A multitude of paradoxes to celebrate the universe
We need to “post-truth” politics. Facts matter, reasonable argument matters; appeals to bigotry and false emotion by demagogues set us on the path to totalitarianism.
Post-truthism is not a new phenomenon. What Harry Truman said of Richard Nixon – “He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time ”– applies to a lesser or greater degree to politicians throughout history. But if two falsities can be uttered by the same person, then two truths can also be affirmed simultaneously.
Walt Whitman, as earnest a poet as ever put pen to paper, declared this prerogative for writers and artists: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Whitman’s defence of his incongruities is that humans are infinitely complex beings, paradoxical universes unto themselves. This should be celebrated, no less than the complexities of quantum physics or diverse societies.
It is no concession to posttruthism to say that two apparently contradictory statements can both be true; often enough, this can be explained when we understand the context of each statement.
I couldn’t help thinking about Whitman when I visited 9 More
Weeks, an exhibition at Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg (which runs until October 19) accompanying a book by the same title compiled by Sinazo Chiya.
A sequel to 9 Weeks, published in 2016, 9 More
Weeks follows a similar format to its predecessor as Chiya conducts interviews with nine artists in the Stevenson stable.
Each artist has contributed one work to the exhibition. Chiya has selected an excerpt from the interview to post alongside it. This establishes a series of dialogues: between the art work and the brief conceptual provocation, as well as between the extract and the longer piece of text in the book, which in turn is based on a conversation between curator and artist. Pleasing contradictions emerge.
Consider this opening salvo, from Simphiwe Ndzube: “I’m really not interested in meaning. Meaning prejudices objects.” It might seem to be the credo of an out-and-out formalist, interested only in how the aesthetic elements of his work relate to each other. But it’s clear from his interview with Chiya that Ndzube is invested in the domain of ideas and in the intellectual traditions in which his work might be located.
Moreover, he is modest about his position in these traditions. He is more interested in what he can learn from others than in the polemical or pedagogical value of his art. Hence the assertion that follows his ostensible rejection of “meaning”: “From well-known philosophers to our completely sidelined grandmothers and grandfathers there is all of this vast knowledge. For me as a young person to say I already know the answers would be a disservice to myself.”
Ndzube’s emphasis on the inherent qualities of the subjects he portrays and the means he uses to portray them, rather than on the interpretive layers that might be added by either the artist or the viewer, is echoed in Bronwyn Katz’s claim: “I use my material in an abstract way, but it has its own history ... The beauty of abstraction is that I’m not giving you things to talk about. Materials can be enough ... I believe in the history. How it was made. Who made it.” Katz disavows a connection between the sociopolitical world beyond line, shape, pattern and colour but in the same breath she insists that the substances used to produce abstract works are inscribed with the sociopolitical, with history, with real people.
Zander Blom, by contrast, admits that he no longer believes in “the transcending power of abstraction”.
Lacking “rules” for composition, he has turned inwards. “I’m delving deeper into my own weird brain.” Blom’s work is nevertheless signposted by an external frame of reference: 20th-century art history. In his interview, he cites Picasso, Cézanne, Mondrian, Pollock and others who have informed his method.
Then there is the irony in Portia Zvavahera’s complaint that while travelling in India “I stopped dreaming for the whole month.” Yet her painting Tavingwa Nezvehusiku, was inspired by that trip and is decidedly “dreamlike”. Art is the result of such contradictions.