Dasart and Victorian Art
by Ashley Johnson
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Dasart and Victorian Art |
"If you go calmly and look English there is no particular danger" Walter BagehotIt is impossible to consider Victorian Art without placing it within its historical context. The art does not exhibit any formal innovations or even any revolutionary zeal. Instead the different images merge to reflect the great political, social and industrial forces of the time.
The Victorian age was precipitated by a number of changes, sometimes conflicting, within British society. Probably the most important of these was the Industrial Revolution represented by the invention of the steam engine. Within years a previously agrarian society was confronted by the development of the factory system. Socially, this meant urban crowding, unemployment and squalor. The resulting unrest acted as a spur for Britain to expand her influence, thus creating the British Empire. Prosperity became an imperative and the various colonies were to provide this wealth. To aid in the endeavor, the British navy stood paramount over the seas and could dictate terms to other nations. Discoverers and missionaries like Dr. Livingstone had already opened pathways into places like Africa.
However, slavery thrived in these areas and although Britain had profited from the trade it became a moral issue to eradicate the practice. At the time, well-intentioned philanthropists supported the idea that commerce and Christianity could act together to 'rescue' Africa. This situation rapidly became one of conquest and Imperialism became an official attitude. Instead of merely plundering resources, it became expedient to colonise Africa and thereby release the pressure of unemployment in Britain. Policies of Anglicisation were followed and institutionalised in the judicial system, churches, schools and other areas.
As Britain's wealth grew, her political system was also changing. The franchise was extended to all males over 18 years and government became one of consent. Thus the democratic age dawned and the party system came into being. A strong and wealthy bourgeois middle-class now began to exert power, bearing their own religious and moral values. A growing religious tolerance meant that Darwin's theories of evolution could co-exist with the various religious attitudes and even encourage the idea of civilised man making progress. Thus what we today perceive as rampant exploitation, was seen then in terms of enlightenment, progress and forces for good.
On returning to Victorian art, the impact of the various forces I have outlined is very evident. Bearing in mind the themes of the 18th century, we see proud portraits of bourgeois businessmen in place of aristocratic portraits. Domestic scenes, family values and pastimes like croquet and tea with scones are evident. Nature is represented replete with cows and yachts but so too are industrial scenes and streets teeming with commerce. As yet, notions of pollution and child exploitation have not become burning issues. Indeed the concept of the child as opposed to a young adult was only beginning to emerge in the 19th century. Education for all was just a pipe dream.
Particularly striking are the many sumptuous portraits of young women, often being gazed at in a proprietary manner by a male figure in the background. The attitudes of ownership resound throughout Victorian art and women without the franchise were similar in market value to the colonised peoples and slaves, i.e. property.
Depictions of the latter are often in the context of military conquest and general subservience. Here the exotic and romantic ideas of exploration are evident through the props and scenery i.e. camels and desert. Faraway destinations are also echoed in Romantic works showing heroic man overcoming nature. Many of these works hearken back to the notions of heroism expounded by previous ages but the actual subject matter is drawn more from experienced reality. The commonplace is often placed within a grand setting of balustrades or other architectural expressions. This lends an air of theatricality to the paintings. A scene
is depicted rather than composed as an 18th century painting might have been. Value resides in what is rendered rather than how. Victorian architecture is notable for its joining of foreign elements rather than homogeneity of design.An exhibition of DASART in conjunction with the Tatham's collection of Victorian art represents the juxtaposition of separate times. Two different centuries are given as cardinal points. What has changed or been learnt in the time that has passed?
To DASART, Victorian art symbolises outdated ideas of the progress of man; industrial development at the expense of the environment and society at large; bourgeois values of home comforts and material existence; romantic perceptions of the heroic immortality of the human spirit; man's ability to conquer all with the aid of science; the cultural invasion of other peoples through language and religion. In a word, Imperialism.
