Contemporary Tribalesque: Evermore the Rage. 2013

TRIBALESQUE

ANNEMI CONRADIE – LECTURER IN art history and visual studies at THE Michaelis School of Fine Art.

Contemporary Tribalesque: Evermore the Rage

'Natural terrain', 2007. Elle Decoration

Surviving The Lens, 2001, Cover photo by A.M. Duggan Cronin. 'Korana Girl. Kimberley'. First half 20th century.

Colonial chic has been around for quite a few decades, with earthy monochromes, starched linen, dark wooden figurines, mosquito nets and slow G&T’s on ample porches adorning magazine covers into the wrong side of the naughties. Recent years have, however, seen a revival of this trend with designers, artists and stylists from Cape Town to Milan gushing over woven and printed tribal patterns, quirky, hybrid designs in waxresist fabric and the ingenious repurposing of the colonial photographic archive. The contemporary tribalesque is, however, a renovated or nouveau-colonial chic, and some might say harder to define and get right. So what makes the contemporary tribalesque different to yesteryear’s colonial chic? To put it simply, it’s more Shonibare than Blixen, more Dak’art than Exposition Coloniale. The trendsetters create the look by cleverly juxtaposing elements of the more demure colonial chic with the visual clamour of our unique afro-cosmopolitanism, signature design pieces, tribal art and archival material. Think wooden body masks above Barcelona chairs in patent leather, Stark’s Miamiam cutlery against the quirky designs

TRIBAL-ESQUE

of a bright chitenge wrap, vintage ethnographic photographs next to your Subotzky and Hugo investment pieces. The more delicate strand of this contemporary tribal revival, the repurposing of archival material by designers and artists, is perhaps for more distinguished tastes, but featuring prominently at the 2012 Frieze Masters, Documenta and this year’s Venice Biennale, you’ll definitely be giving your interior the hallmark of the cutting-edge with one or two such statements. The recently most covetable local find, albeit for the serious collector, must be Andrew Putter’s series of photographs titled Native Work: An Impulse of Tenderness, shown in March at Michael Stevenson in Cape Town, and as part of the group show ‘Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive’, where it represents the Rainbow Nation at the Venice Biennale. Native Work is the product of Putter’s M.A in Fine Arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, where he worked under the supervision of Professors Pippa Skotnes and Carolyn Hamilton. The series comprises 21 black-and-white photographs of contemporary black Capetonians in tribal or traditional costume. These are displayed alongside colour photographs of the same sitters dressed for the formal portraits in outfits of their own choice.

To put it simply, it’s more Shonibare than Blixen, more Dak’art than Exposition Coloniale. The black-and-white photographs transports one to the romantic tribal past, shot in the iconic style of photographer Alfred Duggan-Cronin, who criss-crossed Southern Africa from the 1920s to record the fast-vanishing traditional culture of indigenous peoples. For Putter, Duggan-Cronin illuminated his sitters in a manner that communicated “a quiet stability and monumentality – even a sense of ‘timelessness.”i Native Work pays homage to Duggan-Cronin and is a contemporary affirmation of traditional Southern African inheritances. The series, explains Putter, is “the result of a resourced, white, gay, apartheid-era subject revelling in the stylistics that emerged in the early-mid twentieth century intersection of ‘native’ cultural production (costume, adornment, etc.), phenotypic, bodily features typically inferiorized by the colonial-and apartheid-machine, and the beautifying, ennobling effects of Duggan-Cronin’s use of photography.”ii Putter’s classical compositions, dramatic lighting and the striking contrast of the sitters’ dark skin against the stark white backgrounds have produced some truly statuesque forms that echo those of Duggan-Cronin. Gorgeous pictures are not all that the two men have in common: both went to great lengths to find suitable specimens, and played an important role in styling their phantastic costumes and props. Over the course of three decades Duggan-Cronin travelled to remote villages to document traditional custom and costume, carefully seeking out those karosses, beaded aprons, faces and bodies that best exemplified each of the different South African tribal groups. For his pictures Putter wanted Xhosa-speaking models whose faces conformed to a concept of native beauty he came to identify in Duggan-Cronin’s work. Local television celeb, Thokozile Ntshinga gave Putter the solution: if he was looking for faces that weren’t ‘fat’ and that looked as though they were from the ‘rural’ past, he’d need to

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Suitcase chair upholstered in 'Cameo', by Recreate, Cape Town based interior design company.

