do not demonstrate many similarities – be it in form or content – further inspection reveals a shared trajectory. Both artists use their work to engage critically with South Africa’s charged history and present, whereby they establish a strong link between politics and art. In other words, both More Sweetly Play the Dance and A
Reliable History of the Spice Trade are essentially political. The political nature – beside the
them. However, my interest was heightened further considering the recentness of the two pieces. Both artworks were exhibited in 2015 for the first time; Kentridge’s installation at the EYE museum in Amsterdam, Littlewort’s painting at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town. That means More Sweetly Play the Dance and A Reliable History of the Spice Trade scrutinise and, more importantly, impact the societal and cultural fabric of the here and now. This renders them highly relevant to any discussion of today’s artistic practice as political discourse.
For a fruitful discussion of Kentridge’s and Littlewort’s political art, I needed to engage theorists who are similarly interested in analysing the intersection between aesthetics and politics. Both Jacques Rancière and Roland Barthes have dedicated much of their writing to the investigation of precisely that connection. More importantly, their work is particularly invested in exploring the relation between spectator and artwork. I will therefore start my discussion with an in-depth analysis of Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance, while drawing in particular on Rancière’s concept of political subjectivation in comparison to Barthes’ ideas put forward in his text Upon Leaving the Movie Theater. In my second chapter I will scrutinise Littlewort’s A Reliable History of the Spice Trade, guided by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notions of the double bind and burden of responsibility. By applying these theories to the respective pieces, I will explore the space between spectator and artwork, the role and responsibility of the artist, and the question of how Kentridge’s and Littlewort’s art challenges the spectator’s positionality and perspective.
CHAPTER 1
1.1. William Kentridge: An Encounter with South Africa
William Kentridge’s critical engagement with the world surrounding him results, more often than not, in politically invested art pieces. Much of his work strongly evokes a South African setting, recognizable by the often barren landscapes reminiscent of the nature that surrounds Johannesburg. Though in some of the charcoal drawings the political and social
agenda might not be immediately apparent – as for instance in his illustration ‘Reeds’ – in others it seems to be foregrounded rather more overtly. For Pylon in Landscape, from the series Other Faces (2011), Kentridge used a ledger page with the heading “Central Administration Mine Cash”. The words alone call forth the legacy of the gold and diamond mining industry that is irrevocably linked to slavery. That is, slavery under the Dutch and British rule as well as modern day slavery.1 Away from the landscapes, Kentridge also uses fictional characters in order to engage with (post)Apartheid South Africa. His short-film series 9 Drawings for Projection, portraying the lives of the bullish capitalist Soho Ekstein and his opposite, the introverted Felix Teitelbaum, is but one example in which the viewer watches the realities and consequences of South Africa’s turbulent history. The political angle in much of Kentridge’s work seems thus indisputable. However, Kentridge does not use his art to impart moral lessons, let alone to induce political activism. As the writer Andrew Solomon aptly put it during a talk he gave at the Jewish Book Week in February this year, “he [Kentridge] has a strong ethical view point, but he shies away from persuasion.” This brings to mind Jacques Rancières important distinction between what he calls political and critical art. As Rancière informs us, “[…] all forms of art can rework the frame of our perceptions and the dynamism of our affects. As such, they can open up new passages towards new forms of political subjectivation” (The Emancipated Spectator 82). In short, all forms of art are (potentially) political, yet it does not follow that all forms of art have a political intention or, even if they do, that they will automatically mobilise the viewer. Critical art, in contrast, actively aims to create awareness of a given political or social situation and, in doing so, proclaims to induce its viewership into action. However, there is “no direct road from intellectual awareness to political action” (The Emancipated Spectator 75).
1 It was a late as 2014 that newspapers and online magazines reported on the slave-like conditions in the South African mining industry.
With Rancière’s differentiation in mind, I would now like to proceed to give a brief introduction to the chosen installation More Sweetly Play the Dance.2 The piece, which is part of a bigger project, entitled If We Ever Get to Heaven, premiered at the EYE museum in Amsterdam in 2015. A caravan of various figures and characters dances, limps, and marches on repeat in a fifteen minute long procession along eight screens that reach from floor to ceiling. The figures carry diverse objects, ranging from flowers to typewriters, and are accompanied by an upbeat, melodic musical score. The versatile group of characters together with the eclectic soundtrack is set against an unchanging background of grey, barren landscape. Thus it seems that, as far as the setting is concerned, the installation More Sweetly
Play the Dance does not appear to form an exception to what has been outlined above. The
backdrop is the very same nature we already saw in the drawings quoted earlier: a minimalistic yet precise depiction of the veldts. Moreover, as Kentridge elucidates in an interview given at the EYE, he incorporated dances from South African church groups and the music is played by a South African brass band. South Africa, then, is once again the socio-political framework. This means the viewer of the installation is implicated in that very same frame or, as Jill Bennett puts it in her recent publication Emphatic Vision, the spectator’s “comfort zone, or “space of the body”, can likewise locate [her] within this larger socio-political domain” (76). And yet, unlike some of the other works that are set in Kentridge’s native country, the installation does something to defy an exclusively South African context. It seems to transcend the national boundary to encompass a much larger field, thereby producing a rupture of “any determinate link between cause and effect” (Rancière, The
Emancipated Spectator 63). The viewer’s (natural) anticipation is then cut short and a new
landscape of the possible can spread out. The enlargement and crossing of borders is indeed already reflected on a formal level. The former through the sheer size of the forty-metre-long 2 My entire discussion of the installation is based on and refers to the following recorded version: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-n5Kvw9v4A>.
installation, and the latter by the figurine’s traversing the eight individual screens. In what follows, I will close-read the installation and the exhibition space in order to determine in which of Rancière’s two categories – political or critical – Kentridge’s artwork might fit. Further, drawing especially on Jacques Rancière’s and Roland Barthes’ discussion of politics and aesthetics, I will explore the relationship between artwork and spectator, while paying particular attention to the role of affect in relation to the aesthetic experience of More Sweetly
Play the Dance.
