INTERVIEW WITH KAREN SKAWRAN | PRETORIA ART SCENE | ARTLife
Karen Skawran Arts Academic
Wilhelm van Rensburg “A room with a table and a typewriter, that is with what I started the Department of History of Art and Fine Arts at Unisa in 1961”, Karin Skawran fondly remembers her early days as a 21 year old Acting Head and Lecturer at the University. She singlehandedly drew up all the curricula, typed up all the study guides and wrote all the Tutorial Letters. ‘The system at Unisa at the time was students registering for a Fine Arts degree had to find an artist,, with at least a BA degree in Fine Arts, to prepare them for the practical examination. “Anyone who had a degree in the country could teach our students. Two teachers I will always remember as part of that system were George Boys and Cecil Skotnes. Walter Battiss was also one of these teachers. The Fine Arts degrees were awarded by Unisa. Stephan Welz, believe it or not, at the very beginning was the examination administrator for the Fine Arts practical examinations and oversaw the whole process.” Four years later Skawran was afforded the opportunity to revise the whole system, and she remembers vividly the pleasant evenings and weekends she and art historian, Rayda Becker, artists Robert Hodgins, Nina Romm and Alan Crump all helped to structured a proper Unisa history of Art and Fine Arts curriculum and took over the teaching of the practical component of the course. The dynamics of her Department changed dramatically at this time. Skawran remembers an incident when much valued art historian Frieda Harmsen, usually a very level-headed and gentle person, got so annoyed with Anna Vorster, that she hurled an African Violet at her! When Walter Battiss was appointed as Professor and Head of Department in 1966, Karin still had to take care of all the administrative duties. There came a point when it was her turn to hurl a wad of administrative documents at him in utter frustration! Battiss had a profound influence on her. Skawran remembers his very first day: “He erected a throne behind his desk with a mechanism that would extend an artificial wooden arm whenever somebody came in to greet him. He pinned controversial, bizarre and at times even gruesome billboards, which he took down from lampposts along his way to work, on a washing line put up across his office.” Battiss became a close friend. She remembers the first time she visited him at his famous Giotto’s Hill residence in Brooklyn: he was stark naked inside a large box in his wild garden. “I want to feel what it must feel like to be a battery chicken”, was his only reply. Skawran remembers the peculiar nature of his exhibitions. “All the works on his Yes/No Part I exhibition in Pretoria in 1967 were wrapped in transparent plastic, and visitors were told to bring torches as the gallery space of the SA Association at Church Square then, would be completely in the dark. When Grace Anderson, his wife, entered the exhibition, and saw that Battiss had piled eggs on one of her own precious ceramic plates, she unceremoniously whipped the plate off the table!” Skawran became Full Professor and Head of Department after Battiss’ retirement in 1971. She left Unisa after 35 years in 1996. “Towards the end my time was almost entirely consumed by administrative tasks. The nature of Higher Education had changed radically, and I woke up one morning realizing that I had not been afforded the time to do any research of importance nor had I published an article for quite some time.”Well-known artists and treasured colleagues such as Keith Dietrich, John Clarke and Marion Arnold also left the Department at about that time. Karin’s focus shifted to art education in general in South Africa, curating exhibitions, writing articles on South African art and contributing towards community art. She initiated the Mapula embroidery Project in the Winterveldt as early as 1991. In 1994 Skawran was appointed vice-chairperson of ACTAG (Arts and Culture Task Group) appointed by the then minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to develop and structure the Arts and Culture Policies for the SA ART TIMES. July 2011
country in our new democracy. At the time she worked with such luminaries as Gibson Kente, Andries Oliphant, Jay Pather and Sibongile Khumalo and others. The proposals by ACTAG, which took into consideration recommendations from all over the country, were contained in the White Paper submitted to and approved by Parliament in the same year. Many of ACTAG’s recommendations, such as the introduction of Arts and Culture as a compulsory learning area up to Grade 9 level, were to be implemented. She served on the Matriculation Board and later SAFCERT, from 1981 to 1995, and today she is still the External Moderator for Visual Arts for UMALUSI, the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training. What is not commonly known about Skawran today, or forgotten by an earlier generation, is the fact that she is an international Byzantine scholar. Initially she wanted to study Doric sculpture, but on her first visit to Greece in 1954, what struck her most, were the Byzantine icons and frescoes in the Byzantine Museum in Athens. She took out books from the UNISA library and wrote to the publishers of Byzantine books to provide her with the addresses of the authors of these books, all of who were well-known international scholars on Byzantine art. Talbot Rice referred her to AHS Megaw, Director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens, who suggested she researched MiddleByzantine fresco painting in Greece, a yet unexplored terrain. Skawran duly obtained a scholarship and, on the first evening of her studies in Athens, was asked by Megaw whether she could speak and read Greek. Skawran replied in the affirmative and her sister, who accompanied her on that occasion and who knew that Karin could not speak the language, was aghast at her sister’s temerity! Karin subsequently traversed Greece with a dictionary under her arm, staying only with peasants so that she was compelled to learn Greek quickly. Also under her arm was a notebook, to document the Middle Byzantine frescoes, as well as her tripod to photograph the paintings. She also carried a bottle of water, to wet the frescoes gently - when nobody was looking - in order to make the colours appear clearer for photography. Skawran was soon able to present papers at international Byzantine art conferences and to write numerous articles, at times challenging international scholars, on certain theories they had about the dating of certain frescoes. “Years later”, she recalls wryly “a taverna-owner in Macedonia recognized me from an earlier visit and greeted me with the words: ‘Oh, I remember you. You are the girl with the bible under her arm!’” Whilst studying Art History in Munich in 1959-’61, she also had the chance to attend summer art classes offered by Oscar Kokoschka in Salzburg, Austria. She saw the original paintings by the German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, for the first time and considers him to be one of the very first ‘conceptual’ landscape artists. Her expertise in Art History earned her a place as Founder Member and first Chairperson of the South African Association of Art Historians and of Chairperson of the Board of the South African National Gallery, Cape Town (Iziko) and member of the Curatorium of the Pretoria Art Museum. Over the past years Skawran’s creative and intellectual energies are channelled into curating exhibitions, such as the comprehensive exhibition, Stained Paper: South African images in watercolour, at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2000, which she curated together with Keith Dietrich, and the seminal retrospective exhibition, Walter Battiss – Gentle Anarchist at Standard Bank Gallery in 2005. She has recently written the leading article for the exhibition catalogue for the late Alan Crump exhibition at the Johannesburg Art. Currently she is researching the work of the sculptor, Willem Strydom, for another catalogue essay for an exhibition in Stellenbosch later this year. Karin Skawran has come a long way from the table-and-typewriter years! 45