Anitra Nettleton
Biographic Data
| ID | 411646 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anitra Nettleton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anitra |
| FAMILY NAME | Nettleton |
| SIGNATURE | NETTLETON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2478-6648 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and memorials in post-apartheid South Africa
CITATION: Nettleton, A. & Fubah, M. A. 2019. Exchanging symbols : monuments and memorials in post-apartheid South Africa. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS, doi:10.18820/9781928480594.
Promoting “African Art” and African Modernisms in Johannesburg in the 1960s
In the 1960s, during the years in which apartheid was to become fully entrenched in South Africa and black Africans relegated to second-class citizen status, there was an apparently paradoxical growth of interest in art circles in the art of black Africans. Two major players in the Johannesburg art market who acquired large collections of historical African art and promoted contemporary forms said to be African in quality are identified as having…
Realism, Rurality and Modernity: Samuel Makoanyane, Julius Mfete, Zolani Mapente
The idea of modernity as an ontological status or experiential reality that is exclusive to the West has been contested by a number of authors, theorists, and art historians over the past twenty years. This paper tackles the particular ways in which the modern has been constituted for and about black South African artists, particularly those who have lived most of their lives in "rural" areas as opposed to those living in large cities. What const…
Dress and a Fashioned Identity among Black South African Migrant Miners in the Mid-Twentieth Century
The degree to which the development of migrancy as a way of life for men in South Africa affected the ways in which people fashioned their identity through dress constitutes the core of this article. The history of the development and adaptation of particular forms of dress is traced, with variations considered, following Mikhail Bakhtin (Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), as speech/dress acts within sp…
African Arts at 50: Teaching African Art in the Face of Apartheid
In 1967 the first issue of African Arts was published. In 1967 I first enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), for a BA degree, majoring in English Literature, History of Art, and Fine Art, in a class entirely of white students. This was eight years after the English medium universities in South Africa had been closed to black students under the system of apartheid.1 Nationalist party rule had, in 1959, legislated th…
Of Severed Heads and Snuff Boxes: “Survivance” and Beaded Bodies in the Eastern Cape, 1897–1934
This paper is concerned with beadwork made and worn by Mpondomise peoples, isiXhosa-speakers living in the district of Tsolo in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, and their deployment as a means of developing modes of “survivance” (Vizenor 2008: 2011). The particular beadwork items considered here have European, mass-produced snuff boxes attached to indigenously designed and made beaded necklaces (Fig. 1). They form part of a collection made by a …
Women, Beadworkand Bodies: The Making and Marking of Migrant Liminality in South Africa, 1850-1950
Migrant labour practices in southern Africa pulled large numbers of men into the cities and onto the mines, leaving women at home to tend the fields, bring up the children, care for the elderly and, most importantly, to keep cultural identity alive. At the same time, migrant labour provided cash for those left behind, facilitated the passage of trade goods from cities and trading stores into rural settlements and thus saw to the transformation an…
Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932
March 01 2013 Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932 Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is Chair and Director of the Centre for Creative Arts of Africa at the Wits Art Museum (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). She has researched and published articles, chapters and books on historical and contemporary arts of Africa over three decades. Her present concerns include the relationships betw…
Exhibiting ‘Africa’ in Africa—an impossible conundrum? Take 2
The art museum in Africa - a utopia desired
In this paper, I argue that museums in general are utopias, "no-places" in which categorisations of objects can be opened up for destabilisation. Following a discussion of the ways in which the categories "material culture" and "art" are reflected in museums, I argue that once the museum is transposed to Africa, its function as a space in which heritage is maintained through the conservation and preservation is thrown into disarray. I argue furth…
In pursuit of virtuosity: Gendering ‘master’ pieces of nineteenth-century South African indigenous arts
In nineteenth-century South Africa two different forms of facture of objects were encouraged by European colonial intervention. One, woodcarving, was male and produced many objects which have been declared masterpieces. The other, beadwork, was a female craft and was regarded as less valuable. This article examines the ways in which these values were located in the visible virtuosity of the facture of objects and through the visual representation…
Sensing and making sense: Art-things in a small part of the world
