HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: The governing party has perfected the art of contradiction
'South Africans have been reminded of how fork-tongued our politicians are and how readily citizens participate in their dangerous games'
This column would not be possible — because art would not be possible — without ambiguity. The idea that an image, a piece of theatre, a song or a literary text cannot have a single fixed meaning is as central to the act of artistic creation as it is to a work’s reception. An artist may have a clear vision or message to convey, but the work itself floats free of these constraints; it is given significance by viewer or listener or reader by the context in which it is consumed. Moreover, artists can be (perhaps even should be) duplicitous. Part of the pleasure of art is deception: playfulness, irony, subtext, paradox, even the old bait-and-switch – these are the tricks through which artists teach and delight us.The challenge is to keep multiple possibilities sustained in our minds as a work unfolds, or as we revisit it after our first encounter. We have the freedom of adding further ambiguity: our own what-ifs, our own muddying of the waters. When it comes to interpretation, there is ...
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