Description
Volume 2 of of Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907-1948 is part of a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the twentieth century from a post-apartheid perspective. Lize van Robbroeck is the editor of Volume 2: 1945 - 1976. Between the end of the Second World War and the Soweto Uprisings, South Africa was increasingly isolated from the international world by its policies of racial exclusion and extreme social engineering. The threats to the state of internal revolt and external pressure, posed within the broader contexts of decolonisation and the Cold War, caused it to adopt severe measures, with significant consequences for the art of the period. This volume addresses the fertile cultural ambivalences of this period. These include the relationship between Afrikaner nationalism and the emergence of an 'official' South African art, whose central role would come to be challenged by the steady increase in the number of modern black artists and new informal art centres. Also discussed is the impact of white patronage, the responses of migrant workers to rapid change, and artists' responses to the repressive political climate of apartheid, as well as to emerging black nationalism. The allure and impact of European and American art capitals and modernist discourse, for artists at 'home' and in exile, and not least the struggles of black and white artists to define an African identity, is also explored.
