It is a huge responsibility to pay tribute — and do justice — to a person, a visionary and public intellectual, who touched, inspired and influenced so many people and who had a profound effect on the cultural, intellectual and artistic life of Cape Town and far beyond, over a period of five decades.
Neville Dubow’s contribution to critical writing in newspapers and journals is immense; already in the late 1950s he set a standard for art reviews in English that have never been surpassed and were seldom equalled. Who in South Africa, interested in broader cultural discourses and critical views, has not attended a lecture by Dubow? But few may know that he also lectured in Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States. The compelling, challenging topics, fuelled by his interests and worldwide travel, offered new, incisive perspectives. Some of his abiding interests were articulated in his inaugural lecture at University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1971: Art and Freedom. For the rest of his life he would delve into the notion of the avant-garde, the relationship between art and the politics of power, art as propaganda, art of protest, state art and political art. Other topics of research were Germany, so-called ‘degenerate art”, and monuments, memory and memorials.
Dubow’s membership of national selection and advisory boards and juries enabled him to share his convictions and knowledge, and to make a difference to civic life and to our environment — for example the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, many art competitions and public commissions. His own work was equally important in this process, particularly in the field of urban sculpture. His artistic output as photographer was acknowledged when he was chosen as the Standard Bank guest artist for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1992. The exhibition, entitled Neville Dubow — Sequences, series, sites; 1971-1992, toured all the major museums in South Africa. His work is in many public and private collections.
Dubow qualified as an architect and practised between 1956 and 1961 with Sir Maxwell Fry in London and with Revel Fox in Cape Town. He joined the staff of the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 1962 and became chair of fine art in 1971. He won numerous bursaries and grants, which enabled him to pursue his dual research interests in the role of the artist in social protest, on the one hand, and the interaction between photography, art and architecture on the other. He explored the permeable boundaries and bridges between art and architecture, making real and celebrating the interconnections.
Neville’s convictions were not empty words and rhetoric — in 1961 he organised an art auction for the benefit of the accused in the Treason Trial, he was active in opposition to the destruction of District 6 and he convened the 1979 watershed conference at UCT, the theme of which was ‘The State of Art in South Africa”. It was the first multi-disciplinary conference that demanded of creative individuals that they take cognisance of the problems of the artist and state control. He was an intensely political being, but not subject to ideology and that which is politically correct and expedient for the moment. For Dubow it was what was right for the moment and for the future.
Dubow was an important role player in the museum world. He was director of the Irma Stern Museum from its inception in 1971 and, through his lectures and publications, he brought the work of this great South African artist to the attention of international academics, museums and collectors. In the same year he was appointed the UCT representative on the board of trustees of the South African National Gallery; he served as chairperson of the acquisition committee and member of the executive from 1980 to 1995. He brought not only his knowledge but also his progressive beliefs and political astuteness to bear on the deliberations of what was essentially a conservative, Nationalist government-appointed board.
I got to know Dubow in this capacity when I became director of the institution in 1990. It was time for change, for assessing the meaning and role of the national art museum in society and for creating new policies. No board member was better equipped to participate in this process. Together with staff members we wrote an acquisition policy that is still applicable and — with minor structural changes — still used today. But more than that, in the difficult times encountered pre and post-1994, Dubow was there for us individually and collectively.
I am enormously grateful that Dubow — loved, admired and respected by all of us in what is now the Iziko Art Collections Department — could be so much part of our work during the last few months of his life. In March he gave a lecture to the Friends of the Gallery entitled In the Field of memory: The Berlin Holocaust Memorial; he and his wife, Rhona, kindly loaned a superb watercolour for the exhibition Albert Adams: Journey on a Tightrope. His collage of 1979, Portrait of an Egg-head Contemplating the Future, was used on the invitation for the Pancho Guedes exhibition. Dubow opened the exhibition on May 22 with characteristic flair, brilliance and wit.
We say farewell to Neville Dubow — with profound esteem and gratitude for his contribution to the advancement of art, architecture and critical engagement in our country and abroad, for his love and friendship and for an extraordinary life that enriched our world and our lives in so many ways. — Marilyn Martin
Neville Dubow, born September 16 1933; died August 24 2008