An exhibition at Museum Africa reveals how South=20 African history as we know it was constructed through=20 text and images. RUTH SACK reports
WAKE up, Thomas Baines, your time has come around=20 again. Or so a visit to the exhibition Frontiers — now=20 relocated from the Gertrude Posel Gallery to Museum=20 Africa in Newtown — would suggest.
For one thing, the story-telling style that was so=20 suited to Baines’ original purpose — travellers’ tales=20 and journalistic dispatches from the colony for home- consumption in Britain — is now equally suited to a=20 very different, new objective: the close scrutiny of=20 history, the reinterpretation of those stories, of how,=20 why and for whom they were told. And this is not by=20 learned academics only, but by children and their=20
For another thing, this exhibition has prompted Museum=20 Africa to allow curators Elizabeth Delmont and Fiona=20 Rankin-Smith to delve into its hitherto hidden=20 collection of literally hundreds of Baineses, Frederick=20 I’Onses, and the like, and into storerooms of=20 extraordinary objects and documents that have been=20 obscured from view for a lifetime.
Digging into the museum’s storehouses (somewhere in the=20 suburb of Triomf), among the old furniture, ornate=20 fireplaces, sections of carved balconies, the famous=20 and elaborate Rissik staircase, “like relics from Gone=20 With the Wind” — all of which share their space with=20 streetcleaners’ trolleys and general city council=20 equipment — Rankin-Smith found the objects that would=20 enable us to enter Baines’ world: travellers’ trunks,=20 hatboxes, the painting kit (that actually belonged to=20 Bowler), the tent; and, among much else, two fragments,=20 carefully preserved, of Chief Zandile’s Tree. (The=20 fragments were religiously saved by a Mr Graham, on=20 whose farm the fateful tree grew until he cut it down.=20 Go to the exhibition if you wish to know more …)
In the process, old forms of museum display — a=20 diorama; a portable suitcase-museum on the Bushmen; a=20 San body-cast — as well as recent ones, have been=20 brought forth, in order to critically investigate the=20 conventions of museum presentation, and the ways in=20 which history is constructed by them.
At the precise time when our educators are reassessing=20 what (and how) they have been teaching all these years,=20 this exhibition — largely conceptualised as a teaching=20 exhibition — helps to confront deeply embedded=20 mindsets and points of view. By exploring 19th-century=20 European depictions of South African life, we see the=20 assumptions and preconceptions that flourished then,=20 and are perpetuated to this day, begin to unravel.
It is something of a shock to realise how many of our=20 assumptions are perpetrated through visual images.=20 There are pictures we grew up with, so imprinted on our=20 visual experience that they have become our only way of=20 imagining the past. They become collective “memory”.=20 South African history — for many of us — comprises a=20 series of such “memories”.=20
Our old school history textbooks relied on certain=20 reproductions, partly to relieve the grey columns of=20 text, but also to confirm their underlying messages=20 (white settlers in their rightful place; taming a wild=20 land; standing up bravely to marauding/attacking/lazy/=20 stealing enemy hordes). It might have been a simple=20 matter to deconstruct the text — although only the=20 lucky pupils had teachers who did — but were the=20 “illustrations” ever examined further? Whose portrayals=20 were they? Who chose them? And could they have been=20
More recent educators, and the designers of text-books=20 and exhibitions such as this one, acknowledge that no=20 single form of acquiring knowledge takes precedence=20 over another. Text, image and object do not merely=20 “restate” one another, but form a circuit of ideas:=20 reframing, questioning, reflecting back.
Nevertheless, the presence of the authentic object=20 wields an extraordinarily compelling power. Coming upon=20 Baines’ oil-paintings for the first time is a=20 surprising experience, if only because it makes one=20 realise how completely the presence of the=20 artist/commentator pervades his work. Accustomed only=20 to seeing reproductions of these paintings, we are=20 suddenly and forcibly reminded of the painter’s=20
Baines was never regarded by his contemporaries as more=20 than an illustrator-journalist. Said a reviewer in=20 England in 1869, Baines’ work was not to be thought of=20 as “high-class art … but as representing African=20 scenery, life and customs, and as ethnological studies,=20 they are most attractive …”
Quotations from Baines remind us that the paintings and=20 sketches were fully intended for copying and=20 transcribing, far from the scene. On the stretcher of=20 one painting he had written: “… If you think the=20 figures want a far more prominent lights (sic), you=20 might put a brass ring or armlet of beads on the arm, a=20 tuft of white hair below the knee or a bunch of brass=20 or iron chain suspended from the necklace …”=20 Documentary accuracy is clearly relative.
These in themselves may seem minor and unimportant=20 changes. Yet they suggest the possibility of=20 significantly altered meaning. Even subtle changes (as=20 every artist knows) affect a viewer’s reading: the=20 facial expression, the slightest shift in body=20 language, viewpoint, relative scale, degree of=20 naturalism. The ways in which an artist engages our=20 empathy, alienates it, imbues a subject with dignity,=20 or otherwise, makes his subject accessible, imaginable,=20 or foreign and fantastic, may involve skilful=20 manipulation. The same issues apply to the treatment of=20 the land itself — threatening or controlled; exotic or=20 picturesque; high viewpoint or low: each construct may=20 serve a particular purpose.
In modern times, transcription has taken a different=20 form, technology allowing for supposedly exact=20 replication by mechanical means. Exact replication?=20 Radically altered in size, flattened, made bland, often=20 distorted in colour and definition, reproductions share=20 with 19th-century etchings mainly the virtues of wide=20 availability and dissemination. Obviously the sensuous,=20 physical experience of the original artwork is almost=20 impossible to reproduce. But in the context of=20 illustrated histories, such reproductions carry a=20 specific danger: the hand of the maker is not evident.=20 Thus the image is objectified, “a fact”, and seemingly=20 incapable of lying.
But for most school-pupils, and art students, real life=20 provides few opportunities to spend time with original=20 works and objects; and so this exhibition enables one=20 to assess and confront the implications of working with=20 reproductions. How, exactly, is meaning altered? What=20 is the nature of our response?
The curators of Frontiers have been working between=20 difficult oppositional poles: between, for instance,=20 the conventions of ethnographic display and the fine- art exhibition; and between the need for the safety and=20 preservation of the objects, on the one hand, and their=20 desire to break down the compartmentalising (and=20 distancing) effects of traditional museum display, on=20 the other. Their solutions may not be perfect, but they=20 may also be beginning to turn some of our inherited=20 baggage — and perhaps Museum Africa itself — inside=20
A workshop for teachers, on using this exhibition as a=20 teaching resource, will be held on Saturday September=20 30. It is primarily aimed at teachers of history,=20 English or art history. If you are interested, phone=20 Deon van Tonder at (011) 833-5624 as soon as possible