The Visual Arts Department at the University of Pretoria is
celebrating 100 years of making art and shaping artists. The long
list of contributors may not be exhaustive - only those who have
gone on to achieve some level of acclaim feature here - but the
sheer quantity of artworks on display, not to mention the tiresome
trek from building to building, is exhausting.
As an exhibition it is ambitious, and the effort put in certainly
warrants a slightly longer exhibition period than the week and a
half allotted. It may take the uninitiated one whole week to find
all the hidden nooks and crannies. As an advertising campaign,
overlapping with Tuks' upcoming Open Day, it draws attention to an
illustrious list of alumni and staff that reads like a "who's who"
of local and national talent, including Bettie Cilliers Barnard,
Walter Meyer, Gunther van der Reis, Gustav Vermeulen, Keith
Dietrich, Guy du Toit, Anton Karstel, Helena Hugo, Angela Banks,
Collen Maswanganyi and Diek Grobler.
Clearly, the University of Pretoria is a fulcrum around which the
local art scene orbits.
The conventional status of Tuks, historically a white, Afrikaner
bastion of old-school academia, is somewhat reflected in this
collection. Figure studies in bronze, in the vein of Angus Taylor
and Francois Visser, realistic portraiture by Helena Hugo and
Hanneke Benade, abstract and kinetic sculpture by Etienne de Kock
and Johan van der Schijff, indicate a high standard of technical and
aesthetic proficiency in painting and sculpture, broken only
intermittently by the subversive more conceptual tendencies of
artists like Johan Thom, Diane Victor and Minette Vari.
However, it's no secret that only a few of those who study art
make it exclusively as professional artists - and you can identify
them from the hair on their teeth.
Many of them supplement their art career with one in teaching or
curating. For some it's a necessity; for others a vocation.
Many of these ex-students and lecturers have extended their scope
and gone on to form the backbone of Pretoria's other art
institutions and galleries.
Their names will be familiar to generations of art students.
Among the gallerists and curators are Elfriede Dreyer of Fried
Contemporary and Gordon Froud of Gordart in Johannesburg.
Anyone who has studied art knows that teachers, lecturers,
mentors and institutions make an indelible mark, not only on the
development of output, style and content, but also on an
individual's philosophy of life.
Institutions with their complex knit of stuffy academia and often
eccentric personalities have all the ingredients of a tribe. A
marginal and incongruous tribe perhaps, but a powerfully expressive
one, and one which continues to expand and evolve from the stable
centre of this prestigious university.- Miranthe Staden-Garbett