By contrast, DASART exists at the backside of the 20th century with notions of progress discredited, ozone holes looming, global warming, internecine conflicts. We have seen the end results of what began in the 19th century; the deforestation, overpopulation and depletion of resources. We live in a consumer society which is enslaved by materialism and the factory system. Debris and waste surround us and condition our way of thinking. Therefore the viewer is urged to look at the DASART works within their own context. The Dasartists do not present works which comment specifically on the Victorian Diaspora, but rather works which reside within their own metaphor. It is up to the viewer to make the connections. The grandness of scale coupled with unusual media and the invasion of the viewer's space is a tragi-comic attempt to communicate something which is lost. Dasart's imperialism stands in ironic counter-point to the imperialism and materialism which still surrounds us.
In the DASART VICTORIA installation, presented in Pietermaritzburg at the Tatham Art Gallery, a huge cone made from scrap metal and bent to shape by hand before being adorned by a maelstrom of detritus confronts the viewer. It could be a funnel or even a passage of time. To enter it is to endanger oneself from sharp wire twists that hold everything together. A grand and useless thing that exhibits the mentality of a machine, it embodies the mind of 20th century man. The objects attached like barnacles to the cone are not referential but act evocatively to assert the presence of this abstraction. Within this machine there lurks the primitive spirit of man. This spirit is echoed in a swirling metal form that stands at the cone's end.
Other works also employ the cone as a vehicle but refer instead to the unknown contents within. Like a carousel of the unknown, a piece is positioned on old railway tracks and accompanied by the sound of steam engines. There is something humanoid about the spinning contents which are constructed out of garden waste materials; the congealed spirit of what is left behind after progress has moved on. There is a sense of time standing still even as time spins on. Everything is in a process of decay and all that man can do is resuscitate the victim from time to time.
Primitive, animistic elements are also present in another work which is the corollary of the moving piece and acts to channel the viewer around it. It represents a mental haven within nature but a nature which has been inverted. Its essential metaphor is the skin of Mother Nature, which is not always what it seems. Decaying vegetable matter is given new life as animal hide, undulating sections of wire mesh and fiberglass coated with sand suggest the earth, detritus cut from a river bank and soaked in resin suggests a river flowing around it. The piece arrests the movement and energy of nature which it harbors within itself.
There is also another cone but this time with an end which is almost closed. It is a construction for the end of the 20th century. Signage within the work proclaims "NO EXIT". We are contained by fences, iron and reinforcing rods. The outside has old tyres, paper, cardboard and illusionistic shadows of fencing to reinforce the metaphor. All the materials are industrial but nothing is functional any more. Everything remains in a state of rust and decay. Its dionysian nature means that it can carry a multitude of meaning. Is it phallic or vaginal; is it a filter or a megaphone? Related to this piece are a painted metal construction and a cement construction which take the hand as their metaphor. They are monumental and require the viewer to experience them. Pipes and metal sheeting rise out of the earth carrying a range of meanings. A hand is a point of contact whether this is welcoming or rebuffing, passive or aggressive. Like a shield it protects or it grasps materialistically. It is also a sign held up in greeting or a full stop or closure like an epitaph. The two concrete hand shapes which seem to rise up from a bed of bricks and coal dust suggest an industrial system of friction, heat and energy. Yet that energy could be positive or negative depending on whether the piece is read in a constructive or destructive mode, like the old vase/face visual illusion. The polarity of the dilemma is apt when a previous era is being left and a new entered.
The illusion of cultural progress is the inspiration for another painted metal construction. This piece consists of several parts. A horde of humans seem to be reaching for a pair of large mythical creatures; a goat and a cockerel. These animals have other references to our commodity driven life welded into their structures. The piece is a parable, evoking concepts of cultural weight; literally depicting people becoming enculturalised and bearers of baggage mistaken for culture.
