Reflections on the mission(s) to capture the ‘reader’ and ‘book’ in southern African art

Abstract

This article presents some early reflections from a cultural-historical project on the visualisation of reading practices. The focus is limited to images of people reading. The pervasiveness of such images in popular visual culture is illustrated, and how this relates to the established tradition amongst Western artists to paint the image of the reader. A number of scholars have contributed to the image of the reader in art as a field of study, all confirming the particular significance of depicting women readers in Western art. The current investigation asks how, from our vantage point in the South, the representation (or non-representation) of readers in Africa – specifically southern Africa – stands within, in opposition to, or in conversation with, the canonised tradition in Western art. The appropriation and negation of Western artistic conventions in the popular proliferation of visual images are also considered. For the South African discussion, the artist Gerard Sekoto is highlighted, and some of the contexts which helped shape his visualisations of people reading are traced.

Keywords:

• book
• painting
• reader
• South Africa
• visual culture