[Debate] (Fwd) ANCorruption (cont): Brett Murray hails the thieves with naughty adbusting

Fri May 18 06:40:06 BST 2012

http://www.citypress.co.za/Lifestyle/News/White-Noise-20120511

  White Noise

2012-05-13 09:57
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The ANC is prepared to go to court over this portrait of President Jacob 
Zuma in the pose of Lenin. Picture: Goodman Gallery

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Charl Blignaut

There's the smell of fresh paint in the Goodman Gallery, where streety 
young men with difficult haircuts are hard at work.

One rests a spirit level on a canvas to test its line. It's a gold 
painting of a Johnnie Walker logo with the words "Forward Comrades!"

All around twisted slogans slap, tickle and prod. "Amandla!" shouts a 
liberation poster -- "We demand Chivas, BMWs and bribes!"

A raised fist is inverted to become an oppressive one.

On the floor, an enlarged bronze insignia, "President & Sons (Pty) Ltd". 
Next to it, an ANC logo with a "for sale" sign stamped across it.

Liberation hero Steve Biko gets a nod in a work with the words "Biko is 
dead" -- the painting is called Killed Twice.

Cape Town artist Brett Murray's latest solo, Hail to the Thief II, is 
going up at the Goodman and its on-the-nose satire leaves no space for 
elephants in the room.

Coming round a corner, I encounter a portrait of Jacob Zuma in the pose 
of Lenin. The trousers are open and the presidential penis hangs 
exposed. 
<http://www.citypress.co.za/Multimedia/Lifestyle/Pics-Hail-to-the-Thief-II-20120511-2> 

"I did Hail to the Thief I in Cape Town last year," says the artist.

A slightly portly, young-looking 50-year-old, he has a thatch of brown 
hair and a soft-spoken manner.

"It was telling that the one question everyone asked was, 'Aren't you 
afraid?' I'd never thought of that. Must I be afraid? Is this part of 
some collective consciousness that we can't criticise our leaders?"

Of all the work on show, it's this depiction of the president that will 
set the most tongues wagging and most likely generate some howls of 
disapproval.

It can be read metaphorically (the naked emperor), or it can be taken 
literally -- a man who cannot control his sexual appetite.

It's mirrored in another piece deeper in the gallery.

Judy Seidman's iconic poster depicting the Women's March of 1956 has 
been tweaked to read: "Now you have touched the woman you have struck a 
rock; you have dislodged a boulder; you will be president."

I ask Murray if he's nervous about how people will react to his 
depiction of Zuma.

"Look," he says, "it's potentially problematic from a PC point of view. 
But self-censorship doesn't form part of the satirist's armoury, else 
we'd be critical praise singers."

Later he points out a typographic work that presents the words "White 
Noise".

It's called Liberal White Man.

"It's about self-censorship, asking: 'Is this show just an articulation 
of my whiteness?' I try to place myself as both the person throwing 
stones as well as the target of the stones."

Murray has been exhibiting his particular breed of political pop art for 
almost 25 years, but I have never seen such single-minded, scathing 
anger from him.

His examination of the corporatisation of corruption is played off 
within a stylistic framework of giant insignia, struggle posters and 
communist iconography.

There is a sense of a legacy built on fraud. Giant emblems are 
emblazoned with the word "tender".

There are ripples of Zwelinzima Vavi's "predator state" speech all over 
the place, but Murray's stinging political criticism is always neatly 
balanced by his caustic wit.

"One-liners that resonate," he says of his visual punch lines. "My 
sketchbook is words. It has no drawings. I start with words."

Repeatedly during our chat, Murray refers to himself as a satirist 
rather than an artist. He cites Zapiro, Ali G and David Kau as satirists 
who inspire him.

I move to a plinth holding one of Murray's trademark rotund-figured 
sculptures as he pulls another from its bubble wrapping. It's, er, a 
stylised Afro-futurist gorilla masturbating.

"This is actually a reversioning of a sculpture I made in the 1980s. 
Then it was an Afrikaner with a rifle on its back. In a sense, it's come 
full circle. We had anger then and were throwing stones. We have anger 
now and are throwing stones."

Murray's first major show was in 1989 at the Market Gallery, the 
culmination of his student works mocking Afrikaner nationalism and 
institutionalised religion.

"I studied to avoid conscription. On that show, I managed to sell 
everything, took the money and buggered off overseas."

