In this text I consider Andries Botha's work over the period 1977 to 2007. I particularly look at Botha's creative response to the period of change in which he has worked and at his own considerations of works of art as acts of creative citizenship and private creativity. The text is based largely on interviews with Botha wherein he discusses his intentions and gives insight into the character of his creative imagination. In light of the interviews I write on individual works in detail, giving attention, to a certain extent, to chronology. During the late 1970s Botha was particularly concerned with establishing a sculptural language that would be expressive of his experience as a South African creative artist in the time of turbulence in the country and of paradox in his own circumstances as liberal thinker and inheritor of a conservative Afrikaner Nationalist background. Botha's creative output has been considerable. He commenced his career in a period of waning modernity and an increasing presence of Postmodernist culture. In his works of the 1980s he makes use of conceptual means – installation, assemblage, multiples, technology and unusual materials to express, through myth and allegory, his understanding of aspects of the human condition. The many associations, aesthetic, historical and political, regarding land, in a South African and in an international context, also became his concern. He sought to look at the affects on selfhood in the wake of apartheid, considering particularly the Afrikaner male and indigenous women, with especial reference to KwaZulu- Natal. He has been particularly interested in the effects of the abuse of power in a local and in an international sphere and in the situation of subaltern peoples in the aftermath of domination. When Botha commenced studies at the (then) University of Natal, the prevailing philosophical attitude was Humanism, and his attitude to social responsibility is often markedly humanistic. His own thinking regarding his creative work coincided in many aspects with Marxist aesthetic. A development of Postmodernist thinking occurred in South Africa with the writing of Die Sestigers, who had had large contact with French philosophical writing of mid-twentieth century. Botha's challenge, as was that of Die Sestigers, was to take cognisance of international thinking and at the same time to work creatively within an experience of the South African locale. Botha's reading of Merleau-Pontys' writings on phenomenology influenced him to respond to the immediacy of experience and record that response in his work. Largeness is a distinguishing feature of his art which I discuss in connection with the character of the sublime, as perceived by Burke. The character of duende, as seen by Lorca, is also distinctive to Botha's art and is used by him creatively to effect catharsis. He shows responsibility in his creative citizenship and in his private creativity in understanding and meeting the changes of the time. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

This dissertation is an amalgam of reformulated essays on artists who had connections with 20-21st century KwaZulu-Natal: They appeared in exhibition catalogues that accompanied the exhibitions; The Azaria Mbatha Retrospective, 1998, The Trevor Makhoba Memorial, 2005 and Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe Revisited, 2006. Chapter 1, the introduction; outlines the chapters, gives the theoretical and broader theoretical framework, history of the region and art therein, literature survey and methodology. Central to the theoretical framework is an attempt to meld the original essays into a coherent whole; by expanding the interpretation of indigenous cultural world-view to include the concept of orality versus literate cultures. Even in the transformation to literacy with westernization and Christianity the African oral mind-set is still operative; thus for instance the early Zulu writers like R.R.R. Dhlomo rendered the Zulu kings‘ oral praise-poems into written form and these became set-works for Zulu schools up until the 1994 new dispensation. Also dealt with are related issues of what therefore constitutes 'Africanness‘ and debates whether it is but the invention of the west in need of the 'Other‘ (something arguably pertinent to the art-collector‘s reasons for collecting), or if there is that own to the African style, like the oral style, which can be termed a 'legitimate Africanness‘ if one will. Further, how this style then exhibits itself in the visual arts as a 'preferred form‘ in terms of medium, colour, patterning and favored technique which best conspire to express these qualities. Chapter 2 (essay 1) and chapter 3 (essay 2), carry forward the assumptions made in the introduction. In modern times the oral genre has developed into an exciting style; namely the development of urban, often migrant musical forms, like isicathimiya, that challenge politics, social-wrongs, racism and taboos. It is argued that an artist like Trevor Makhoba can be considered a social commentator and 'master of the oral genre‘ in that he rendered this style into visual form. Certain of Makhoba‘s works depicting white females and black males are analyzed in this light and it is suggested that the oral genre also draws upon both stereotypical and universal archetypal imagery. Chapter 3 (essay 2) considers Azaria Mbatha‘s use of the older oral story-telling mode, rendered in linocut medium as an echo of earlier indigenous wooden 'pokerwork‘ panels, to transmit a political message in line with concepts of African Christianity, itself a syncretism of the Christian message with African world-view. This allegory was needed in a time where the Nationalist Government would have made open insurrection impossible. Chapter 4 (essay 3) concerns ex-Rorke‘s Drift art-student Cyprian Shilakoe. I analyze his aquatints in the light of his own Sotho cultural ideas on contagion and the ancestors for deeper meaning. The fact of culture change is accepted and mention is made of the artist‘s friend and fellow student, Dan Rakgoathe‘s melding of western esoteric mysticism, like Rosicrucianism, into African thinking and how far this impacted on the more traditional Shilakoe‘s works. The essays are followed by Chapter 5, the conclusion, which serves to come to some resolution. This is then followed by the bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.