The Fine Politics of Art and Accountability

By André Clements

Consider the Sasol debacle, no… not the one around the corporate fine, the one about the prestigious Sasol New Signatures fine art competition and its winner.

Sasol, sponsor of this competition distanced itself from the winning work in no uncertain terms – though they did pay the artist his prize, Sasol made the unprecedented move of officially and  publicly dis-associating themselves from -  and not buying work for their prestigious as has become tradition – the winning artwork.

Their cited reason for this step was out of consideration of potential offence the work might cause, which truly it might given that it entails full-frontal male nudity. And if that had been the end of the matter  it would already have been a situation raising some  philosophical questions about art,  morality and even ethics – but that as you may have guessed was not to be the end of it.

Once all of the above had been announced, with Sasol’s action arguably creating more publicity for the winning artist and his work, one of the models featured in the photograph that is the winning work, claimed not to have given permission for the photograph to be used in this manner – that the photograph was taken to help a friend with a college project eight years ago. He also argued that the age of the original photograph should have disqualified it from the competition which is only open to works completed in the last year. The judges and organisers however maintain that it is only the completion date of the work that is relevant to this criteria. They also hold that any liability for not satisfying the legal requirements for Model consent forms to be signed lies with the artist – even with that being the case the whole situation does highlight some interesting questions.

Fine art sometimes reflects real life, hardly surprising when one considers its evolutionary origin in the  basic ancient need to communicate ideas. But arguably one of the things that differentiates fine art from illustration and other graphic disciplines is the characteristic of reflecting more than just its direct subject matter – that it challenges its audience at a deeper level than only interpretation of that which is pictured or sculpted.

Then perhaps this year’s winner in the New Signatures competition does deserve the first prize for creating a most disturbing representation of some of the difficulties our society is currently navigating – not least of which is a crisis of accountability and credibility.

Who knew that this year’s competition would turn into a drama involving so much more than mere aesthetics.

The artist’s statement , offering a rationale for the winning work, makes a bold claim arguing that it ‘… depicts and exposes, both literally and figuratively, the extreme misery, the pathos and dehumanization of poverty…’ . When one considers the actual image there can be little doubt about the importance of the stated theme but it is easy to see how those who have dealt with or experienced poverty could feel that the work’s depiction comes close to if not actually making a mockery of the issue – which seems to remind of the bold statements and commitments made about the alleviation of poverty with each election, yet much has been exposed to question the integrity of many of our leaders in this context.

Then there is the matter of the sponsor implying disagreement with the judgments, the ‘policies’ if you will, of the appointed judges, stopping short of ‘recalling’ their commitments. Although it is true that evaluating and judging art necessarily involves some subjective opinion one expects that organisations and individual of the stature and reputation involved here would have clarified some consensus on the criteria for measuring (we have a course ‘Monitoring and Evaluation‘ that focuses on just that.

Most concerning perhaps is that while everyone involved seems responsible for the situation in some part, no-one seems to be accepting responsibility for very much.

The highest forms of art not only reflects life, but challenges – not only the viewer (and the artists) but us as the society that produces it.

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