Sadness comes in many forms. It lingers much longer than happiness. The new ZEITZ MOCAA museum in Cape Town displays Africa’s sadness so profoundly, I’m absolutely sure it will soon be recognized as one of the greatest art museums on earth.
Conceding that the museum is “likely to become the dominant arts institution on the continent,” the New York Times in a patently jealous critique worried that so much money ($38 million) had been spent on a single museum in an impoverished society.
What was MOMA’s budget last year? How many free tickets did MOMA give to Appalachians?
Much more balanced review from London’s Guardian, reporting that the museum “has been hailed as Africa’s answer to the Tate Modern.”
South Africa’s Daily Maverick acknowledged the controversy, too, but pointed out that Desmond Tutu was present for the opening, exclaiming, “This is what we fought for!”
I don’t know where to begin. How extraordinarily pompous for self-appointed guardians of the world cultural order to criticize Africa for such powerful greatness, particularly when they bear the responsibility for the slavish poverty of the continent.
It will take me a long time to digest my visit to the museum, but the few hours on one rainy day in Cape Town gave me more direction, more fodder, more clarity in understanding Africa than any other single event in my life.
The museum collects the greatest contemporary artists of the continent. Their works are obviously radically varied from one another, yet they cling together as African sadness.
Personally I’m optimistic about most of Africa, today, particularly vis-a-vis the revolutionary suicides occurring right now in western societies. But what this museum tells with nuclear force is the deep sadness of enslavement, oppression, and emasculation.
Perhaps none does it better than William Kentridge’s “More Sweetly Play The Dance.” This is a multiple-screen mostly sepia multi-media symphony of Africa’s long history of failures, from slavery to domination to being ignored, all ended with the dance of a gun.
Yet throughout the 15-minute film is the dissident clatter of Africa’s playful songs and dances, that oil-and-water mixture of the traditional and modern which forces each out of its perfection. It’s Africa’s Divine Comedy set in an unending purgatory of profound global history that can neither change nor dismiss Africa.
Yesterday I was speaking to a young Cape Town artist, Lorenzo Bruno, who manages the Knext Africa gallery. I suggested that one reason for so many exceptional non-black South African artists was because in these revolutionary times whites are having a hard time getting traditional jobs.
At first he agreed, and then disagreed, uncertain himself. But I believe that is fundamental to the motivation for some of this great art: In the same way that Ramadan Hamisi or Cyrus Habiru of Kenya stand out greatly, South Africans Lorenzo Bruno and William Kentridge do as well.
There is little in Kentridge’s production that can be called “script” but at one point a marcher is laboriously carrying a tattered banner that reads in part, “Eat the Bitterness.”
Bitterness, physical pain, hunger, anger, failure … sadness contains them all. Built on such misery are pyres of great art. Art isn’t something that an ant or a gorilla creates. Only men create art, and great art is from great men. For the weak of soul this may be the straw to tease some hope out of this magnificient instituition.