1.2. More Sweetly Play the Dance: Setting the Stage
During his talk at the Jewish Book Week Andrew Solomon refers to Kentridge as “the patron saint of ambiguity.” This trademark of his is unequivocally reflected in the installation’s equivocal title. “Sweetly”, “play”, and “dance” are words that, on the most general level, bring to mind a sense of positivity. On further reflection, associations with edible delights and joyous movements might spring up, evoking images of fun and pleasure. The overall impression, then, is one of lightness, which, it stands to argue, is not easily combined with the political context of South Africa. Due to the choice of words my mind is pulled into an emotive space that clashes with the political reality of ‘Apartheid’, ‘rainbow nation’, ‘riots’, and ‘trauma’. Instead, the spectator is led to think of harmony and harmlessness. This is not to deny the presence of peaceful interactions and positive developments in South Africa. However, these do not frequently star in Kentridge’s work. His focus lies rather on the tumultuous and traumatic past and present. Further, the title’s sentence structure bears more resemblance to a verse in a poem than the caption of an artwork. It sparks question marks and, in contrast to a descriptive title like ‘Reeds’ or ‘Walking Man Turning Into a Tree’, it does not provide a straight line from the installation’s name to the installation’s content. Far from being futile, though, these questions and doubts play a vital role in the aesthetic experience. The strangely set up sentence structure both furthers curiosity
and frustrates the urge to know, whereby the viewer, compelled by these polar sensations, is drawn in and on as by a magnetic field. The cognitive faculties thus stimulated, the viewer is pulled towards the darkened room where the installation is exhibited. And although Rancière advocates a policy of non-anticipation, it is difficult indeed to conceive of a spectator whose mind is perfectly immune to pre-framing in the face of any such equivocal title.
The visual, however, is temporarily sealed off by yet another layer that cannot simply be peeled back or quietly walked through: the music. Four megaphones project the soundtrack to the installation, and the resulting high volume of the soundtrack heightens the auditory perception. In fact, the music played by brass instruments, accordions, and drums also resounds in the room adjacent to More Sweetly Play the Dance at the EYE museum. The cheerful, melodic musical score virtually enwraps the gallery space and the viewer, and it creates an ambiance that stands in contrast to the silent masks hanging on the wall. The music, like the installation’s title, captures the spectator in a positively charged encounter, even before she has entered the room where More Sweetly Play the Dance is exhibited. The allurement is heightened further by the staggered walls and the inclined ceiling to make the entrance to the installation resemble a secret, ominous, yet inviting cave. Accordingly the spectator is drawn to join the audible festivities in the next room.
Roland Barthes would argue against such an affective encounter for his reader is “a man [or woman] without history, without biography, without psychology” (Death 6). In short, she is strangely devoid of feelings and memories to draw on for her meaning making of the text. Kentridge however, in a talk given on peripheral thinking, gives the following description: “Every encounter in the world is a mixture between that which the world brings towards us […] and that which we project onto it.” Further, that response cannot be singled out from context but always works in relation to it. Teresa Brennan points this out by stating that “if I feel anxiety [or joy] when I enter the room, then that will influence what I perceive or receive by way of an “impression” (6). In other words, the installation’s title, the music as well as the structure of the gallery space engage the spectator’s affects in such a way that she is led to pre-judge the subsequent encounter with the installation, for “affects evoke the thoughts” (Brennan 7). However, while the spectator might indeed have cause for anticipation, the effect is by no means predictable. Or, in the words of Rancière, “the effect of the idiom [of the spectacle] cannot be anticipated” (The Emancipated Spectator 22). Indeed, it is precisely on the line between creating expectations and frustrating them that More Sweetly
After having worked her way through the first two layers that ask for a perceptive and affective response, the spectator now steps into the room and stands in front of the installation. The sheer size of the forty metre long installation has an instant and powerful effect on her. However, the way the work is divided into eight different panels, which run along the walls in a zigzag shape rather than a straight line, strikes the viewer just as much. The overall impression of the exhibition space at the EYE is rather industrial and naked: shades of black, white, and grey; raw, cold surfaces; wan, very dim lighting; the metallic megaphones on their pin legs and the huge, hard screens confront the viewer. All these elements create a certain sense of distance, of coldness, of inhospitality. And yet, the way the panels are arranged stands in contradistinction to all that. Instead of creating a rigorously even surface along which the figures move in their unyielding procession, the actual shape of the screens, softly weaving its way across the room, lessens the otherwise relatively harsh, overbearing, and alienating effect the enormous installation has on the viewer. Indeed, the zigzagging screens are reminiscent of a river or trail, natural and untouched, in which nature can flow in its pristine course. In spite of the initial impact of starkness and coolness, then, the screens’ arrangement somehow softens the instantaneous negative affective response. Notwithstanding the barren, bleak landscape depicted on the screens, their fluid form speaks of a more hospitable nature, of open and free spaces. The landscape portrayed appears to be a living organism, rather than a static, dead representation of nature. However minimalistic the plants’ movements might be, they do evoke an impression of nature’s life cycle, endlessly repeated and renewed. While it would be hyperbolic to state that the screens’ arrangement and the depicted fauna alone would allow the viewer to think of cheerfulness, of colours and warmth, with the help of the accompanying tune she is likely to able to do so. Here, then, the title and the music find their complement – more sweetly play the dance on the lively riverbank of her imagination. In other words, the interplay of all those elements mitigates the
initial starkness of the installation, and seems to evoke a different affective response in the spectator.
Parallel to those more or less visceral reflections that come over the viewer as soon as she enters the room, the installation engages my perception in another way. The relative darkness deprives the spectator of her customary eye sight, which shifts the focus of her gaze. Yet once accustomed to the surroundings, her gaze is more acute and amplified, discerning with more clarity the imagery available to her view. The viewer’s attention, by the comparative lack of other visual distractions, is gripped by what is in front of her. Further, the relative darkness manipulates the spectator’s conceptual perception of space and distance. It melts away optical boundaries and, together with the projected music, pulls the spectator into the realm of the sensorial. In that sense, the installation functions in a way not dissimilar to cinema and calls to mind another essay by Barthes, Upon Leaving the Movie Theater. Discussing the nature and effects of cinema, Barthes argues that the physical space of the cinema causes the spectator to fall into a state of hypnosis, while the moving images take on the function of the pendulum, luring the spectator in and subsequently gluing him or her to the screen. The reader, or spectator, seems to be the kernel of Barthes’ discussion in both The
Death of the Author and Upon Leaving the Movie Theater. In the former the reader is lauded
for being the critical, discerning meaning-maker, while in the latter the spectator seems to have lost all her critical faculties. The two arguments he puts forward might therefore seem at first somewhat contradictory. Rather than seeing this as a logical fallacy, however, the two texts should be read as a criticism of the author’s supremacy on the one hand, and cinema on the other. The reader is hailed and the viewer belittled (Barthes himself is no exception here) only to the extent that it serves Barthes’ criticism. Their critical value is not, in other words, the anchor point, but rather the logical result. Yet in my discussion I am very much interested in the receptive end of any text. Disregarding therefore Barthes’ opposing stance on cinema, I am interested in how he describes the spectator. Due to the spectator’s transfixed state she is,
according to Barthes, lacking self-reflective involvement and critical analysis with regard to what she sees. In the case of More Sweetly Play the Dance, however, it is precisely this mode of observation, which is at one at the same time absorbed and detached, that adds a critical dimension to the viewer’s perception. Or, in Rancière’s words that I already quoted earlier, Kentridge’s installation engages the viewer in an aesthetic experience that “can open up new passages towards new forms of political subjectivation” (The Emancipated Spectator 82). In what follows I will provide a detailed analysis of the figures moving on screen in order to contextualise the installation’s content. This will help me for my later discussion of Rancière’s and Barthes’ theories in relation to the artwork.
