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The recent controversy about the artist Brett Murray's "The Spear" painting provoked furious verbal and other acrobatics. Those who opposed the public showing of the painting did so claiming not to be censoring an exposed penis per se, but to be objecting to the...
Artist Brett Murray, in his affidavit, explains why he painted 'The Spear' "At the outset, I would like to say that I am a proud South African and a former supporter of the ANC. I am not a racist. I do not produce art with an intention to hurt, humiliate or insult,...
How far can artists go in satirising or sending up the powerful? That is the essence of the brouhaha over Brett Murray’s contentious The Spear painting depicting President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed in a pose reminiscent of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin....
AN OLD west African proverb compares the artist to a dog. Positioned at the interface of the human and the natural worlds, the dog in most ancient African societies enjoyed a slippery and highly ambiguous cultural status. Neither a human being, nor a wild animal, it...
Brent Meersman says the fuss was manufactured to assist Jacob Zuma's re-election at Mangaung. The outrage over the Zuma Spear has now revealed itself to be as all about politics. Not for the first time, the country was brought almost to a standstill by its...
Andrew Donaldson on why Brett Murray's painting has provoked such unhinged fury LET us get to the heart of the matter. In his affidavit, which forms part of the ruling party's legal bid to remove Brett Murray's The Spear from public gaze, the painting's subject,...
The controversy surrounding Brett Murray’s portrait of President Jacob Zuma has stirred up a hornet’s nest. On the one hand, it has elicited outrage even from people I know to have antipathy towards our head of state. On the other, defenders of The Spear feel that...
Over the past eighteen months there have been enough “Kaffir” slips of the tongue, from different echelons of White society, to prove that racism is alive and well and living on the tips of the tongues of most White South Africans. In many cases all it takes is a bit...