'Portrait of a Woman'. Inscribed on the reverse, 'Kaffer woman'. Photograph by Gribble family. Late 19th century. Reproduced in Surviving the Lens.

look in those parts of the townships furthest away from Cape Town, the areas least resourcediii. And it is here, in the areas where the migrants from the smaller cities and countryside first find shelter, where Putter found the beautiful faces he was looking for, and would eventually employ. Now, when it comes to styling, Duggan-Cronin’s choreography of his sitters is somewhat legendary. He was known to take props and pieces of dress with him on his camera-hunts for authentic indigenous tradition and it seems this Irishman was rather fond of leopard print. An album from 1937 shows three Bhaca chiefs from three different places wearing the same leopard skiniv. For the black-and-white photographs, Putter’s sitters were dressed in ensembles fashioned from private collections of Xhosa beadwork and other objects. With the input of his sitters, most of whom would never really wear such costume, Putter’s dressing and styling of the models was done ‘in the spirit of’, rather than in rigid adherence to, traditionv. The striking compositions showcase the artists’ natural interest in aesthetic experience, a quality he feels a certain stratum of white, middle-class, gay apartheid-era men have in commonvi. Moved by a growing sense of his models’ beauty as contemporaries of his, a consequence of his seduction by Duggan-Cronin’s archivevii, Putter then also produced colour portraits of his sitters, and this time in dress of their own choosing. These portraits are very important for the artist as they represent how the sitters see themselvesviii. But this new trend is not just for the fine-artsy. The popular and versatile ‘Cameo’ range by Johannesburg-based Design Team, featured at recent design expos and in the pages of Visi, House & Leisure, Ideas, Garden & Home and Sarie, is just the thing for more modest tastes and budgets. It’s seen in pillows, handbags and chairs, and has even gone glam on the catwalk, made up into a sumptuous St. Lorient bridal gown. Available in a wide range of colours, the fabric is printed with ornately framed oval portraits of stately and prim women, repurposed from an archive of colonial photographs. One portrait in this range has clearly become a favourite of designers, fashionistas and crafty entrepreneurs from Pretoria to Plett. The appeal of this brown-eyed beauty with the elegant décolletage seems universal as her face also has pride of place on the cover of the beautifully illustrated Surviving the Lens, Photographic studies of South and East

Andrew Putter. 2012. Given Mkhondo as A Young Man Dressed for the Dance. Photography: Andrew Putter, Kyle Weeks and Hylton Boucher. Image: http://www.stevenson.info/

African People, 1870 -1920, edited by Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart. Here we learn a little more about this famous damsel. She was photographed in Kimberley by none other than Alfred Duggan-Cronin, who christened her ‘Korana Girl’ and scribbled the following on the back of the picture, “[s]he is the daughter of the woman (no 53) and is a very good specimen of the people”. The Korana people once lived at the Cape and were displaced by settler farmers and it’s certain that neither she, nor Duggan-Cronin, could ever have guessed that her portrait would one day become so coveted, take so many forms, and travel so far! It was quite a rendezvous of pictures when, at the opening of Putter’s Native Work, a well-heeled blonde arrived in an A-line sleeveless shift cut from Cameo in ivory, the ornate frames, dark eyes and full lips of Cronin’s ladies appearing and disappearing between the folds of rich cotton. Who knows, perhaps the models Putter employed might one day enjoy the same fame. i (Putter, 2012: 251) ii (Putter, 2012: 251) iii (Putter, 2012: 252) iv (Godby, 2010: 61) v (Putter, 2012:251) vi (Putter, 2012:250) vii (Putter, 2012: 252)

Andrew Putter, 2012, Given Mkhondo. Photography: Andrew Putter, Kyle Weeks and Hylton Boucher. Image: http://www.stevenson.info/

viii It specifies in both the gallery statement (http://www.stevenson.info/exhibitions/ putter) and in Putter’s Kronos publication (2012: 253) that the thirty-eight portraits will only be available for acquisition as a series, must always be shown together, or if in part, only if a model is represented in both the colour and black-and-white portrait.

Annemi Conradie teaches art history and visual studies at Michaelis School of Fine Art, and commits works of art from time to time.

WANT TO KNOW MORE? Godby, M. 2010. Alfred Martin DugganCronin’s photographs for the Bantu tribes of South Africa (1928-1954): the construction of an ambiguous idyll. Kronos: Southern African Histories. 36(1): 54-83. Putter, A. 2012. Native Work: an artwork by Andrew Putter consisting of 38 portrait photographs (with photography by Hylton Boucher, Kyle Weeks and Andrew Putter). Kronos: Southern African Histories. 38 (1): 249-269. Available at: http://www. scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S025901902012000100012&script=sci_arttext.

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Stevenson, M. & Graham-Stewart, M. (Eds) 2001. Surviving the Lens, Photographic studies of South and East African People, 1870 -1920. Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, in association with Michael Stevenson and Michael GrahamStewart. Stevenson: Exhibitions. 2013. Andrew Putter: Native Work [online]. Available at: http://www.stevenson.info/exhibitions/ putter/index2013.html. [accessed March 20, 2013].

ERRATUM: The editor formally apologises to Annemi Conradie, author of  “Contemporary Tribalesque: Evermore the Rage.” The essay was published, in Art South Africa Volume 12 Issue 1 (print edition), without the final consent of its author. In this edition the following errors have been corrected: 1. The restoration of in-text references and end notes. 2. The re-inclusion of a paragraph excised without the author’s permission. 3. The inclusion of the correct illustration, absent in the print edition.  The editor takes full responsibility for these errors and acknowledges that the article as it appears was published without the author’s consent.