I ask about his upbringing.

His father, he tells me, was a fervent supporter of the National Party.

He recalls being draped in an old South African flag to attend HF 
Verwoerd's funeral.

Conscientised in his teenage years -- by images on TV of black teenagers 
being killed in 1976 -- he recalls parents patrolling the perimeter of 
his fancy boys' school "to protect the white domain from the marauding 
masses".

Angered, he spent much of the 1980s making prints, posters and banners 
for the struggle.

The artist is at pains to discuss his liberal politics because of the 
fury that met Hail to the Thief I.

"There was criticism that I'm only a privileged white reacting from a 
white perspective. One guy from Parliament called me a racist, 
right-wing apologist."

So does he acknowledge the privilege of his upbringing? He snorts.

"I'm not a poepol. I'm on top of the shit pile -- the middle classes 
here are. Absolutely, I speak from a point of privilege. But I still 
have opinions. I still have an idea of a better place that we can all 
live in and hope for a government that can try to achieve that."

It's no big surprise that Murray has returned to his protest art roots. 
It's something I'm seeing all over the cultural scene at the moment -- 
the sense of a new struggle emerging and of artists testing their voices 
again.

There was also a tapering off of the political after 1994 as our art 
began to examine the inner landscape
as well.

In 2002, when he was named Standard Bank Young Artist, Murray presented 
White Like Me -- looking "humorously and critically at my skin colour 
and notions of identity".

He turned to the broader theme of Africa as a playground for Western 
culture and famously won a sculpture competition that saw Cape Town 
graced with a large African curio sculpture sprouting Bart Simpson heads.

He turned to global politics, presenting George Bush as an international 
cowboy of war.

"But politics is my default setting. It's the monkey on my back. There's 
so much around again that's feeding the monkey."

On my way out, I ask if it isn't all a bit simplistic -- the political 
tone. He nods and smiles, and says the show's "a little poppy, quite 
didactic and I suppose vitriolic too. But I don't care. This is not a 
time for rich metaphors. I want to convey a message."
/
» Hail to the Thief II runs at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg until 
June 16

***

/

  Painting of Jacob Zuma angers ANC

Art gallery urged to take down Brett Murray's painting depicting South 
African president in what could be a codpiece

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    Associated Press in Johannesburg
  * guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Thursday 17 May 2012
    19.21 BST

Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma in his regular attire. Photograph: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

South Africa <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/southafrica>'s ruling ANC 
has demanded the removal of a painting from an exhibition by one of the 
nation's best-known artists that it said ridiculed the party and the 
president.

Brett Murray's sculptures and paintings were an "abuse of freedom of 
artistic expression", said ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu.

He said ANC lawyers would go to court to force the Goodman gallery in 
Johannesburg to remove a painting of the president, Jacob Zuma 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/zuma>, from the exhibition and from its 
website <http://www.goodman-gallery.com>.

The Spear, a black, red and yellow acrylic on canvas priced at 120,000 
rand (£9,000), depicts Zuma in a suit and what could be a codpiece 
accentuating his genitals. Some observers say it depicts Zuma exposing 
his genitals.

Other work in the show recalls Soviet-era propaganda posters, and twists 
political slogans to acerbic effect. In an essay accompanying the 
exhibit, curators say the work forms "part of a vitriolic and succinct 
censure of bad governance and are [Murray's] attempts to humorously 
expose the paucity of morals and greed within the ruling elite".

A silkscreen in the show has the silhouette of a machine-gun-toting 
guerrilla with Murray's own version of the last words of Solomon 
Mahlangu, an ANC militant who was hanged by the apartheid government in 
1979: "Tell my people that I love them and that they must continue the 
struggle for Chivas Regal ... and kickbacks."

Visitors can take away posters with the ANC spear-and-shield logo and 
two phrases: "For sale" and "Sold".

Murray said through the gallery that he would have no comment on the 
ANC's response. His criticism of the ANC echoes commentary that has 
appeared in newspaper articles and editorial cartoons and been debated 
on talk radio in South Africa.

In 2008, two years after Zuma was acquitted of rape charges, the 
cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro depicted Zuma with his pants down, preparing 
to rape a blindfolded, female figure symbolising justice. Shapiro, who 
signs his work Zapiro, was commenting at the time on allegations Zuma 
was trying to intimidate legal authorities.

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