During the first two minutes and a half a series of comparably congruent characters marches across the screen. An African brass band is followed by what appear to be either worshippers or mourners, clad in long robes reminiscent of religious tunics, carrying offerings of plants and flowers. The flowers – as is one of the megaphones – are an artistic creation rather than real life plants. The dichotomy between real and artificial is significant, for it ensures that the spectator does not mistake the installation for a documentary of a real life procession. The religious overtone emerges with particular clarity when the procession of flowers is interrupted by the appearance of one single dove; a symbol associated with love, peace, and purity. It is important to note, however, that the group does not walk in the wake of a coffin, or any other discernible source of devotion or grief. Indeed, the head of the group is formed by two characters that are difficult to interpret. One is nonchalantly ripping out pages of unknown form and content, leaving a trail of lifeless, scattered sheets behind; the other is hauling a non-descript flag along the screen as if scaling an invisible mountain or pushing back a transparent force. The twirling, dancing figures that overtake the pilgrims are equally difficult to integrate in the otherwise more or less congruent picture. From here, ambiguity, uncertainty, confusion even, emerge as the red thread that guides the viewer through her watching and listening experience of the increasingly abstract installation. The flowers are
replaced by human masks, Roman busts, and animal cages, thereby moving away from the delicate, free, and soft to the more solemn, confined, and concrete. This is the first instance in which the airy atmosphere condenses into a faintly gloomy veil. And yet the music and the dancing streams on incessantly, depriving the spectator of the opportunity to grasp the ambivalent and elusive imagery. This observation echoes Rancière’s discussion of the pensive image. In an analogy to Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, Rancière argues that the pensiveness is spawned by a dual narrative: “the chain of the narrative directed from the beginning towards the end […] and the chain of micro-events that does not obey this directed logic, but which is randomly dispersed without beginning or end, without any relationship between cause and effect” (The Emancipated Spectator 124). Together with the procession and the seemingly illogical micro-events the viewer’s mind floats along relentlessly, whereby the only chance she has to absorb and process what she sees is by way of affect rather than any calculated thinking. Shears that sidle amongst humans, an abstract man with a globe for a body and a ruler for arms that dances on a cart, followed by skeletons and secretaries are but a few of the examples that might have led the writer Anna Heyward to make the following comment in a review of More Sweetly Play the Dance in The Paris Review: “After minutes of watching, the dancing becomes the least absurdity in the image.” By infusing the installation with such abstract characters whose nexus is left unexplained, “Kentridge constitutes a gap” (Bennett 76). This gap cannot be bridged by way of rationality. It can only be perceived affectively. The installation, therefore, works in such a way that the spectator’s critical faculties, normally residing in the brain, are not intercepted but transplanted to a different region of the body. Gilles Deleuze describes this as “the shock wave or the nervous vibration, which means that we can no longer say ‘I see, I hear, but I FEEL […]’” (158). The sub-or supra-conscious, the spiritual automaton, seems to open up a temporal rift, which means the viewer is able only in retrospect to piece together rationally what she has already perceived affectively.
Following on from here, it is important to name some of the thoughts that are sparked by the aesthetic experience in order to re-contextualize the installation in its political context. Despite its overall cheerfulness, misery and hardship loom rather large in the installation. This fact alone might not be enough to bring to mind the consequences of social upheavals, political violence, or deaths that are inflicted forcefully. However, the various figures who struggle across the frieze pulling carts with evident fatigue or pushing their own drips cast a shadow over the spectator and give the installation a more serious frame. This holds true to an even greater extent for the man who limps along with one crutch, carrying on his back what appear to be all his earthly belongings and trying to gain on the secretaries. The man’s effort, however, is perpetually frustrated as the secretaries float away swiftly and effortlessly without taking any notice of him, despite the fact that they are facing him. Translating this into a current political scenario, it might be plausible to read the man as a refugee whose application for immigration is denied by the bureaucratic authorities. By extension, the whole procession might now spark thoughts about migration and globalisation, thus coming full circle with the above contention that More Sweetly Play the Dance transcends the South African national boundary in order to encompass and address issues on a much larger scale. In relation to that, an interview given by Kentridge at the EYE museum, might contribute an additional layer to the viewer’s perception of the installation. Expounding the origin of the title, Kentridge says: “It is a reference back to the violent political death that stalks the world.” Not only does this concede to the installation’s universalism, it also leads back to Rancière’s concept of political subjectivation. Based on the elements analysed so far, Kentridge’s artwork may then be classified as political, but not as critical. To that effect, the viewer of More Sweetly Play the
Dance might experience a certain sense of aporia. Although the installation has – like most of
his works – a strong underlying or perhaps even overt current of political and social commentary, that commentary is not made explicit, nor can it be extracted uniformly or straightforwardly by way of interpretation. Kentridge’s installation, in other words, elides a
clear-cut, spelled-out message or meaning, political and otherwise. “What it [the aesthetic experience] produces is not rhetorical persuasion about what must be done … It is a multiplicity of folds and gaps in the fabric of the common experience that change the cartography of the perceptible, the thinkable and the feasible” (Rancière, The Emancipated
Spectator 69). This metaphorical multiplicity of folds and gaps referred to seems to have been
physically translated into the screens’ set-up here. They are folded into the room rather than flatly put on the walls, while the individual screens are separated by a clear gap. The gaps, however, can only open up if the viewer resists the struggle with what Rancière terms the ‘politics of the sensible’. That is to say, by disrupting the notion of a sensible, rational world,
More Sweetly Play the Dance provides the spectator with the possibility of “a different
politics of the sensible” whose “images change [her] gaze and the landscape of the possible if
they are not anticipated by their meaning and do not anticipate their effects” (The Emancipated Spectator 105, my italics).