This paper addresses issues with which I have grappled in teaching, researching and writing about forms of creative production which have been incorporated into the ‘art’ world. I have taken the questions of sensing and making sense as a leitmotif for interactions between people objects and contexts, placing the body, along with ‘value’ as elements central to the ways in which we make sense of objects, or make objects make sense. The concern with…
Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon
March 01 2011 Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is a professor in art history at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. She has published on historical and contemporary African art and is presently working on research in both of these areas. [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author …
Life in a Zulu Village: Craft and the Art of Modernity in South Africa
This article examines contemporary South African baskets as objects that refer to histories and memories. I argue that the manner of their display around urban areas in South Africa visually demarcates aspects of the cities as African. But I argue further that this African aura is concocted: these objects belong within a particular space of production denoted (and fenced off) as “authentically” African, because it is not industrialized, and there…
Jackson hlungwani's altars: An African Christian Theology in Wood and Stone
This article examines the wooden and stone altars created by Jackson Hlungwani (1923-2010), a Tsonga artist and prophet from the former Gazankulu homeland in South Africa. Hlungwani's monumental, multi-media installations, which combine indigenous and Christian beliefs and practices, are analysed as a form of 'African Christian theology'. The article argues that Hlungwani's work provides a powerful critique of both the political and religious sta…
African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests
Samson Mudzunga, Dzingoma, and New Mythologies
Der Mond als Schuh: Zeichnungen der San [The Moon as Shoe: Drawings of the San] by Miklós Szalay
Presenting the self for the gaze of the Other: Ethnic identity in portraits by black South African artists
In the holdings of the Museum of Mankind is a pair of busts, made in clay and brightly painted, representing a man and a woman. Recognisable as 'Zulu' through their ethnic markers of headgear, these busts are relatively naturalistic in style and particular in detail
Family Stories of South Africa: Nine Family Histories
December 01 2004 Family Stories of South Africa: Nine Family Histories Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Anitra Nettleton Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 Copyright 2004 Regents of the University of California2004 African Arts (2004) 37 (4): 80–81. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2004.37.4.80 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Faceb…
Africa: Regional overview
Home Is Where the Art Is: Six South African Rural Artists
L'A. examine la maniere dont les artistes noirs sud-africains en milieu rural ont negocie l'espace entre leur origine africaine rurale et leur integration au marche de l'art en milieu urbain. Retracant l'histoire individuelle de six artistes parmi les plus connus de la Province du Nord, il tente de mettre en evidence la complexite des processus au travers desquels ils ont succombe ou resiste a la cannibalisation et a la celebrite du monde de l'ar…
People, Power, Politics
Arts and Africana: Hierarchies of Material Culture
Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Myths, Monuments, Museums; New Premises? 16-18 July, 1992
Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues
1992). Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues. African Studies: Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 203-230
African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests
Women, Beadworkand Bodies: The Making and Marking of Migrant Liminality in South Africa, 1850-1950
Migrant labour practices in southern Africa pulled large numbers of men into the cities and onto the mines, leaving women at home to tend the fields, bring up the children, care for the elderly and, most importantly, to keep cultural identity alive. At the same time, migrant labour provided cash for those left behind, facilitated the passage of trade goods from cities and trading stores into rural settlements and thus saw to the transformation an…
Jackson hlungwani's altars: An African Christian Theology in Wood and Stone
This article examines the wooden and stone altars created by Jackson Hlungwani (1923-2010), a Tsonga artist and prophet from the former Gazankulu homeland in South Africa. Hlungwani's monumental, multi-media installations, which combine indigenous and Christian beliefs and practices, are analysed as a form of 'African Christian theology'. The article argues that Hlungwani's work provides a powerful critique of both the political and religious sta…
Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues
1992). Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues. African Studies: Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 203-230
History and the Myth of Zulu Sculpture
in the southern region of the continent.' This myth has been perpetuated by the South African government itself in its Information for Immigrants and Visitors: The Black Peoples of South Africa (1975-84), geared to prospective immigrants from Europe. The notion presented in these pamphlets that blacks have some ability in crafts such as beadwork and pottery, but not in figurative sculpture, that is, fine art continues to have such wide currency t…
Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon
March 01 2011 Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is a professor in art history at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. She has published on historical and contemporary African art and is presently working on research in both of these areas. [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author …
