Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale, structured around national pavilions, is the world's oldest, largest and most prestigious biennial event for national art participation. South Africa has participated since 1950, and this has engendered thought-provoking, ever-changing debates about what constitutes artistic rep...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | Eng |
| Published: |
Michaelis School of Fine Art
2024
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1867613174173270016 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Bronkowski, Annchen |
| author2 | Campbell, Kurt |
| author_browse | Bronkowski, Annchen Campbell, Kurt |
| author_facet | Campbell, Kurt Bronkowski, Annchen |
| author_sort | Bronkowski, Annchen |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | The Venice Biennale, structured around national pavilions, is the world's oldest, largest and most prestigious biennial event for national art participation. South Africa has participated since 1950, and this has engendered thought-provoking, ever-changing debates about what constitutes artistic representation of national identity. This thesis presents the first institutional history of the South African national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It highlights the organisational system of the pavilion, shaped by the South African Association of Arts in the twentieth century and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in the twenty-first, and analyses the politics of the pavilion's structural history. In so doing, it shows how certain sections and members of a community, who in some sense thought of themselves as ‘national' representatives, shaped the notion of a South African ‘national art' throughout the twentieth century. This study argues that the understanding of a ‘national' art has changed throughout the decades in South Africa. In the 1950s, the preoccupation was with stylistic issues and specifically with the shift from an academic to a modern art. Towards the 1960s, under the guidance of the New Group movement and artists like Walter Battiss, Alexis Preller, and Cecil Skotnes, South African art in Venice sought to capture a specific ‘South Africanness' rather than seeking to emulate modernism as it had developed in Europe and America. The country's exclusion from Venice during the boycott years of the 1970s to early 1990s coincided with the emergence of a politically-aware national aesthetic, while South Africa's re-entry to Venice in 1993 highlights a time when the tenets of post-apartheid nation-building had to be navigated within a postmodern, globalist art world focused on issues of post-nationalism. Finally, the thesis considers how contemporary concerns about inclusive representation have completely restructured South Africa's participation. This study shows that South Africa has always been caught, culturally, between national determinations and internationalist aspirations and that this tension is nowhere more sharply reflected than at the Venice Biennale. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/40406 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | Eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:31:56.645Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| publishDateRange | 2024 |
| publishDateSort | 2024 |
| publisher | Michaelis School of Fine Art |
| publisherStr | Michaelis School of Fine Art |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/40406 Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale Bronkowski, Annchen Campbell, Kurt Fine Art The Venice Biennale, structured around national pavilions, is the world's oldest, largest and most prestigious biennial event for national art participation. South Africa has participated since 1950, and this has engendered thought-provoking, ever-changing debates about what constitutes artistic representation of national identity. This thesis presents the first institutional history of the South African national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It highlights the organisational system of the pavilion, shaped by the South African Association of Arts in the twentieth century and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in the twenty-first, and analyses the politics of the pavilion's structural history. In so doing, it shows how certain sections and members of a community, who in some sense thought of themselves as ‘national' representatives, shaped the notion of a South African ‘national art' throughout the twentieth century. This study argues that the understanding of a ‘national' art has changed throughout the decades in South Africa. In the 1950s, the preoccupation was with stylistic issues and specifically with the shift from an academic to a modern art. Towards the 1960s, under the guidance of the New Group movement and artists like Walter Battiss, Alexis Preller, and Cecil Skotnes, South African art in Venice sought to capture a specific ‘South Africanness' rather than seeking to emulate modernism as it had developed in Europe and America. The country's exclusion from Venice during the boycott years of the 1970s to early 1990s coincided with the emergence of a politically-aware national aesthetic, while South Africa's re-entry to Venice in 1993 highlights a time when the tenets of post-apartheid nation-building had to be navigated within a postmodern, globalist art world focused on issues of post-nationalism. Finally, the thesis considers how contemporary concerns about inclusive representation have completely restructured South Africa's participation. This study shows that South Africa has always been caught, culturally, between national determinations and internationalist aspirations and that this tension is nowhere more sharply reflected than at the Venice Biennale. 2024-07-05T13:07:15Z 2024-07-05T13:07:15Z 2024 2024-07-02T13:59:30Z Thesis / Dissertation Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/40406 Eng application/pdf Michaelis School of Fine Art Faculty of Humanities |
| spellingShingle | Fine Art Bronkowski, Annchen Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| title_full | Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| title_fullStr | Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| title_full_unstemmed | Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| title_short | Looking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale |
| title_sort | looking south african tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in south africa s history at the venice biennale |
| topic | Fine Art |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/40406 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bronkowskiannchen lookingsouthafricantracingtherelationshipbetweennationalpavilionandnationinsouthafricashistoryatthevenicebiennale |