From my close analysis so far it has transpired that More Sweetly Play the Dance is a prime example of the fact that Kentridge’s work refuses to be easily placed in any stationary category, not only in terms of content but also in terms of form. It is not theatre for the lack of a stage and live actors. It is not cinema for the multiplicity of narrative screens and the absence of comfortable seats, which the spectator can “slide down into … as if into a bed” (Barthes, Movie Theater 419). Yet it is not simply an installation either. It has qualities and elements of all three (and possibly more) of the above-named categories, making Kentridge’s work what Rancière calls a “mélange of genres” (The Emancipated Spectator 21). Thus the genre eludes precise definition, and doubt becomes the precondition for the viewing experience. Layer seems to be built upon layer, while the peeling back of one does not lead closer to the core but only to a complication of the previous one. Yet this is precisely what makes the piece so intriguing and, more importantly, a characteristic that defines most of Kentridge’s art. More Sweetly Play the Dance does not give answers but raises questions, and
it wants to toy with the human impulse to make sense of the world. Further, the installation plays not only with the opacity of meaning and genre, but also with the fluid line between subject and object. On a surface level the viewer is presented with a static screen, “a surface of manifestations” (The Emancipated Spectator 128) which, according to Rancière, “prevents identifications” (128). The impossibility to identify, however, does not place the spectator on one side and the installation on the opposing other. In fact, what Rancière stresses throughout his essay entitled Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization is a space of in-betweenness, or “the non place as a place” (61). Elaborating on the example of the proletarian, Rancière expounds the concept of subjectivization which he describes as “the formation of a one that is not a self but is the relation of a self to an other” (Subjectivization 60). By that definition, the relationship, in which I, as the spectator, enter with the installation is not circumscribed by static boundaries and iron separateness but rather it creates and is created in a fluxionary middle space; “a gap between two identities, neither of which we [can] assume” (Subjectivization 61). This metamorphic relationship is achieved mainly by the ambiguous, complex nature of the installation, which forecloses the possibility for the spectator to clearly define and construct that ‘other’ on screen in contradistinction to her ‘self’. Rancière speaks here of the ‘aesthetic effect’. I initially dis-identify with something or someone, here the represented figures, to then place myself in relation to them, while this ‘in relation to’ signifies political subjectivization (The Emancipated Spectator 73). The moving in and out of the subject/object divide, therefore, complicates the viewer’s distinct and exclusive status as the subject, or agent, and leads to three core issues. How does the installation speak? What is the relation between spectator and art work? How does More Sweetly Play the Dance thematise this relation?
With the previous two subchapters I have placed Kentridge’s work in context and argued for the importance of affect in perceiving More Sweetly Play the Dance. I now would like to take further the notion of affect by discussing some of the ideas put forward by Roland Barthes and Jacques Rancière. Both writers have dedicated a considerable amount of their work to the theorisation of the relationship between the spectator and the image. While both their discussions examine a rather extensive field – ranging from cinema and theatre to literature, painting, and photography – the conclusions they draw seem to be equally comprehensive as well as conflicting. To that end, I wish to bring Barthes’ views on the spectator into conversation with Rancière’s in order to explore further the question of what kind of spectator I am (or become) when watching More Sweetly Play the Dance. More concretely, I would like to examine what exactly Kentridge’s installation does to me as a viewer, i.e. how it engages me affectively and critically. Or, to borrow again from Bennett’s recent work, “how might affect itself lead to a critical understanding that undercuts rather than affirms the bounds of subjectivity, thereby taking us beyond ourselves?” (104). Finally, by investigating this set of questions I hope to bring into focus the three founding pillars of my analysis as outlined above: How does the installation speak? What is the relation between spectator and art work? How does More Sweetly Play the Dance thematise this relation?
Although the installation is a projection of the previously filmed moving colour images, much of the rather vibrant colours that actually were worn by the people taking part in the procession, have faded away. The darkness in the room seems to have swallowed them up. This becomes apparent if we compare the below image (fig. 1) with the correpsonding time frame in the video.
What I discern in the video installation are mostly faded, grey or black figures moving along a backdrop of barren, dreary nature. This commentary might at first seem incompatible with the argument of the living organism given earlier. At this stage, however, it might suffice to return only very briefly to the installation’s main characteristic: ambiguity. Contradictions form an integral part of the aesthetic experience, underpinning rather than undermining the installation’s richness. Indeed, according to modernist views, the political potential of the artwork might indeed lie in its inner contradictions (Rancière, Aesthetics 22). Allowing to unfold rather than to dismiss the inner contradictions, then, the colourless figures, together with the grey landscape, evoke, by and large, bleakness, monotony, and, to a certain extent, indistinguishability; one fluid grey mass is marching or dragging along the screens in a procession that does not seem to come to an end. At first sight, the logical consequence of this quasi hypnotic continuity calls for the viewer being glued to the screen in the Barthian sense. And yet she is not. An affective discrepancy seems to take place on two levels, denying my sliding into hypnosis. The first level concerns the interplay between the aural and the visual. The second discrepancy applies exclusively to the visual, whereas another two distinctions need to be made. One side of the aesthetic experience is an impression of repetitiveness. A throng of people and other characters moves along the vast length of the eight screens, taking full fifteen minutes to do so, and underlined by a soundtrack that changes its melody but not its ambiance. Further, the projection of the installation itself is on endless repeat without clearly signalling the start of a new cycle. In contrast to the recognisable opening credits in a motion picture, for example, the superimposing of the installation’s title and the artist’s name might be the beginning just as much as the ending. This means the spectator’s watching experience is not delineated by distinct markers as one projection feeds seamlessly into the next, thus creating the impression of being stuck in a time loop. This repetitiveness, however, has a function and it is at this junction that form and content overlap. As discussed earlier, the topic of migration and refugees seems to be brought to mind by affective associations with
some of the imagery. The repetition and duration of the installation mirrors the constant flow of people who are compelled to be on the move as well as the length of their journeys. However, it also echoes media’s repetitive presentation of one and the same photograph or news story, which might lead the oversaturated spectator to “dream off” (Barthes, Movie
Theater 419), or else “to close [her] eyes and avert [her] gaze” (Rancìere, The Emancipated Spectator 85) in the face of certain intolerable images. Giving war photography as one
example, Rancière expounds the shift from “the intolerable in the image to the intolerability
of the image [itself]” (The Emancipated Spectator 84, my italics). What photographs as these
– the dead body of a 3-year-old Syrian boy who is washed up on a Turkish beach might be such an image – show is consequently “deemed too real, too intolerably real to be offered in the form of an image” (The Emancipated Spectator 83); so the viewer turns her back. At the same time, the intolerable image is reproduced so many times on every media channel until its intolerability turns into familiarity and eventually indifference. The repetitive quality of the installation, then, might produce a hypnotic effect or one of dis-engagement due to low affect intensity and repletion. In fact, the low intensity seems to be mirrored in the indiscernibility of the colourless mass, too. This allows for the possibility to group the figures together under the umbrella term of ‘refugee’, while one face is repeated in another, making them effectively faceless. However, there is a second side to the aesthetic experience. The grey moving throng of people is frequently interspersed with various dance sequences that cut through the otherwise sober procession. Further, the pilgrimage that seems to set off as a congruent group of more or less ordinary figures comes to include a cumulative amount of obscure, elusive, even grotesque characters as the images move on, some of which I have discussed above. Thus the many incongruities, ambiguities, and uncertainties inherent in the installation alleviate the sense of repetitiveness the installation invokes and prevent the spectator from dreaming off. All these discrepancies, then, cause the viewer to enter into an ambiguous relationship with the installation. Due to the fragmented, seemingly incoherent nature of the
artwork, which stands in juxtaposition to the repetitiveness, the spectator is split between two polarities. This sensation of dividedness causes the viewer to constantly have to construct herself anew, foreclosing a state of dis-engagement and hypnosis. However, it also discloses the possibility for a new relationship between spectator and artwork, one that is not defined by the gap between the two. I will discuss this in greater detail below.