Arts and Africana: Hierarchies of Material Culture
Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Myths, Monuments, Museums; New Premises? 16-18 July, 1992
Realism, Rurality and Modernity: Samuel Makoanyane, Julius Mfete, Zolani Mapente
The idea of modernity as an ontological status or experiential reality that is exclusive to the West has been contested by a number of authors, theorists, and art historians over the past twenty years. This paper tackles the particular ways in which the modern has been constituted for and about black South African artists, particularly those who have lived most of their lives in "rural" areas as opposed to those living in large cities. What const…
African Arts at 50: Teaching African Art in the Face of Apartheid
In 1967 the first issue of African Arts was published. In 1967 I first enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), for a BA degree, majoring in English Literature, History of Art, and Fine Art, in a class entirely of white students. This was eight years after the English medium universities in South Africa had been closed to black students under the system of apartheid.1 Nationalist party rule had, in 1959, legislated th…
Home Is Where the Art Is: Six South African Rural Artists
L'A. examine la maniere dont les artistes noirs sud-africains en milieu rural ont negocie l'espace entre leur origine africaine rurale et leur integration au marche de l'art en milieu urbain. Retracant l'histoire individuelle de six artistes parmi les plus connus de la Province du Nord, il tente de mettre en evidence la complexite des processus au travers desquels ils ont succombe ou resiste a la cannibalisation et a la celebrite du monde de l'ar…
The Venda Model Hut
young women of marriageable age.' Such items as doors, drums, xylophones, and divining bowls carved with schematic figures are associated with the court; freestanding and naturalistic figures are rare. Wooden statuettes are, however, generally reserved for the Domba, the third of three female initiation procedures (Blacking 1969). The first two stages, the Vhusha and Tshikhanda, employ clay figures only, and similar ones may be used in the Domba …
Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932
March 01 2013 Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932 Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is Chair and Director of the Centre for Creative Arts of Africa at the Wits Art Museum (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). She has researched and published articles, chapters and books on historical and contemporary arts of Africa over three decades. Her present concerns include the relationships betw…
Presenting the self for the gaze of the Other: Ethnic identity in portraits by black South African artists
In the holdings of the Museum of Mankind is a pair of busts, made in clay and brightly painted, representing a man and a woman. Recognisable as 'Zulu' through their ethnic markers of headgear, these busts are relatively naturalistic in style and particular in detail
The Arts of Southern Africa
Breve typologie regionale et ethnique des differentes formes d'art (principalement sculpture du bois, poterie, peinture murale, tissage de perles)
Form and content: A Formalist Approach to the 'Long-Faced Style of Buli
Methodologie de l'etude de l'art africain et controverses la concernant. Etude de cas: analyse formaliste d'un tribal, le style a longue face de Buli des Luba-Hemba du Congo (figurines et tabourets de bois sculpte
San Rock Art: Image, Function and Meaning: A Reply to A. R. Willcox
The Arts of Southern Africa
Breve typologie regionale et ethnique des differentes formes d'art (principalement sculpture du bois, poterie, peinture murale, tissage de perles)
The Venda Model Hut
young women of marriageable age.' Such items as doors, drums, xylophones, and divining bowls carved with schematic figures are associated with the court; freestanding and naturalistic figures are rare. Wooden statuettes are, however, generally reserved for the Domba, the third of three female initiation procedures (Blacking 1969). The first two stages, the Vhusha and Tshikhanda, employ clay figures only, and similar ones may be used in the Domba …
Treasures in Transition? Problems of Research into Southern African Art
(1986). Treasures in Transition? Problems of Research into Southern African Art. de arte: Vol. 21, No. 34, pp. 38-48
History and the Myth of Zulu Sculpture
in the southern region of the continent.' This myth has been perpetuated by the South African government itself in its Information for Immigrants and Visitors: The Black Peoples of South Africa (1975-84), geared to prospective immigrants from Europe. The notion presented in these pamphlets that blacks have some ability in crafts such as beadwork and pottery, but not in figurative sculpture, that is, fine art continues to have such wide currency t…
Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues
1992). Ethnic and gender identities in Venda domba statues. African Studies: Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 203-230
Arts and Africana: Hierarchies of Material Culture
Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Myths, Monuments, Museums; New Premises? 16-18 July, 1992
People, Power, Politics
Home Is Where the Art Is: Six South African Rural Artists
