Another Art Magazine
was launched on 4
September 2002 in South
Africa.
During the short
history of art in South Africa, there were numerous attempts to establish an art magazine. Sadly
none
ever stood the test of time and although there were good
ones like ADA, Art Ventilator and Artlook, there were more failures than success
stories. There are various reasons for this:
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- The
South African Art Market is relatively small and there are not enough
serious buyers of Contemporary Art to make a substantial publication economically
viable.
- The second
reason which has lead to many a publication's downfall is that the
work is done in isolation and for own personal gain rather than to give an
comprehensive view of the art market. Some
publications in the past were regionally bound or only representative
of a certain group of artists.
- There are few
unbiased writers in this country who
are knowledgeable and well informed about the complete art market and
History
of Art to write meaningful articles. They tend to forget that input
from Art
Historians, Auction markets, Galleries and Museums should
be taken into account.
- There are only
a handful of good Contemporary Art Galleries and thus not a lot of
Exhibitions and news to cover, resulting in quarterly publications
with relative high pricing, exceeding the average South African's
budget.
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art | southafrica
is published quarterly and judging from the first edition, the
information seems to be of good quality with comprehensive coverage about
the current state of what is happening in contemporary art and around
South Africa. Articles cover Documenta 11, Confessions of Zeno by
William Kentridge, Willie Bester 15 Years, Jane Alexander Daimler
Chrysler award, Exploding heads by Brett Murray and various
others.
Although the magazine is difficult to page through and to handle because
of the way it is bound, it consists of 72 pages printed on semi gloss
paper with numerous colour reproductions, although in my copy some pages
were stained from adjacent printing where the ink was not dry. The
magazine is reasonably priced at R160 for 4 issues or R50 a copy. The
launch of the magazine was well attended. We share the editors comment
that this is indeed a risky undertaking with a lot of negative sentiment
due to failures by similar ventures in the past, but definitely worth the
attempt to see rather something than nothing happening.
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e-mail : info@bell-roberts.com
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