The Artful Viewer

By Melvyn Minnaar

More than Beautiful Botanicals

Maybe the person, making the sideways comment, wasn’t all too comfortable either at being seen at an exhibition of pretty flower pictures. But he had to say his say, implying some deeper questions: “What on earth is he doing here? Isn’t he an art critic who holds forth on Clement Greenberg’s modernism, or quotes Arthur C. Danto whenever a postmodernist argument gets tough?”

The perplexed speaker clearly belonged to the snobby class who takes its art categories very seriously, and finds it imperative to draw the lines between what is allowed and what not when one talks about art. It was the hackneyed argument of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art all over again: the same thing that rubbed up the snooty art crowd the wrong way when beads and blankets appeared in the SA National Gallery as our democracy was dawning.
Of course, the puzzled person at the exhibition of flora was there for the same reason as the famous art critic: to look and enjoy, to engage and appreciate a very specific mimetic art medium. The occasion was another of the increasingly-popular biennial Kirstenbosch exhibitions of floral imagery.
In shorthand referred to as ‘botanical art’, the pictures of flowers and plants on display represent not only a unique category of illustration that has a long ( and, yes, romantic) history, but it stands within an established tradition that more than anything connects science with art. In short, it has everything to do with accuracy of documentation, preservation of information and recording of historic and empirical facts of a natural phenomenon.
This is the reason why these are images in which remarkable attention is given to detail: the true showcase of the artist’s illustrative skills. For this, rewards are announced and medals handed out. If some of those pale, anti-bourgeois souls are rankled by this act of acknowledgement, so be it. The appeal of finely-executed drawing is universal -and this could well be the draw card for those of us who flock.
But, as we have learnt from the postmodern prophets, what the eye sees is not necessarily the ‘truth’.
Here’s a very interesting situation: if ‘botanical art’ was simply documenting a good-looking flower or even a not-good-looking plant, why not simply take a high-definition photograph and stick it in the herbarium’s records?
What is fascinating about this particular art - the one that engages with flora exclusively - is that it often seems to record more than simply the immediate visual truth. Anyone who scrutinised the great botanical illustrations by artists like James Osgood Andrew, Franz and Ferdinand Bauer, Elizabeth Blackwell, and even our own legendary Harry Bolus and Cynthia Letty may have experienced a feeling that they witness more than superficial images. When good, it is as if the artist relays and puts across a sense of place and circumstances in the image.
The classic botanical illustration was typically executed as a watercolour painting, which is, as we all know, a demanding medium. Tradition called for ‘life-like’ depiction, usually done to life-size or indicated scale. The flower is presented front and back, open and in bud , seed, and possibly with root system.
In the modern invention of the botanical illustration, we often seem a ‘style’ of presentation that used to be called ‘photorealism’. (That was when art critics felt everything had better be categorised!) A form of painting (or other illustration) that sets itself purposefully up as antithesis of the ‘reality’ that can (theoretically) be documented clinically with a camera, the best photorealism imagery has a manner of unsettling the viewer, triggering dynamic engagement.

Something similar happens in the best of contemporary botanical illustration.
This month sees the fifth Kirstenbosch Biennale (from September 10 to 24), and the invited guest curator for 2008, Karen Stewart, is well suited to talk about the above.

For her masters degree from Stellenbosch University, she curated a show entitled Curiositii, which commented on botanical practices of annotation and display derived from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A key factor, she says, in her curatorial practice is to make artwork accessible to people from all walks of life.
Stewart’s involvement is another step in the increasing stature of the Kirstenbosch Biennale. Inaugurated in 2000 by Merle Huntley, the show, standards and scope of artists both from South Africa and beyond have steadily grown over the years.
Some 50 artists participate in the biennale Amongst the art this year are paintings by Simthembile Kewuti, a young botanical artist from Paarl who was tragically murdered in April this year. It had been his dream to exhibit his work on the biennale.
Organised by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, whose brief it is to make South Africans more aware of our natural heritage, and sponsored by Old Mutual, the biennale - the only exhibition of its kind in South Africa - is an important local marker for botanical art.
Don’t miss it. Even if your snooty arty pals object.
* The Kirstenbosch 2008 Biennale is at the Old Mutual Conference Centre, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. Entry to the show is free, as are the walkabouts that will be conducted by well-known artists and critics. A series of lectures about various aspects of botanical art, and workshops by Gill Condy and Di Carmichael form part of the programme.