The installation does not provide the spectator with an easy-to-follow narrative. Firstly, the rhythm of the installation does not allow for a traditional plot structure with beginning, middle, and end. The whole procession rather seems to be one long, organic movement that starts and ends in the same incoherence. The spectator, therefore, is deprived of an anchor point and cannot rely on the narrative to create a clear-cut relationship between her and the installation. The space she inhabits, in other words, is not well-defined. Secondly, the installation’s repetitiveness as well as the repeated projection leave the viewer in eternal anticipation of a climax, but also frustrate a sense of closure. One procession flows into the next, echoing the endless wave of migrants, refugees, and displaced communities and people around the globe. The continuous deferral and refusal of an ending alienates the viewer who is, against Rancière’s advice, anticipating at least to some degree a logical chain of cause and effect. On the other hand, the missing closure, paired with the uncertainty of the relationship between spectator and installation, lead her to re-evaluate and subjectivize differently. This re-evaluation precisely opens up the space for a new politics of the sensible, in which the spectator negotiates her relation to the installation. In other words, the viewer subjectivizes the way she relates to issues like migration, refugees, globalisation, and displacement. What follows is that the spectator has become unglued by “fetishizing not the image but precisely what exceeds it” (Barthes, Movie Theater 421, my italics).
I would now like to turn to the relationship between the aural and the visual. Although the visual organ is fully engaged in the darkened room, the soundtrack is still roaring at full
volume. Accordingly, the viewer is compelled to combine what she sees with what she hears. However, the music is not always congruent with the images it accompanies. Returning to Barthes’ essay, he observes that very often “[…] sound is merely a supplementary instrument of representation; it is meant to integrate itself unobtrusively into the object shown, it is in no way detached from the object …” (Movie Theater 420). In a mediating way, though, he goes on to say that “one displaced or magnified sound, the grain of a voice milled in our eardrums” (Movie Theater 420) would suffice to break the spell and awaken the spectator from her dreamlike, un-fascinated listening-and-watching experience. In More Sweetly Play the Dance a great part of the soundtrack is out of tune with the images that it never simply accompanies or underlines. On the contrary, the music – versatile and upbeat – seems to continually grind against the visual and thus creates tension. Reminiscent of a device commonly used by Quentin Tarantino in his films, the arrival of the sickly figures pushing their drips coincides almost perfectly with the onset of the happiest tune yet. Up until now the figures moved more or less in rhythm with the music, which was cheerful but discreet. With the onset of the new melody the spectator hears a fast-paced tune that resembles a piece of samba music. Far from dancing, however, all but one of the skinny figures scuffle along, thus creating a stark contrast that borders on the grotesque. Indeed, the third man in line, visibly depending on his drip for support, does not let his bent over body stop him from teetering to the rhythm of the music, thus emblematising the bizarre. The images and the music, therefore, form a mesmerising whole that cannot be harmonised on an affective level. Instead, the installation sets the viewer up and generates a double bind, challenging also in this way the relationship between her and the installation. This friction is aggravated of course by the mood (discussed at length above). To that effect, the merging of image and sound as well as the high volume of the music involve the senses on such a level and to such a degree that the viewer is constantly kept on her toes, quite unable to drift off into any hypnotic, uncritical slumber; it exacerbates the possibility to be distracted from it, to get away from it, or to be unreflectively lured into it. At
the same time, it foregoes any straight forward interpretation or affective response. Instead, the spectator needs to constantly reconstitute herself. Further, to add yet another stratum to the already densely interwoven and entangled elements at work here, the megaphones, as a recurring theme in Kentridge’s work, are a means to express “what needs to be heard or seen, outside of oneself” (Kentridge, William Kentridge 33). On the one hand, the recurrent theme links back to the already discussed repetitiveness and speaks to the “repetitive nature of experience” (Solomon) that Kentridge explores in his work. On the other hand, it reflects Barthes’ argument of that which exceeds the image and Rancière’s idea of creating a gap in the common – or known – experience. Finally, on a metaphorical level, the megaphones and the sound they project come to stand in as a mediator between the viewer and the image. In the way they are positioned, with the mouthpiece pointed towards the screen, they appear to lend their potency to the figures, enabling them to voice with clarity and volume whatever they wish to express. The viewer is invited to listen. This assertion, then, challenges the installation’s status as a mere object of the viewer’s gaze. My claim is rather that there is a dialogic function to the piece in the way in which it engages the viewer. A dialogue is thus established and a new space opened up; a middle space, or non place, that blurs the line between subject and object. Before discussing this idea further, however, we need to return to the ‘outside of oneself’ as this notion points towards the critical question of identification, which is the focal point of Barthes’ text on cinema.
