(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Schmidt, Leoni
Review of prof. Estelle Mare's inaugural lecture entitled "Revisioning Visual Worlds", which was delivered on 25 August 1998 at the Department of History of Art and Fine Arts at UNISA, and later published.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Collard, Judith
In this article a manuscript from the Cambridge University Library, viz.: "La estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei" is discussed with particular reference to its authorship and its possible date of manufacture as well as highlighting its special insights into the nature of medieval kingship.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Coetzee, Anton
In this article the problems of teaching and
studying the history of European achitecture in a post-colonial South Africa are addressed. Approaches to the history of European architecture that encourage admiration and respect are criticised as being based on a slanted set of criteria that determine a biased view of the past. Oppressive attitudes are sustained by such approaches to the history of architecture, because they serve to legitimise existing social differences and entrenched class hierarchies. It is argued that because of the reality of South Africa's colonial past, the history of European architecture cannot be ignored. Another reason why European architectural history should be taught is that it forms part of the cultural backgrounds of many South African students, academics and institutions. Hence it is recommended that both European and African architectural histories should be taught. To develop a variety of interpretations of architectural histories, historians can experiment with various methods. They include the techniques of historical reconstruction, rational reconstruction, the history of ideas, and cultural history. In this article it is proposed that historians should play
these methods of writing architectural histories off against each other with the aim of ameliorating architectural practices in South Africa.
(Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2000) Jooste, Johan K.
Gerhard [Gerard] Moerdijk (1890-1958) was
one of the first practising Afrikaans-speaking architects. He was active from 1917 until the early fifties during which time he and his partners realized a large body of work - around eighty churches alone. He was also the author of Afrikaner Nationalism's most revered icon, the Voortrekker Monument. By his own account Moerdijk claimed to have created "volkseie argitektuur". He believed that a style of architecture reflects the symbolic aspirations of a nation. Did Moerdijk contribute to the architectural and cultural continuum? Did he in actual fact, develop a "volkseie agitektuur"? How should one appraise Moerdijkian artifacts in a revisionist climate? And what are the particular and specific features of each of Moerdijk's stylistic phases?
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Van der Merwe, Johann
This article is a response to both Bert Olivier's article "'Natural Born Killers', violence and contemporary culture" (this journal, last issue) and the accompanying report by Amanda du Preez. Based mainly on two issues derived from du Preez's report, this article argues the points raised from a social structuration perspective as
against the report's perceived postmodern
perspective. The question of the absence of a role for narrative in the social sense is discussed, as well as the schizophrenic "normality" that can be
created by the non-presence of such a normative structure. The article ends by looking at Stone's supposed criticism of violence, and questioning what is really being criticised.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Schmidt, Leoni
The house is explored as a site which
suggests various possibilities with regard to psychological aspects of embodied experience in space. Some well-known links between architecture as site and the psyche as terrain are noted. Four readings of house, psyche and body are investigated with reference to core texts relevant to each. A first reading explores Jungian
interpretations of the house as feminine. The next reading inscribes the house as masculine in its Freudian repression of nature. A third reading
finds Freud's notion of the "uncanny" useful for the exploration of the feminine becoming hysterical of the house. The fourth reading posits the house as being both masculine prosthesis and feminine prophylactic in accordance with the current poststructuralist practices of architects Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and others.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Mare, Estelle Alma
Angels in Christian art mainly fulfil the role of intermediaries between God and human beings or messengers from God. In this article the focus will be on the inclusion of angels in representations of the Baptism of Christ, which poses a special problem because this iconography has no Biblical basis. Explanations are suggested for this deviation from the Biblical evidence, and the formal development of the theme is briefly surveyed in order to ascertain stages of innovative representation since early Christian times. Speculation about innovation in art, relevant to the discussion of the inclusion of angels in Baptism scenes, leads to an interpretation of two paintings by El Greco which present a late sixteenth-century innovative approach to the theme.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) karel.bakker@up.ac.za; Bakker, Karel Anthonie
In offering new understanding of the
tectonic syntax included in Hellenic art and
architecture, the article demonstrates the transference of abstract ideas from one art form to another, the effects of the acceptance of tradition in design, as well as the evolution of an "esprit de systeme" over time. Rhys Carpenter's earlier tectonic
understanding of the Hellenic Orders is expanded through an analysis of the tectonic syntax in examples of late Mycenaean to Archaic art and the Archaic Ionic Order. A synthetic understanding of
the interplay between style and tectonic syntax in Mycenaean and Hellenic pre-Classical monumental art and Archaic Hellenic architecture is constructed
through integration of the results of the analysis with Thomas Noble Howe's analysis of the tectonic syntax of the Doric Order.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Cornew, Clive
The viewer of Hogarth's "Satire on false
perspective" notices many instances of perspectival parody in the picture. Taken as a whole, his picture may be regarded as an emblem for viewing Hogarth's picaresque view of the world as one based on the themes of false perspective, satire, and inversion.
(Art Historical Workgroup of South Africa, 2000) Avital, Tsion
This essay attempts to refute the conventionalist aspect of Nelson Goodman's theory of representation that is still one of the most influential theories of aesthetics in our time. However, the primary aim of this essay is not to
summarize the long ongoing debate between the conventionalist and the opposed views of art, but rather to re-examine in its wider context the conventionalistic view and its implications for twentieth-century art. This re-examination will be carried out from vantage points such as paleoanthropology, prehistoric art, hierarchy theory, empirical findings of psychology, relations theory (logic) and other fields, thus bridging between empirical and philosophical contributions to the elucidation of this problem. A central argument of this essay is that the conventionalist view is not only mistaken but that it has destructive implications for art as a symbolic activity. This follows from the fact that this view reduces the artistic to the perceptual and to the habitual, and thereby abets the complete blurring of the lines of demarcation between art and non-art, which is perhaps the main problem of art in the present century and in the foreseeable future.
