A ‘one-out-of-a-hundred’ artist

A ONE-OUT-OF-AHUNDRED ARTIST AND HIS OBJECT LESSON IN DEMOCRATIC EQUALITY: JOHANN VAN DER SCHIJFF AND HIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE

CONTEXTUAL RESPONSES

KURT CAMPBELL

This essay explores aspects of a public artwork by Johann van der Schijff, one of the 40 artists included in the Another Time, Another Place reunion exhibition of alumni who graduated at the University of Pretoria (UP) between 1986 and 1992. Van der Schijff’s work is emblematic of the socio-political influences and a complex era, and how those shaped the artistic expressions of this close-knit group of artists who studied during the dying years of apartheid and prepared themselves for a new social order in South Africa.

INTRODUCTION

There are certain aesthetics that are only made possible by life- changing damage. Johann van der Schijff’s exhibition Power Play (2006) and more recently I to I (2015) display autobiographical qualities that disclose the deranging effects placed upon the artist as a consequence of being raised during the height of apartheid, and crucially, while nested in a politically conventional and decidedly conservative Afrikaans family, despite being in fierce and instinctive opposition to the ideology of the oppressive National Party government of the day.

As an aesthetic, the threat of civil violence and war in the society of the artist’s formative years are visible in selective artworks – objects that precisely mirror those produced for mass destruction by the military industry and deployed, when required, as an acceptable course of action by the apartheid state1 against its own people. This aesthetic may be unequivocally observed in the works Missile and Bomb (Figures 1 and 2) respectively, despite masquerading as bright, playful pieces of art. Figure1 (left): Missile, 2003. Galvanised and painted mild steel, chromed mild steel, stainless steel, brass, leather and rubber. Figure 2 (right): Bomb, 2006. Galvanised and painted mild steel, stainless steel, brass, leather, compressed wood, epoxy coating, car paint and rubber. Photos supplied by the artist.

Several writers (and even the artist himself) have alluded to the presence of these weapon/ordnance clones in his exhibitions as reflections on a childhood that included the robust interaction

with toy rockets and fighter jets as part and parcel of a conventional masculine Afrikaans childhood. Indeed, Virginia MacKenny (2006:[sp]) who contributed to the Power Play exhibition catalogue,2 offers the view that Van der Schijff, even in his current capacity as a university academic, had admitted to finding “a legitimate career of never-ending play and tinkering” as a means for earning a living. This is a formulation that seeks to aid the reading of his work as the continued creation of intriguing forms born of an emersion in the domestic “phallocentric garage” where imagination and experimentation offer visual creations that delight as “toys for boys” (MacKenny 2006:[sp]). This reading is

certainly one possibility to consider, yet far removed from the original tools for mass human harm, terror and destruction that certain of his sculptures directly index/reference, and that have haunted the artist, despite both personal and critical attempts at sublimation. Thankfully, the oeuvre of the artist has not been detained at this point.

THE LESSON

In the year following his Power Play exhibition in 2006, Van der Schijff committed to a struggle to move beyond a “ fear of the state” and the attendant focus on the rocket or bomb that symbolises the terror of military subjugation and the abstraction of human beings necessary to render them as targets in a war-time scenario. The artwork that encapsulates the fruit of this struggle is a public sculpture with a decidedly didactic and utilitarian function. This artwork embraces the sustained possibilities of democratic equality in South Africa and serves as a symbolic vanguard for the ethical alternative to military mass violence in the face of dissent by offering (as a visual argument) an alternative that involves individual humans turning to each other to settle disputes, a course of action that demands looking each other squarely in the eye and physically engaging one another by a touching of hands.

How may we see this seemingly obscure riddle manifest in the work of the artist? The Arm Wrestling Podium (AWP) (Figure 3) offers an object lesson in democratic discourse – a path of flight that may be sought between two individuals who disagree about any matter facilitated by the mechanics of the sculpture itself that ensures an equal footing (literally) for a one-to-one encounter. Figure 3: Arm-Wrestling Podium (AWP), 2007. Bronze, weather resistant steel, mild steel, stainless steel, aluminium, brass and enamel paint. 165 x 145.5 x 140cm.

Figure 4: Johann van der Schijff and Kirsty Cokerill, gallery director of the AVA, having an arm-wrestling match on the AWP. Photos supplied by Johann van der Schijff

Figures 5: The AWP is located on the front porch of the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, 35 Church Street, Cape Town.

Figures 7: Detail of the medallion appearing on the Braille bronze plaques of the AWP. All photos supplied by Johann van der Schijff. The Arm-Wrestling Podium (AWP) was unveiled in November 2007 as the winning entry of the fourth Cape Town public sculpture competition and is installed on the patio of the Association for Visual Arts at 35 Church Street, Cape Town.