According to Barthes “I [the spectator] press my nose against the screen’s mirror, against that “other” image-repertoire with which I narcissistically identify myself” (Movie
Theater 420). Drawing on Lacan’s mirror stage, Barthes describes the filmic image as a
mirror in which the audience sees itself reflected. Thus the characters on screen constitute the other who the audience henceforth tries to become. Yet since Barthes sees a likeness between the image and ideology, the audience, by identifying with the image, essentially falls prey to the dominant discourse which it ingests uncritically. Seen in this light, it is not surprising that
Barthes condemns identification with the image and promotes the becoming unglued from it. Since it was produced in the cultural setting of South Africa, the installation, too, forms part of the “Cinema of a society” (Movie Theater 421). But that fact alone does not warrant reprobation since, as I have argued above, Kentridge does not impose an ideology on his spectators. Indeed, even Barthes concedes that “it is still possible to conceive of an art which will break the dual circle … by some recourse to the spectator’s critical vision (or listening)” (Movie Theater 421). More Sweetly Play the Dance is such a work of art. It engages the spectator affectively which, in turn, has the potential to stimulate critical thought (Bennett 90). In the next part I will explore why and how.
In the case of More Sweetly Play the Dance the question of identification with the image is rather more complex than the cinematic character identification outlined in Barthes’ text. One reason for this is the lack of narrative structure or character development. Secondly, the way the installation plays with colours and the lack of light make it quite impossible to differentiate and clearly define the characters on screen. This inability, then, seems to prevent identification. I cannot ‘narcissistically identify myself’ with the representation of someone whose features, characteristics, and assets I do not fully distinguish. Speaking in Jacques Lacan’s words, I forgo “the transformation that takes place in the subject when he [or she] assumes an image” (503). At this stage, the relationship between spectator and image does not seem to fall easily within the grid of either identification or dis-identification. Rather, it appears to be a question of affective non-identification due to the figure’s relative indiscernibility. And yet the surrounding darkness does something to the spectator’s perception which hinders any clear-cut distinction between myself and the characters on screen. As mentioned earlier, the darkness challenges the boundary between me, the spectator, and the figures marching on screen. The colour spectrum of the installation – grey and bleak – together with the absence of lighting in the room make it difficult to discern not only the characters on screen, but also the other viewers of the installation. What is more, the lack of
light creates a certain sense of intimacy, or closeness between the viewer and the image. In that sense, the figures on screen and the spectator seem to melt together into one organic whole, moving together in the very same darkened space. Consequently, the darkness effectuates a sense of discomposure to my spatial awareness since I am no longer able to fully ascertain my own bodily position in relation to the bodies moving on screen. I cease to conceive of myself as a mere spectator and I am instead drawn into an ambiguous terrain that lies somewhere in-between, in-between critical distance and emotional proximity. The spectator, in other words, has come to inhabit “the non place as a place” (Rancière,
Subjectivization 60) referred to above, by which she seems to be invited to participate in the
march.
The size of the installation and the repetitive nature play again an important role here. The spectator can zoom in and out as she pleases, watch the entire procession in close-up, then step back and watch it again at a distance. At the same time, the viewer is almost manipulated into watching the installation repeatedly if she wishes to take in everything. This possibility (and suggestion) carries a lot of power for two reasons. My wish to watch it again and again mirrors perfectly that which is happening on screen: a never-ceasing repetition of a performance that changes in its details, but never in its generality. Migration is and has been on the social agenda for decades, if not centuries. Further, it seems to make the spectator more empathetic of the figures since her watching and re-watching – significantly, the video is fifteen minutes long – echoes the length and monotony of their walk. The repeated watching as well as the lack of temporal or narrative anchor points might lead to an affective encounter with the figures on screen that has the potential to lead the spectator to experience, to some extent, the duration as well as the hardship and emotional turmoil of a refugee’s journey. However, the installation is sufficiently abstract in order to prevent the spectator from identifying emotionally and thus lose her critical distance. Instead, More Sweetly Play the
by inviting us to inhabit an inside and an outside, as it were, at the same time” (Bennett 90). The installation, therefore, challenges the dual circle and makes the spectator look for that which is outside herself and towards a broader socio-political domain. Yet it does not do so by creating a “Brechtian-alienation effect” (Movie Theater 421), which Barthes seems to be in favour of as a method to become unglued. On the contrary, by engaging, rather than alienating the viewer affectively, it creates a new space for critical interaction. The installation, then, might be a prime example of a political aesthetics that “takes social matters away from the representational plot … to recast it as an ‘aesthetic’ plot, a matter of variation of perceptions, intensities and speeds …” (Rancière, Aesthetics 14).
With the underlying idea that all politics are aesthetical and all aesthetics are political, Rancière’s discussion of the spectator-image relationship is particularly viable for Kentridge’s
More Sweetly Play the Dance. Taking a critical stance towards theatrical reformers who wish
to bridge the gap between actors and spectators, Rancière advocates a rather more provocative view by stating that said gap cannot be spanned simply because it does not exist. Indeed Rancière argues that “being a spectator is not some passive condition that we should transform into activity. It is our normal situation” (The Emancipated Spectator 17). And further, we need to “refuse, firstly, radical distance, secondly the distribution of roles, and thirdly the boundaries between territories” (The Emancipated Spectator 17). By refusing to uphold binary oppositions – such as actor/spectator, active/passive, knowing/viewing – and instead blurring the lines between them, a ‘disruption of the sensible’ comes about. This disruption is precisely what Rancière calls the emancipation of the spectator and through which the possibility of a new politics of the sensible opens up; a politics that “can help us arrive at a better understanding of how words and images, stories and performances, can change something of the world we live in” (The Emancipated Spectator 23). It follows that according to this view it is not the duty of the artwork to impart knowledge or to coax the
spectator into activism. Indeed, it is quite futile for the artwork to do either, for the binary oppositions of knowledge/ignorance and activity/passivity are no longer viable.