L'A. examine la maniere dont les artistes noirs sud-africains en milieu rural ont negocie l'espace entre leur origine africaine rurale et leur integration au marche de l'art en milieu urbain. Retracant l'histoire individuelle de six artistes parmi les plus connus de la Province du Nord, il tente de mettre en evidence la complexite des processus au travers desquels ils ont succombe ou resiste a la cannibalisation et a la celebrite du monde de l'ar…
Africa: Regional overview
Family Stories of South Africa: Nine Family Histories
December 01 2004 Family Stories of South Africa: Nine Family Histories Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Anitra Nettleton Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 Copyright 2004 Regents of the University of California2004 African Arts (2004) 37 (4): 80–81. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2004.37.4.80 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Faceb…
Der Mond als Schuh: Zeichnungen der San [The Moon as Shoe: Drawings of the San] by Miklós Szalay
Presenting the self for the gaze of the Other: Ethnic identity in portraits by black South African artists
In the holdings of the Museum of Mankind is a pair of busts, made in clay and brightly painted, representing a man and a woman. Recognisable as 'Zulu' through their ethnic markers of headgear, these busts are relatively naturalistic in style and particular in detail
Samson Mudzunga, Dzingoma, and New Mythologies
African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests
Jackson hlungwani's altars: An African Christian Theology in Wood and Stone
This article examines the wooden and stone altars created by Jackson Hlungwani (1923-2010), a Tsonga artist and prophet from the former Gazankulu homeland in South Africa. Hlungwani's monumental, multi-media installations, which combine indigenous and Christian beliefs and practices, are analysed as a form of 'African Christian theology'. The article argues that Hlungwani's work provides a powerful critique of both the political and religious sta…
Life in a Zulu Village: Craft and the Art of Modernity in South Africa
This article examines contemporary South African baskets as objects that refer to histories and memories. I argue that the manner of their display around urban areas in South Africa visually demarcates aspects of the cities as African. But I argue further that this African aura is concocted: these objects belong within a particular space of production denoted (and fenced off) as “authentically” African, because it is not industrialized, and there…
Sensing and making sense: Art-things in a small part of the world
This paper addresses issues with which I have grappled in teaching, researching and writing about forms of creative production which have been incorporated into the ‘art’ world. I have taken the questions of sensing and making sense as a leitmotif for interactions between people objects and contexts, placing the body, along with ‘value’ as elements central to the ways in which we make sense of objects, or make objects make sense. The concern with…
Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon
March 01 2011 Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is a professor in art history at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. She has published on historical and contemporary African art and is presently working on research in both of these areas. [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author …
In pursuit of virtuosity: Gendering ‘master’ pieces of nineteenth-century South African indigenous arts
In nineteenth-century South Africa two different forms of facture of objects were encouraged by European colonial intervention. One, woodcarving, was male and produced many objects which have been declared masterpieces. The other, beadwork, was a female craft and was regarded as less valuable. This article examines the ways in which these values were located in the visible virtuosity of the facture of objects and through the visual representation…
Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932
March 01 2013 Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932 Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton Anitra Nettleton is Chair and Director of the Centre for Creative Arts of Africa at the Wits Art Museum (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). She has researched and published articles, chapters and books on historical and contemporary arts of Africa over three decades. Her present concerns include the relationships betw…
Exhibiting ‘Africa’ in Africa—an impossible conundrum? Take 2
The art museum in Africa - a utopia desired
In this paper, I argue that museums in general are utopias, "no-places" in which categorisations of objects can be opened up for destabilisation. Following a discussion of the ways in which the categories "material culture" and "art" are reflected in museums, I argue that once the museum is transposed to Africa, its function as a space in which heritage is maintained through the conservation and preservation is thrown into disarray. I argue furth…
Women, Beadworkand Bodies: The Making and Marking of Migrant Liminality in South Africa, 1850-1950
Migrant labour practices in southern Africa pulled large numbers of men into the cities and onto the mines, leaving women at home to tend the fields, bring up the children, care for the elderly and, most importantly, to keep cultural identity alive. At the same time, migrant labour provided cash for those left behind, facilitated the passage of trade goods from cities and trading stores into rural settlements and thus saw to the transformation an…
Art (21 works) · South African History and Culture (19 works) · Visual arts (15 works) · History (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · African history and culture studies (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works)