Charts from bygone days adorn the walls of the gallery, nestling between the Victorian paintings and providing a link between the two and three-dimensions by projecting out onto the floor. These maps have been painted on in a crude way and act now as repositories for signs and events remembered. Outlines of figures and painted umbrellas evoke the past while a huge sprawling/falling figure drawn in meaty tones dribbles down through history. It projects a latter day view of Imperialism.
Another metaphor of encroachment is mooted by a collection of telephone books which are painted black, bolted together and hung by coat hangers in rows. Each has a sign painted in white outlines on the front. Identity is being sealed and yet displayed under the auspices of a sign. This is the fate of man, who has himself become a commodity.
This sense of imprisonment is also reflected by another piece although the prison depicted is more a visceral mental experience. Cotton waste is used to form the walls which are reminiscent of the vagina. Cotton has great significance in the history of slavery and the manufacture of cotton cloth was a strong feature of the Industrial Revolution. A length of old timber is used to symbolise an element of spirituality while the supporting structure suspends the cotton wall from wires like a wound held open. The sense of open and closed is added to by a sound poem which is heard in private space via head phones and repeats itself like a mantra. Its meaning is both partially given and hidden.
DASART feels an urgent need to communicate something incommunicable to the viewer. The purpose is to make art that relates to the human condition and that reawakens in the viewer a capacity to find new meaning in visual Art. A reawakening in art means a re-birthing of the spirit. The Bushmen of Africa, for instance, related directly through their art to the spiritual world beyond. This was achieved by a heightened perception of reality brought on by means of a Trance Dance. The purpose of reaching the spirit world was renewal. The Dasartists' feel that art should work for them as the ritual Trance Dance did for the Bushmen, to provide an avenue for renewal.
Renewal can be achieved by confronting the unknown in materials and situations yet with the goal being the expression of profound values linked to spiritual awareness. There is so much at the disposal of the contemporary artist from ancient stone to ultra high-tech visual and computer systems, that the works which the Dasartists present may range from the two dimensional to the situational.
Art, for the Dasartists, is not a self-referential system launched on a mysterious trajectory through history. Instead, they see it as an intimate form of communication between individuals and their times. In a spiritual sense, all ideas are in a state of flux and the artwork functions as a point of coagulation or timelessness for these. The viewer gains new perceptions by acknowledging what he already knows yet has not considered. Human behavior and knowledge are predetermined from the beginning of time, with the original explosion implying that that generative energy continues to affect us. Our beings are not separate from the energies that pass through us and define us.
Creative endeavor has to challenge prevailing preconceptions of art with the goal of allowing the viewer to transform their experience of reality. The viewer confronts the artwork as a mass of potential energy. The work of art exhibits an imaginary passage of energy which is static in whatever aesthetic form it takes from conceptual art to wild life paintings. New meaning is gained by the viewer absorbing the imaginary traces which are suggested by the art work. The energies which are subsequently released in the individual are apprehended by other individuals who may not have seen the art work but contain within them patterns of understanding which correspond to attitudes expressed by the original individual. Thus the Dasartists do not see information as a commodity to be transferred. Rather, information is energy in motion which informs because it is already known.
When art becomes stale and stereotypical it is necessary to employ new metaphors to engage the imagination and jolt it from a static apprehension of reality. DASART is striving to reflect a deeper sensibility of our time. The works are concerned with ideas of fragmentation and discontinuity; time and timelessness; loss and regeneration; the changing skin of Mother Nature. The spiritual essence of man is sought through the energies of change. Metamorphosis is the very energy of nature and this shape-changing is continuous. There is nothing immutable but change itself.
References
Churchill, Winston. A History of the English-speaking Peoples. Volume IV . The Great Democracies. Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, 1958.
Claxton, Guy. Noises from the Darkroom, The Science and Mystery of the Mind. Aquarian, 1994.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae, Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Yale University , 1990.
Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa : 1876 - 1912. Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1991.
Wood, Anthony 19th Century Britain 1815-1914, 2nd Ed. Pg 189, Harlow London, 1982.
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