Exhibition to put Pierneef back in frame, stir debate on his stooge status
THE work of renowned South African artist, JH Pierneef, will be on show at the Standard Bank Gallery, Joburg, from July 7 until September 12 – the first exhibition of his paintings for many years.
The exhibition, JH Pierneef: A Space of Landscape, is geared to highlight the immense artistic contribution Pierneef made to South Africa during his formative years.
The work of Jacob Hendrik Pierneef (1886-1957) was a dominant presence in South African art for much of the 20th century.
His works were displayed in public spaces, his paintings were prized commodities in the art market and his prints were a common sight inside homes.
He was studied by school pupils and art historians alike.
But this prominence did not necessarily benefit his longerterm reputation.
Associated (whether fairly or not) with the apartheid state and with Afrikaner nationalism, Pier neef ’s landscapes have been appropriated, paro- died and subverted by other artists since the 1980s; his work has become largely neglected by scholars and institutions in the arts sector, even though private collectors pay huge sums for “a Pierneef ” at auctions.
Indeed, Wilhelm van Rensburg, curator of the Standard Bank Gallery, suggests that “public awareness of the art of JH Pierneef has never been at such a low point in South Africa”. The exhibition, JH Pierneef: A Space for Landscape brings together a wealth of paintings and prints, from numerous collections, to create the first major Pierneef exhibition in many years.
It also includes a selection of works by artists who have responded to and undermined Pierneef ’s status.
This theme of iconoclasm is particularly timely given the renewed debate in South Africa about images, symbols and figures from the country’s contested past.
Pierneef ’s work, some of it commissioned by the Union Government and much of it coopted by the apartheid state, has been criticised for its romantic or nostalgic representation of the landscape – ignoring a history of violent conquest and displacement, as well as the central questions of land ownership and “belonging”.
Van Rensburg has challenged the assumption that Pierneef was merely an artistic stooge of the projects of colonialism and Afrikaner nationalism.
He says by adopting a biographical or a for malist approach, Pierneef reveals other aspects: an outsider and an experimenter and an opponent of empire who was nonetheless international in his outlook.
“His influences were wide and varied, and his style shifted ‘under the broad rubric of modernism’ from ‘sombre and realistic’ to impressionist, abstract and ‘quasi-geometric’.
“If Pierneef can’t be pinned down” in terms of style, perhaps the same is true in terms of the historical contexts in which his work was produced and received. As we discuss other icons of South Africa’s past, the time is now ripe to revisit the work of JH Pierneef,” Van Rensburg adds.