The Taxi Art Book series makes a valuable contribution to the documentation of our rich artistic heritage.
The series was initiated in 2000 by the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and the Pro Helvetia Liaison Office South Africa (PHLOSA), and funded additionally by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Royal Netherlands Embassy, the National Arts Council of South Africa and the MTN Art Institute. It comprises 10 books, each focusing on a different contemporary South African artist.
Here, renowned photographers Jo Ratcliffe, Santu Mofokeng and Lien Botha rub shoulders with controversial performance artists Steven Cohen and Samson Mudzunga, as well as multi-media artists Kagiso Pat Mautloa, Jeremy Wafer, Deborah Bell, Noria Mabasa and David Koloane.
Acclaimed writers like Veronique Tadjo and Ashraf Jamal have been selected to write texts that accompany samples of the artist’s creations, and that seek to explain their relationship to their socio-political context.
While David Krut publishers announced that the series was launched to ‘begin to correct the lack of published documentation on contemporary South African art”, an equally important objective was to ‘develop an active educational programme and teaching resource archive”, particularly for the Grade 12 Visual Arts learning area in secondary schools. Hence each title in the series is published together with an educational supplement to encourage teachers and students to communicate about the arts. Each book has been exquisitely designed and produced. The exception is the book on Mudzunga, which sadly has been relegated to inferior quality paper and black and white renderings of the artist’s work.
There are also discrepancies in the overall print quality of the educational supplements. Printed separately from each title, they are also in black and white, except, curiously, for the one attached to the Wafer title, which is in brilliant colour. Unfortunately, the supplements that accompany the Mudzunga and Ratcliffe texts seem only to have been hastily stapled together, and are poorly photocopied, so that some of the activities are hard to decipher.
I mention this because at R150 a title, many schools will not be able to afford these beautiful books. Perhaps less fortunate institutions will only be able to obtain the educational supplements, and therefore these should be of the highest quality. It’s simply pointless to try to discuss works that are almost unintelligible.
And it is rich and clamorous discussion that I hope this series will generate between teaching colleagues, and educators and their learners in Grade 12 classrooms, more informal art training workshops and tertiary institutions.
Each title offers up a multitude of learning opportunities. One could start by looking closely at the books themselves. In some, the artists are visibly present, commenting on their own work. In others, like the text on Wafer, the artist himself is present only in one blurred image.
Students and their teacher should also critically interrogate the text that accompanies the visual examples. Each author has chosen a distinctive style and viewpoint to explain the relationship of the artist to his or her work and life. Students could use this as a starting point to talk about ways to interpret and write about art and meaning. I was enchanted by the text that accompanied the work of Kagiso Pat Mautloa by writer Andries Walter Oliphant. It invites the reader to walk through the city with the artist, the journey making clear the key concerns of Mautloa’s work. In contrast, the text by Lola Frost – an accomplished artist herself – to clarify the work of Jeremy Wafer was so academic that it left me baffled and suspicious. How many teachers will be able to wrestle with highbrow ‘artspeak”, and then be able to share it with their students?
If teachers and students are lucky enough to pore over each book at length, they will be perfectly positioned to explore the supplements, crafted by art critics and educators like Philippa Hobbs and Wilhelm van Rensburg. I especially liked the way that all the activities and worksheets were designed so that students could draw on and expand their own knowledge and skills.
This expansion could, and should, happen in conjunction with other learning areas. In particular, Life Orientation, History and Drama teachers could all enrich discussions about making and documenting art under the watchful eye of a powerful and oppressive state. Drama could augment investigations into performativity and the deliberate shock tactics employed by artists like Steven Cohen. Language learning area programmes could further stimulate debates around art and conflict, art and sexuality and gender, and art and the telling of stories.
The educational supplements accompanying the series also deal comprehensively with medium and process. Learners are encouraged to document their responses to classical and contemporary art works as a way to create their own masterpieces. And they won’t necessarily need fancy equipment. There are clear instructions on how to utilise available methods and materials to create photos and linocuts, for example.
Many other possibilities are at hand for teachers to extend the study of contemporary South African art. Teachers could arrange talks with artists and those who have sought to preserve and show their work to the public. Students could hone their interview skills, while learning about the problems that formal art spaces and curatorship present.
Teachers may also be inspired to take their learners out of the confines of the classroom to discover and engage with the work of other contemporary artists in their own milieus.
But above all else, this series of stories will inspire students to pursue their own artistic dreams. They can draw strength from the fact that artists have often been seen as ‘brave and crazy’” After completing book 10, I was haunted by several powerful images – of the intriguingly complex Steven Cohen wearing a glittering chandelier in a dusty and dusky informal settlement, of the maddeningly elusive Samson Mudzunga enacting his own burial and ascension, and of the artist Deborah Bell covered in paint attacking an enormous canvas.
Bravo, David Krut! Now, how about a series on contemporary South African dramatists—?