"Dumile never pandered to white whims" - Sunday Independent, January 23 2005
Untitled (Double bass player, 1969) portrays the ecstasy induced by music through the human form
(Source: Sunday Independent, January 23 2005)
This landmark retrospective should help put to rest the erroneous 'Goya of the Township' epithet, writes Mary Stuart
Since Dumile Feni's death in 1991, art institutions have sought to pay tribute to the creator of the African Guernica. Now the Johannesburg Art Gallery will be hosting the largest retrospective of Dumile's work.
From the moment that Mhlaba Zwelidumile Mgxaji Feni's drawings hit the Johannesburg art scene in 1966 at Madame Haenggi's Gallery 101, he garnered immediate adulation and soon acquired the nickname "Goya of the Township".
Initially Dumile's work was viewed as a synthesis of expressionism and surrealism; an emotive translation of his subconscious reaction to the urban township environment. The stark pallor of the paper in Dumile's Family Scene (undated) is violently broken by a grouping of anguished figures who grip each other with the kind of force needed to weather a brutal storm. These isolated figures suggest an absence of social framework and despite their unity they appear fearful, weary and deeply distressed.
The repetitive black lines marking this harrowing scene enhance the anxious and painful mood of this charcoal sketch.
The distraught, knotty figures that characterise Dumile's early work were thought to represent the horror of being torn away from traditional rural surroundings; a response to the modern world.
Although Dumile's figures commonly inhabit barren landscapes that do not situate them in any time or place, early interpretations positioned his artworks under the banner of "township art".
Despite this, Dumile never pandered to the expectations of his predominantly white patrons; in stead he produced his own disturbing yet evocative art.
Prince Dube, one of the curators of this retrospective, asserts that interpretations of Dumile's art remain inconclusive.
"Even if you interview artists who were part of the township art movement, they will tell you that Dumile's work was not part of that movement. He may have lived in the townships but that is all," says Dube.
His work was also perceived, as Professor EJ de Jager once described, "To be drawn from the artist's subconscious - it is characterised by freedom from the limitations of reason and absence of any aesthetic preoccupation".
Later, this reading of Dumile's work was dispelled by Anitra Nettleton. who argued (1991) that it "robbed the artist of any intention other than to express his emotions".
When the liberation of South Africa was imminent, Nettleton and other historians proposed that Dumile's work was actually "resistance art", whose uncomfortable and painful images were produced by a man tormented by the exploitation and degradation of apartheid, not fantastical subconscious imaginings.
Dumile's Who am I? Where do I come from? What am I doing in this world? (not dated) could be seen to mirror the political rebellion brewing in the country in the 1960s.
This highly charged charcoal drawing shows the figure of a child raising its fist in defiance, his other hand distorted by unyielding rage.
In this artwork Dumile wanted to make a strong statement. He therefore included typewritten text articulating anger at society and God: "What am I doing in this world? Tell me Lord?" it reads.
Dumile's restless lines render the child's features almost indistinguishable, except for the mouth, which is pulled open by a tormented scream.
Although Dumile was affiliated with the ANC - it is said that he donated a percentage of all his sales of his artworks to the organisation -he suggested that his artworks were not politically motivated.
"My subjects are Africans because they are my people, but my message, the idea I am trying to put across, has nothing to do with racialism. I am not interested in politics.
"My situations are human ones, and this is all," Dumile asserted in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in 1966.
Dumile's poignant depictions of human suffering were also well received in Britain and the United States during his years in exile (1968-1991). Perhaps the significance of this artist's oeuvre lies in his ability to express universal human suffering with such concise skill.
African Guernica is considered Dumile's most important work.
While in exile, Dumile also produced a body of work devoted to his passion for jazz.
"When I listen to jazz I get.ideas, even in London my mind is taken back home," wrote Dumile.
In characteristically Dumile style, Unfitted (Double bass player) (1969) portrays the ecstasy and fervour induced by music through the human form. Dumile's life in fact ended while he was shopping for jazz in a music store in New York in 1991.
This retrospective shows the diversity of Dumile's creativity It includes a collection of erotic drawings and a short film he made while studying film at New York University, and maps his progression as an artist.
Dumile's exile period reads almost like the study of the human body responding to different psychological states.
Untitled (Composition: nine figures) (1968) maps the various positions of an individual driven to frenzy by overwhelming sorrow.
His artworks produced during the 1980s reveal further experimentation of the human form; Dumile's figures have become abstracted, almost veering into geometric shapes.
He appears to be searching for a new pictorial syntax that might reveal the reality behind appearances.
Although his legacy has been limited to a few drawings and sculptures in major South African museums, the more than 340 works that make up this landmark retrospective will pay homage to Dumile's immense contribution to South African art and maybe put his epithet "Goya of the Township" to rest.
• Dumile Feni: A Retrospective Exhibition opens on January 30 and runs until April 10