In contradistinction to Barthes, then, Rancière does away with the binary oppositions so explicitly underlying both The Death of the Author and Upon Leaving the Movie Theater. Although Barthes’ reader is emancipated in the sense that she is the instance where meaning making resides, this emancipation cannot be likened to how Rancière uses the term, for Barthes relies on the polarity and distinction between reader and author. What is more, the critique put forward in Upon Leaving the Movie Theater is based on the assumption that cinema tries to implant its own ideology in its viewers. This far Rancière seems to concur, for the tone in which he writes that today “they [artists] simply wish to produce a form of consciousness, an intensity of feeling, and an energy for action” (The Emancipated Spectator 14) rather than “using the stage to dictate a lesson” (14), reveals a sense of scepticism. However, Barthes’ solution is entirely reliant on that which Rancière criticises most fiercely, i.e. the assumption that the spectator is impassive, or glued, and needs to become, or made, active. Instead, Rancière holds the opinion that contemporary art needs to engender “a third way that aims not to amplify effects, but to problematize the cause-effect relationship itself and the set of presuppositions that sustain the logic of stultification” (The Emancipated
Spectator 22). By way of its many ambiguities and incongruities as well as its refusal to
narrate a cohesive story, More Sweetly Play the Dance does precisely that. It lays the causes, but it does not anticipate, let alone prescribe effects. Accordingly, Kentridge’s installation draws precisely on the middle space between artwork and spectator in order to bring out “the third thing that is owned by no one, whose meaning is owned by no one, but which subsists between them [spectator and spectacle], excluding any uniform transmission, any identity of cause and effect” (The Emancipated Spectator 15). The middle space in which the ‘third thing’ is spawned is then precisely the locus where the subject and object flow together and where the boundary between the two overlaps. In other words, the installation works in a way
that wipes away binary oppositions and thus creates an aesthetic experience so rich in layers, folds, and gaps that the spectator is taken beyond herself. The political potential, therefore, lies in the installation’s ability to disclose a space for the spectator to reconfigure her subjectivity in order to form a new relation of herself to the other, while the other is not pinned down to inhabit one static category – or South African, or black, or refugee, and so on – but rather open to repeated affective and critical interpretation.
CHAPTER 2
2.1. Lizza Littlewort: Artistic Resistance in South Africa
In the last chapter I explored the relationship between the artwork and the spectator, arguing that Kentridge’s installation opens up a third space, in which the spectator is asked to redefine herself in relation to the other. While More Sweetly Play the Dance is embedded in and refers to a concrete socio-political context, it does not prescribe modes of perception or political activism. Indeed, the installation is open to a broad field of historical, political, and social positioning due to its inherent opacity as well as the artist’s “moral insistence on ambiguity”, as Andrew Solomon points out it in his talk on Kentridge’s art at the Jewish Book Week. Lizza Littlewort’s latest series of paintings We Live in the Past, however, seems to embody a rather more overt and direct approach to the role of art both in history and politics. Elaborating on what inspired the project, Littlewort explains in an artist statement on her official homepage: “These research studies [during my Honours in English Literature] helped me understand the overwhelming extent to which the ways we understand the world are historically-produced ‘Grand Narratives’ deeply embedded in our colonial past, which remains a fundamental architecture of the overreaching structure of global power as well as mundane details of daily life in South Africa to this day.” South Africa’s colonial past and its present ramifications are the explicit cornerstones of Littlewort’s We Live in The Past. On the surface level, the painting A Reliable History of the Spice Trade depicts in bright colours a
stylised passenger ship riding on the crest of a wave against the backdrop of black and white clouds. However, given the determinate political frame Littlewort presents her artwork in the spectator looks at a representation of the many voyages Dutch colonialists undertook during the Dutch Golden Age, in particular between the Dutch East Indies and South Africa. Littlewort does not only use the artistic process to engage critically with South Africa’s history, but the work seems to be intended to transmit “a frank message to today’s white South Africans”, as Joshua White writes in an article published on Littlewort’s homepage. This frank message revolves around Littlewort’s frustration with the partially diffused denial, or at least non-acknowledgement of their privileged position, and forms a returning theme in her work. In 2005 she already addressed the issue, arguably in even more explicitness, with her exhibition Drawing on a White Background. Rather than only pointing her finger, though, she critically engages with her own situatedness as a white artist. She does so by including family paintings in her series, whereby she deals with the ethical conflicts that arise from her own colonial heritage.
These preliminary observations call to mind what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak explicates as the ethical double bind and the burden of responsibility. Due to the complexity of Spivak’s theory I will only give a brief outline now and return to it in greater detail after my close analysis. That way I will be able to read the concept of the double bind in the specific context of A Reliable History of the Spice Trade and analyse how artwork and theory are interrelated. According to Spivak, the question of subalternity and unrecognised, other histories confronts the intellectual (and privileged people more generally). It is her task to address this question, which leads to the necessity to know and to represent the subaltern. Spivak speaks here of “figuring the other as another self” (Double Bind 108). This task is at one and the same time possible and impossible, an ethical necessity as well as a moral burden: necessary because of the need to give space to other histories that are different from the dominant one; a burden because of the intellectual’s awareness of her own privileged position
that does allow her to speak and write (while the other remains unheard) but that nonetheless disavows the possibility to figure the other in words. In light of this problematic, Littlewort’s privileged position in connection with the historico-political context of her artistic work spark several questions. How does the artwork represent a marginalised subject position? How does Littlewort’s art contribute to the opening up of a space for other histories? In what way and to what extent does the situatedness of the artwork activate the white spectator’s critical engagement and thereby challenge her to change her perspective? In order to approach these questions I will first provide a close analysis of A Reliable History of the Spice Trade, exploring both form and content of the artwork. This will help me to contextualise A Reliable
History of the Spice Trade and bring out its socio-political anchor points. After that I will
discuss the painting’s specific situatedness, and finally bring it in connection with Spivak’s conceptualisation of the privileged person’s ethical responsibility.
2.2. A Reliable History of the Spice Trade: A Monograph
Before I start my investigation of A Reliable History of the Spice Trade, I would like to give a brief overview of Littlewort’s series as a whole. This background knowledge is essential in order to delineate with more clarity what exactly the painting does and how it does it. Every painting of the series We Live in the Past is a cover version of existing Dutch artworks, most of which are now canonised as masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age. So, for instance, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, or Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier. The blueprint for A Reliable History of the Spice Trade is Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea
of Galilee, which depicts Christ and his disciples caught in a storm on a ship. By using
Rembrandt’s famous painting as the basis for your work, Littlewort establishes a narrative of linear history, in which the Dutch Golden Age is put in relation to present day South Africa. Her work, however, is not a pastiche. Instead, the techniques Littlewort uses – bringing to
mind Dadaism and surrealism – de-familiarize the original to such an extent that the familiar becomes what Freudian terminology describes as uncanny. This creates a relationship between content and artistic execution in the painting that points towards an estrangement from the historical narrative. More concretely, the estrangement is represented artistically by allowing the paint to flow almost freely on the canvas, which results in ill-defined, abstract shapes. In what follows I will elaborate on this technique and discuss its effect specifically in relation to A Reliable History of the Spice Trade.
