Unseen Art Scene (mirror)

Source: Mail & Guardian South Africa | http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2008/2008mar/080307-artfair.html Image: The Jo’burg Art Fair’s Ross Douglas. (Photo: Lisa Skinner) The Art of Selling Art Anthea Buys speaks to Ross Douglas about the commercial possibilities of the country’s first art fair It is not uncommon to find contemporary South African artists and critics who are still suspicious of the infiltration of money into the local art scene. Perhaps this is why it has taken the initiative of entrepreneur Ross Douglas, who lacks purist artistic commitments, to realise an event such as the Jo'burg Art Fair, a local art-buying initiative at the Sandton Convention Centre for three days next week. Douglas is the producer of the first-ever Jo'burg Art Fair, which also claims the accolade of being the first entirely privately funded art-buying fair on the African continent. The fair will take place from March 14 to 16, but will be cushioned by a programme of non-commercial even

Source | Mail & Guardian Online | http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2008/2008mar/080314-njami.html As Njami Likes It Simon Njami on the show he has curated for the Jo'burg Art Fair and why he has called it As You Like It In an interview, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat responded to a critic who tried to ascribe his interpretation to one of his own canvases. He said: "As you like it." Basquiat's answer is charged with irony. He uttered it at a time when his career had impressively shot up. He had left the New York subway, the walls of which bore his signature, having been invited, along with two other very young artists, to Documenta in Kassel, Germany, where his work was very successfully received. In New York, he became the new idol. At the time when he spoke these words he had moved beyond the phase of empathetically wanting to impose his own interpretation as the only possible one. Even better, he understood how the art world worked and set himself apart through

Jo'burg Art Fair Stirs Up Debate Celean Jacobson | Johannesburg, South Africa 14 March 2008 04:04 The first fair in Africa to focus on selling contemporary African art offers plenty of work reflecting the continent's war, disease and poverty: sculptures of guns with spikes; dark, bloody etchings; installations on the dangers of unprotected sex. Masks, fetishes and the odd protest poster from South Africa's resistance art movement also are on display. But so is art with more universal themes, such as a wistful sculpture of mother and child. Other work is irreverent, pop and cheeky. The kaleidoscope of images and themes is a fitting backdrop for the debate the Jo'burg Art Fair has sparked about what it means to be African and an artist. The fair also has the art world buzzing about tensions between art and commerce. "Whatever we call African art, I think the African artist exists," said Simon Njami, a Cameroon-born, Paris-based curator who spoke at Thursday&