Abstract
M.Tech. (Fine Art)
In this research I explore performances of white South African masculinities in select
works by the South African artists, Anton Kannemeyer and William Kentridge, as
well as in my body of practical work.
The primary aim of this study is to investigate the nature of performances of white
masculinities depicted in the selected visual texts. The term 'performances', in the
context of this study, refers to Judith Butler's (1990, 2004) concept of gender as
performed identities, as free-floating, unconnected to an 'essence'. Within the
context of gender performativity, I apply constructivist identity formation theory to
examine masculine identities depicted in the visual texts. This research shows how
the performances of white masculinity represented in the artists' selected works
function to comment on how white South African men are reconceptualising their
masculine performativities in order to adapt to the ideals of post-apartheid South
Africa. The study explores a perceived existential crisis in emergent South African
white masculinities, analysing how a changing post-apartheid socio-political
environment cause white South African men to create new conceptions of identity
which break down previously imposed preconceived identities.
In this dissertation I explore Kannemeyer's, Kentridge's and my own visual texts
relating them to a discourse of social commentary. A key deduction I make from my
research is that the selected visual texts operate through Laurel Richardson's
factors of lived reality and reflexivity in that the artists' appropriate elements from
within their experiences and observations of South Africa to inform their visual
narratives. Another key deduction is that the visual texts analysed are structured
through heteroglot voices, voices the artist uses to differentiate between the artist as
author (his author-voice); the artist as his recognisable alter-ego (his object-voice);
and the voice that provides content, context and meaning, to the text (his subjectvoice).
There are a number of white, male artists who grew up in apartheid South Africa and
who critique performances of white masculinity. I choose Kannemeyer and
Kentridge as, apart from their both growing up in apartheid South Africa and using
their lived realities and observations of socio-political change to inform their art
making, as do I, they also tend to focus on two-dimensional art.