Jacana

Sue Williamson’s South African Art Now, or “The Book” as art insiders refer to it, is at the centre of her recent chat with Janine Stephen:

SUE Williamson is generally quite the diplomat, but she’s no great fan of Jean Pigozzi — an Italian man who owns a huge private collection of contemporary African art, which he pimps out to the museums of the west.

There is a photo of him in a 2005 edition of Vanity Fair, standing loud-shirted amid a collection of “his” artists (including Esther Mahlangu and Chéri Samba). He has chosen them according to three criteria: they “must be black, breathing and living in Africa”.

Williamson — who, with the publication of South African Art Now, has three respected books under her belt — is infuriated that Pigozzi’s uneven collection has managed to shape popular US perceptions of African contemporary art: he evidently seldom considers work by fine art-trained artists, so traditional materials predominate in his collection.

Thanks to the influence of glossy books on the Pigozzi works (one, funnily enough, titled African Art Now) and prestigious shows at institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, the American public doesn’t expect “sophisticated video installations” to come out of Africa, says Williamson.

• Read the complete article in The Weekender

Book details

• South African Art Now by Sue Williamson
  EAN: 9781770097216
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