Figure 6 (right): Detail of the Xhosa text appearing one of the four bronze plaques attached to the AWP. Photo supplied by Johann van der Schijff.

THE OBJECT

The Arm Wrestling Podium sculpture is a faithful recreation of the piece of equipment used in the sport of arm wrestling, cast in bronze and steel and placed in a public square. It offers the potential to facilitate a resolution of conflict through a physical interaction (see Figure 4) that is a carefully guided affair with highly regulated modes of interaction immanently available to all participants to ensure parity. This is not a spurious claim, as the very rules for the agreed arm-wrestling match that both parties must adhere to before an engagement, are detailed on the sculpture

in four languages (including Braille) placed on the four sides of the podium (See Figures 5 and 6).

The inherent physicality of the interaction the work calls for must not, however, sully the deeper argument Van der Schijff offers his viewers through his public sculpture. He points us to the value of intellectual struggle, where individuals are able to disagree, contest and compete as part of conventional public life without the conditions and consequences of warfare in an intimate way that leaves no corporeal wounding.

Despite the permanent installation of the hefty sculpture in its current position, the piece crucially alludes to the continued importance of the portability of the ideals the public sculpture suggests: Democracy as a practice must always travel to spaces and places where it is not present, and this is emphatically alluded to by the mounting of the podium on wheels.

CONCLUSION

Arm Wrestling Podium is the emancipatory point of Van der Schijff’s highly charged political yet personal artistic journey. It is the instrument he invites us to use in a figurative and literal way for ideational benefit beyond the immediate participants.

Following the military and corporeal discourse evident in the work of Van der Schijff discussed thus far, I maintain thought in this vein, and turn to the ancient Greek strategist Heraclitus who describes special individuals emerging during times of war and who are not only fit for battle, but are able to benefit many near to them precisely because of the exemplary skill they deploy in the face of danger:

Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others home. – Heraclitus (Bardunias & Ray 2016:102)

In this light, Van der Schijff is indeed “one out of every hundred men”, one that has moved beyond damage from his past to a democratic ideal he offers as an object lesson in the Arm Wrestling Podium using his artistry to show a path of flight (like many of his peers featured in the Another Time, Another Place exhibition), to individuals who have been/are faced with political danger in the participation and practice of a relatively new democracy in South Africa.

In ways that unfold almost daily, many are staggering in the face of the battle against corruption, apathy and nepotism, and need help to return to the shared “ethical home” created in the first democratic election of 1994, but this without replicating conditions of subjugation that were such a crucial part of the apartheid era. Van der Schijff and his peers assist us with intellectual leadership that is predicated on individuals interacting with each other in productive struggle on a decidedly personal level, using the power of a three-dimensional form wrought from bronze and steel, that may be found in Cape Town on any day and at any time, opposite the Association of Visual Arts gallery located in Church Street.

ENDNOTES

1 There are many historical accounts of the state via the South

African National Defence Force (SANDF) deploying weapons of mass destruction (tanks, fighter jets, rocket launchers) against those deemed “ terrorists” or “communists” and thus in opposition to the state, in terms of the discourse of art history in

South Africa. Perhaps the most infamous bombing was that of the Medu Art Ensemble in Gaborone in 1985, where the cultural centre that produced resistance posters and printed anti- apartheid literature among other cultural resistance endeavours, was raided, leaving five dead (including the prominent artist Thami Mnyele). The SANDF had mobilised 50 tanks, helicopters and a jet as part of the operational strategy. 2 See MacKenny’s essay Toys for Boys

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Kurt Campbell is a past Harvard University fellow and visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota and the American University in Cairo. He is currently associate professor in Fine Art and director at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. He has developed productive interdisciplinary dialogues as an artist and writer extending his practice into fields as broad as pugilism, textuality and historiography. South Africa’s recent political past and the accompanying legacies often feature in his writing and artwork. Crucially, this focus is not to re-inscribe the ideas of race or apartheid, but rather to assist with a final critique of these boundaries and thus contribute to a potentially richer self-concept for individuals as they move in the intellectual world.

REFERENCES

Bardunias, PM & Ray, FE. 2016. Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.

MacKenny, V. 2006. Toys for Boys, in the catalogue Power Play, Johann van der Schijff. Cape Town: Bell-Roberts.

Van der Schijff, J. 2008. Participatory Podia. Artworks in Progress, journal of the staff of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.

Van der Schijff, J. 2021. Johann van der Schijff. [O]. Available: www.johannvds.co.za/post/4079/arm-wrestling-podium/ Accessed: October 2021.