South Africa at the Tate: Searching for a National School and a National Identity

On 20 September 1948 the Exhibition of Contemporary South African Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture opened at the Tate Gallery in London. It was organised by the newly formed national arts body, the South African Association of Arts, generously sponsored by the newly elected apartheid government, and hailed to be the first representative exhibition of South African art ever to be held abroad. Beyond its size and position at the Tate, it might, in retrospect, easily be relegated to the status of just a provincial collection of mildly avant-garde work reflecting the European influence and tutelage that most of the artists received. However, a considered study will show that it was a watershed moment for the politics of national art and representation, and for getting South African artists onto an international stage. By considering its local context, the selection process and the local and international responses to this exhibition, this article will provide an assessment of the concerted efforts made by an underdeveloped, colonial art world to promote and export a ‘national’ South African school abroad. It will highlight the exhibition’s critical position in the early development of a local South African art world in four aspects: first, the Tate exhibition evidenced the South African art world’s debut on the international art stage; second, it signified a local shift from privileging European art to preferring South African art; third, it hinted at the advancement in the South African art world toward modernism from academic art; and fourth, but not least, it raised issues of a national art to a national consciousness. Ultimately, the exhibition engendered a prominent public discourse about national art, national identity and representativeness that reached a general audience beyond the art world.