The art collection at the University of KwaZulu-Natal: an appraisal of content and purpose.

Abstract

This research examines the Art Collection held at the University of KwaZulu-Natal through a metamodernist (and where relevant metaformalist) paradigm that embraces both modernist and postmodernist narrative and explores the in-between-ness of these two concepts in a postpostmodern context. Many universities reappraised their art collections at the end of the apartheid era to embrace the democratic transformations of their institutions through visual representation, but no such assessment was undertaken by UKZN making this the first study of the scholarly merits of the University’s art portfolio. This study coincides with a period of student and national activism witnessed across South African universities in response to a call for ‘decolonisation’ and the removal of ‘colonial’ signifiers, prompting a revaluation as to the ‘suitability’ of ‘colonial’ artworks on campuses. An assessment of the portfolio held at the Centre for Visual Arts demonstrates that no archival management policy has been put in place to preserve the Collection and, from obvious signs of deterioration and decay, indicates that the works have been neglected for many years with even basic archival standards not being applied with material housed in unsuitable facilities. By initially photographing and correlating information obtained from piecemeal inventories, an archival spreadsheet provided a partial catalogue of the works housed in the UKZN art school. The Collection has been analysed through Metamodernism as a paradigm, and not merely as a concept as envisaged by the Dutch scholars Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, together with the application of Greg Dember’s eleven methods of interpretation. During this analysis, a twelfth method, that of geocentering, was developed and a new paradigm was identified, metaformalism, which is derived from metamodernism mediated as a South African formalistic interpretation of the European theory. This was substantiated by the analysis of five selected artworks held within the Collection of artists Jack Heath, John Hooper, Rosa Hope, Walter Battiss and Stephen Inggs. An assessment was also made of the purpose, benefit and potential for art collections generally and considered the benefits and potential of UKZN’s institutional, teaching and research collections. It was recognised that artworks displayed on university campuses reflect the visual culture and socio-political identity of an organisation and also provide a visual record of an institution’s history and socio-political praxis. Artworks also provide a forum for cultural and intellectual knowledge exchange with art teaching collections in particular enabling students access to different aspects of an artwork that would ordinarily be denied them in a museum or gallery environment and where possible, are able to handle the works and experience tactile sensation making their studies more of an engaged, felt encounter. At UKZN materials have been used as teaching aids as well as acting as pedagogical signifiers of the CVA’s former British Formalistic interests and teaching practices which reflect in the works of CVA past lecturers Rosa Hope and Hilda Ditchburn. Research collections have become interdisciplinary repositories and not only preserve historical information or cultural knowledge, but also engender new knowledge. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become the ‘norm’ to collectively share information through open source digital platforms enabling the networking of material to a wider audience. Although digitalised collections negate the ability to judge or experience the scale of artworks, so too does it introduce technological experiences and imagery beyond the peripheries of the human eye and adds another layer of narrative (or stratosphere) to the artwork. The notion of ‘Africanising’ art collections is also discussed and how this term is, by necessity, an African idiom that assumes and validates a mythical ‘authenticity’ of African ‘traditional’ culture that is not been documented and is beyond living memory, thereby creating an invented tradition. The effect of acculturation on constructing an African vernacular is analysed and is also assessed with its development based on a hybrid of both traditional and contemporary practices. Comparison is made with other South African universities that have commissioned new works to reflect the democratic transformations of their respective institutions. It also considers the national and international call to remove ‘colonial’ public artworks but, by applying a metaformalist approach, understands such commemorative icons as sources of collective memory and, through geocentering, recognises the union of the author, viewer, subject, object, time, space and a perpetual vortex of narrative with a momentary interaction providing a further layer of discourse. This thesis concludes with the hypothesis that metaformalism, as opposed to unmediated metamodernism, becomes a paradigm specifically by reference to an internalised non-European (African) context and that it is indeed an example of successful ‘Africanising’ of Eurocentric theory and provides a Southern Hemisphere exemplar; metaformalism maintains an awareness of the origins of metamodernism but initiates a localised repost.