HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: Finally — an uncontrived black-and-white pairing
‘Artists MJ Lourens and JM Tshikhuthula engage with the tradition of landscape painting, disrupting the genre as an appropriate response to industrialisation’
Black-and-white pairings in SA tend to be inappropriate — especially when they make comparisons or seek similarity. The Nobel Peace Prize committee set us off on the wrong foot in the 1990s by suggesting an equivalence, moral and personal, between Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. The country is still dealing with the consequences of that manufactured likeness. Nowadays, a thousand sentences starting, "Jacob Zuma is no worse than …" or "Jacob Zuma is no better than …" are uttered daily. None of these analogies gives an adequate account of the unfettered villainy of the president, his handlers and his circle of patronage. Moreover, no one making them can hope to say something sensible about the ostensible counterparts: apartheid cronyism, Broederbond nepotism and "white monopoly capital". Then there is that old chestnut, according to which racism against blacks is no worse than "racism" against whites. Western Cape Premier Helen Zille and writer Rian Malan have much to say about the st...
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