In the back of the latest in the Taxi series of art books we are told that Ivoirienne writer Véronique Tadjo has “used her poetic skills to weave the strands of thought and theme in [David] Koloane’s work into an atmospheric text”.
Take this as a warning. The words “weave” and “atmospheric” should be enough to indicate that the text is sentimental to the point of saccharine and about as critically evaluative as a nursery school report. This is a pity because Taxi is an important series making a big space in which to look at the best of our contemporary art.
Tadjo’s weak-spined evaluation says nothing particularly insightful about Koloane, a major, senior artist whose role as facilitator has gained importance with the passing of time. Koloane is a co-founder of Fordsburg’s cross-cultural space fondly known as The Bag Factory and has been a member of the board of the National Arts Council since 1997.
Tadjo has begun her investigation with an overly metaphorical impression of Johannesburg city (“people rummaging in her inside”) and moves to Alexandra township where Koloane was born in 1938. After a potted journey through Koloane’s youth there is some mention of the Polly Street group of artists to whom Koloane belonged in the Sixties.
Then there is a puffy look at Koloane’s major themes: dogs, prostitutes and jazz. The first includes an ineffectual poem called Snarling Dogs (“Dogs barking / Dogs snarling / Dogs growling / Dogs jumping”) that does little justice to the energy of Koloane’s mad scribbling.
It is precisely Koloane’s form that could make for interesting discussion. There is a sense of urgency in his portrayal of Johannesburg — his life’s work — almost as though the artist were trying desperately to keep up with the rapid changes of the city. Not only its historical transformation, but also in the rapid movement of its people — from hour to hour, from day to day.
In endeavouring to look at the role of art as social documentation, Tadjo has skipped through history and one wonders whether this lightness of touch is deliberate, or whether it is disguising a basic lack of research.
More substantial is the stamp of approval given to the publication by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. Gordimer met Koloane when he exhibited at her husband Reinhold Cassirer’s gallery in the Seventies. She reflects on his journey from his apprenticeship under Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation to his establishing of Johannesburg’s first black-owned gallery in the Seventies.
Gordimer also makes a succinct statement about Koloane’s recent collection of assemblages. “An old saxophone against a bicycle wheel” in his studio, she notes, encompasses “memory and history as well as a tactile fascination with three-dimensional form”.
Yet another weakness of the book is that the reproduction of some of the larger images is in soft focus. This does Koloane as much of an injustice as Tadjo’s soft-focused text.