The hideousness of the art world
Art collector <b>Charles Saatchi</b> writes about the new, super-rich, vulgar and depressingly shallow art-buying crowd.
Visual Arts
Everyday but far from the obvious
In his latest show, <em>Fucking Hell</em>, at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town, Cameron Platter exhibits new drawings.
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Mandela museum ‘boot camp’ inspires artists
Five young artists are gaining valuable artistic and business skills near Mandela’s childhood home.
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Scottish installation artist Boyce wins Turner Prize
Scottish artist Martin Boyce, whose works include a modernist reworking of a library table and artificial trees, has won Britain’s Turner Prize.
Malema: It is a material world
Many will rejoice if Julius retires from the public eye, but writers, satirists, playwrights and cartoonists will lose a rich source of inspiration.
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‘Shocking’ exhibition pulled from Franschhoek gallery
The exhibition of a student artist has been pulled from a Franschhoek gallery after she posed nude and tore pages from a Bible.
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Dark city
Award-winning author <b>Lauren Beukes</b> visits the art exhibition inspired by her novel.
Toxic past stains Pierneefs
A massive restoration project is giving valuable artworks housed in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court a new lease on life.
Subversive intervention
An art exhibition running alongside COP17 in
Durban builds a poetic, not evangelical, message.
Revolution, re-vision and redress
<b>Mario Pissarra</b> explains how an ambitious project has set a new standard for dealing with competing art histories.
Pathology of power
Kudzanai Chiurai’s new exhibition generalises about the horrific abuses in failed African states — and that’s part of its problem.
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Shifting the gaze
Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj subverts Western notions of how Arab women should look and behave.
Repatriated ‘struggle’ work goes on show
A new travelling exhibition attempts to uncover "lost" South African art — art that is unknown in its own home.
Disturbing discontent
Award-winning artist Michael MacGarry’s exhibition uses parody to slice through layers of meaning.
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Narcissistic modern art cannot help us in these troubled times
Some people need art — not pretentious elite art that is up its own backside — but art that recovers meaning, that calls back the soul.
Horse sense on a grand scale
An exhibition featuring works by about 60 artists reveals the magnificant beasts in their many facets.
Making us boil quietly
Environmental art exhibition aims to provoke us to reflect by avoiding the usual noisy proselytising.
Freud brought back to life
London’s National Portrait Gallery will stage a major Lucian Freud exhibition next spring which the artist collaborated on up until his death in July.
African art in the Modern terrain
A new exhibition at the Tate Modern in London challenges and subverts the way in which African cultural narratives are constructed.
A mystic’s hard words
Willem Boshoff’s self-assigned role as a druid gives him the space to take on major social issues.
What Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s bad art says about him
In some cases the readiness to inflict one’s dearth of artistic talent on a helpless world may be a sign of far worse things to come.
Dancing around convention
<i>Dancing with Dada</i> as the start of a large-scale collaboration between someone who can move well and someone who can’t move at all.
A home for lost love
Every object tells a story, and none more so than the exhibits donated to Croatia’s Museum of Broken Relationships.
Tarzan and Arab: The Gaza artists determined to make it against all odds
Despite a lack of training, equipment, funding or an audience, two artists are determined to succeed as film directors.
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Ordering art
Nando’s has embarked on a drive to expose its patrons to creative juices.
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Absa L’Atelier Art Awards winners announced
Ian Grose has won the 2011 Absa L’Atelier Art Award, and Isabel Mertz has been awarded the 2011 Gerard Sekoto Award.
Dipstick of where SA art is at
This diverse collection of essays is a gauge of what’s hot and not in the contemporary art scene.
The many faces of King Ferd
A new Walter Battiss exhibition that includes never-seen drawings brings in millions — and makes interesting links.
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Celebrating quality, integrity and fearlessness
When Alan Crump passed away he left behind a legacy of committed engagement with the SA art world. An exhibition celebrates his vision.
Bullish beneath the skin
Nandipha Mntambo’s exhibition at the National Arts Festival continues her fascination with the cow (and bull) as a subject and motif.
That’s entertainment
Michael MacGarry’s new solo show is sharp-witted and playful, but also just serious enough to be startlingly poignant.
Between satire and slogan
Recasting images in the public domain to
deliver a message contrary to the originals is
misappropriation, writes <b>Judy Seidman</b>.
