Realism, Rurality and Modernity: Samuel Makoanyane, Julius Mfete, Zolani Mapente

The idea of modernity as an ontological status or experiential reality that is exclusive to the West has been contested by a number of authors, theorists, and art historians over the past twenty years. This paper tackles the particular ways in which the modern has been constituted for and about black South African artists, particularly those who have lived most of their lives in “rural” areas as opposed to those living in large cities. What constitutes “rural” as an identity or status opposite to “urban” is contested today more than it was in the 1980s. This is partly because labeling an artist as rural participates in the conflation of distance between people in time with distance between people in space that Johannes Fabian (1983) pointed to as characteristic of the West's engagement with the so-called primitive. It also calls up the specters of the categories of “folk” and/or “outsider” art...