Turning the gaze to the painting (fig. 2), I will work my way inwards from the title, which will be the first element for elaboration. Since the spice trade was facilitated by and stimulatory to Europe’s expansion in the 17th century, its nomination brings the imperialist endeavour to mind. The VOC, or Dutch East India Company, held the monopoly on spice trade during the Dutch Golden Age, propelling the Netherlands into an economic boom, which, in turn, allowed for the art market to flourish.3 The Dutch enterprise of importing spices from the Dutch East Indies via South Africa and the socio-economic ramifications thereof are closely linked to the production of art at the time, enabling the master-painters to find both the subject matter of and the buyers for their work. The Dutch narrative, however, tends to recount only the manifest and documented effects of the nation’s expansion, while eliding the causes. It focuses, in other words, on the economic and artistic achievements and hides the other side of the coin: the colonial perspective and the links between colonialism and art. The history of the spice trade, as part of the dominant narrative of Western civilization, is therefore necessarily incomplete and biased, and Littlewort points to this by calling her painting a ‘reliable’ depiction. The key point here is not so much to elevate Littlewort’s version of history to accuracy (or authenticity) but to indicate the holes in the fabric of history and to attempt to offer a different perspective. In that sense, Littlewort’s art 3 For more information on this, see the Encyclopaedia Britannica entries on East India Company and Indonesia.
can be likened to Kentridge’s, both being sceptical about any inherent, knowable truth in the world. The title of A Reliable History of the Spice Trade shifts the focus away from the grand narrative in order to make space for lesser known histories. Despite popular narrations of Dutch colonial history as innocent, the accruement of wealth during the Dutch Golden Age depended on the exploitation and domination of human and natural resources of foreign lands. Yet, it is a lesser known, or at least widely unacknowledged fact that the splendour and size of the Dutch art archive is intimately linked to the same global excursions. In discussing her own family ancestry, Littlewort explains in her artist statement:
The de Wets’ ancestor, Jakob Willemzoon, was a Haarlem-based painter and art dealer, and his son was given a fairly powerful post in the Dutch East India Company’s way-station at the Cape. This brings home for me how closely intertwined these worlds were, that they existed in the same family: the profits being raked in by the world’s first globalised corporation, the VOC, and the use of those profits in acquiring art treasures… My adaptation [of a family painting] celebrates the beautiful flowers of Indonesian spices, which were the prize without which Dutch art would have been unable to flourish.
By pointing out this frequently left out interrelation and looking at the other side of the coin, Littlewort writes a more holistic history, which is necessarily more reliable than a one-sided account.
Fig. 2. Lizza Littlewort. A Reliable History of the Spice Trade, 2015.
The painting is roughly structured along a horizontal axis, and divided according to that line, the bottom half with the wave folds fairly neatly into the top half, which depicts the sky. It is important to note that the clouds are vertically, and almost symmetrically split in two, while the wave is painted as one unified movement. At the centre of the horizontal axis, at the intersection of water and sky, sits the ship, which is thereby put to the fore. Likewise, both in terms of colour and the technique used, the painting is divided symmetrically. The bleak black/white background in its soft, circling strokes is set against the hard, straight lines, using an array of joyful colours in the foreground. Again, at the junction of these two
differing techniques we find the ship which is painted abstractly and fluidly as well as more minutely compared to the sweeping shapes surrounding it. Consequently, this abstraction precisely gives it a somewhat more complex air, which further underlines the ship’s prominence. The abstract style stands in poignant contrast to most works of the Dutch Golden Age, traditionally painted in a realist/naturalist style including Rembrandt’s The Storm on the
Sea of Galilee. I argue that Littlewort’s style subverts the technique of the master-painters, by
challenging its virtue and universalism. In line with this, the melting together of both colours and figures destabilises the reliability and thus the normative, universalising perspective of history, as the viewer is unable to describe unequivocally the content of the ship. Further, the ship is reminiscent of the myriad paintings of Dutch trading ships produced at the time, many of which can be seen at the Rijksmuseum today. Looking at Rembrandt’s art piece more specifically, which depicts Jesus and his disciples at sea, I suggest that Littlewort’s painting establishes a parallel between Christ the saviour and the imperial endeavour. Abstracting the figure of Christ and his disciples and displacing their journey on the Sea of Galilee to a colonial context reconfigure Christian virtues and values – one of the pretexts of European expansionism. Accordingly, the incisive tone of the work’s title finds its echo here, and Littlewort’s critique of white privilege and historicity becomes very poignant. Strong criticism and binary oppositions are thus the leading themes of A Reliable History of the Spice
Trade, while the former feeds into the latter. That is to say, the painting uses binary
oppositions to draw attention to and comment on the artificial divide – centre/periphery, black/white, self/other, modernity/in development, to name a few – that characterizes both the grand narrative (past) and modern history (present).
Littlewort’s technique is inseparably linked to the painting’s content and critical message. The sky is separated into black and white, presenting, at its most basic level, two meteorological possibilities: the dominance of calm, fair weather or the arrival of a tempest. While equal space given to both sides makes it unclear which way the clouds are in fact
moving, i.e. whether the white ones are going to push out the black ones or vice versa, it seems that the technique used in painting the black clouds – the big circles of black pushing over the white – indicates more of a movement here than on the white clouds’ side. In fact, black is the dominant colour in the painting. Translated into a political context, the black-white division calls to mind the notion of enslavement trade and colonialism as well as its younger cousin, apartheid: the nearing storm becomes a harbinger of empowerment on the one hand, of threat, riot, and violence on the other. The upcoming storm is echoed, too, in the manner the wave is illustrated – the gush of water, painted with staccato brush strokes, and the resulting froth describe an almost violent motion. In fact, both sky and sea are painted with exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes that are commonly associated with expressionist rather than surrealist art. This expresses a certain sense of unease, the prevalent feeling amongst modernist artists. Indeed, combining the two aspects discussed so far, which do not even take into consideration the ship yet, it seems clear that the sea is already at storm. Politically speaking, then, racial segregation appears to be in a state of turmoil.
The wave also stands in stark contrast to the sky, both in terms of colour and unity, and in the affective response it elicits. In fact, the rainbow effect, with its strong associations of South Africa as the “rainbow nation” – a term first coined by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu to capture in a metaphor the large number of diverse cultures and peoples living in South Africa – almost becomes the binary opposite par excellence: post-apartheid set against apartheid. In that sense, then, the past and present converge seamlessly here. This contention is underpinned by the painting’s structure: the wave almost appears to clash against the sky itself. What is more, the convergence of past and present seems to hold doubly true in the instance of the wave, for the rainbow colours do not only evoke the rainbow nation, but the spice trade as well, i.e. the colourful spices typically at display in a bazaar. While I do not want to reduce history to a linear succession of sealed-off events, it is undeniable that the ramifications of colonialism played their part in engendering racial
