Matthew Krouse Down the tube
Anyone with a television set, and an interest in the arts, knows that on Sunday night it’s time to commune with high culture. Looking back at the progression of arts programmes over the last decade, from Collage to Arts Unlimited, to Artworks, aRt and Flux, one recalls mostly long-winded, dour looks at the entertainment industry, hanging heavily on those Sunday blues, curing insomnia.
However staid they might have appeared, both Collage and Arts Unlimited were useful as records of the variety of work that formed the mainstream in the Eighties and early Nineties. In his gentle, camp voice, producer Alan Auld told you where everything was showing, and when.
It was in all probability Artworks, produced by Kathy Berman and Claire Brazil, that changed people’s perceptions of the way culture could be presented to the South African public. Awash with chroma-key effects, shot in a myriad of awkward angles, their insert producers saw equal merit in examining Coca Cola as they did in promoting state-sponsored ballet.
In the end, of course, they landed up poking too much fun at popular culture, and gave up on high art altogether.
Last Sunday saw the first episode of a new series. Called But is it Art?, it probably won’t pick up as much flak as its pretentious predecessor Flux. Starting with its rather awkward name, for a week or so viewers were subjected to a promo item in which a hunky, scruffy art student type painted an unseen work then briskly dashed off, screen left, leaving a black garden gnome behind.
Regarding the promo, which doubles up as the pre-title sequence, it’s difficult to figure out what it really means. I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably means nothing – and the black garden gnome is just a cheap laugh.
The programme’s concept seems to hinge on its title. One assumes that, since the challenge is being presented, it is necessary to decide for oneself whether what is being shown is, or isn’t, art.
The first episode’s little challenge turned out to be a book of poetry and a new CD by none other than Eugene Terre’Blanche. In case anyone had fallen asleep, to jolt them awake the deadpan presenter – Hugh Masebenza – came up with the following mysterious gem.
Over a photograph of the right-wing leader, smoking a pipe, he said: “Even if this lyrical nostalgia fest is not your cup of tea, you have to admit that that pipe on the back cover [of the CD] can lend a hint of debonair to even the most soppy of xenophobes.”
But is that English?
What followed amounted to a most offbeat look at South African arts and culture, one that I’m glad I caught.
The format is quite conventional, opening with an arts diary, following with short inserts and graduating to a feature item.
Last week’s feature fell just short of genius. Under the title The Lung Road to Freedom, producer Chris du Plessis managed to pull together an in-depth look at cigarette marketing, showing every corny cigarette advert ever made in South Africa. Granted, the insert went on a little too long, but, for the record, archival footage of our country in the Sixties and Seventies is always good for a laugh.
Two more items followed. The first, about unknown award-winners who had achieved greatness in 1998, seemed slightly condescending to the people being interviewed. The one who came off worst was probably Bruno Silva, the dental student of 22 who broke the Guinness Book of Records for spending 40 hours playing a grand piano in Boksburg’s Danube Caf.
A more serious look at kwaito rounded off a rich and varied hour of arts coverage, one that’s definitely worth a peep in weeks to come.