NOW AVAILABLE: Sometimes, art appreciation trumps ownership

Ed's Note

The last thing artists are motivated by when creating — from the vantage point of a 20-plus-year career documenting culture — is the idea that their work will ultimately have an “owner”. The act of creation, in and of itself, is, for many, enough. Yes, the fact that art ownership also benefits the artist financially problematises my contention, but I am not suggesting that artists do not value personal benefit — they do, as they should — I am merely pointing to a nuance in motivation.

The ingredients that go into the stew of art making — the process, expression, season, year, minute, impulse, mood — can never be owned fully, not even by the artist. We all extract what we need from the work. For me it’s about that dreamy meta place you drift to when an entire afternoon ticks over in a minute while immersed in lines, strokes, shade, light, and impossible angles, while on airplane mode, hopping in silence from one gallery to the next. I have consumed, wrestled with, and appreciated hundreds of works in this fashion, with no fomo about the people or institutions that ultimately got to hang them up.

I live in a three-bedroom house with finite wall space and, while we all have our own valid inclinations, I, for one, am not compelled to collect art to the extent of keeping some covered, dusty, and unappreciated in a storage unit, no matter how waterproof it may be. You can consume, appreciate, feel on a cellular level, like your life is truly the better for having experienced it, without ever having owned it.

But then this time of year comes around, when we must find our most intriguing art prospects for our Young and Vital Artists list. All thoughts of the relative merits of appreciation over ownership come unstuck. For two years I have walked away wanting it all, and 2023 just upped the ante — from Kagiso Gundane’s quietly majestic work that communicates a knowing that could only come from an adjacent place to Buqaqawuli Nobakada’s exploration of the feminine and the important messages shaping her own coming of age.

Blessing Blaai, whose work adorns our cover and has had our office abuzz with appreciation, is another gem whose art courts ownership. You can add another 20 to that list, some on the ascent, already collecting awards, and some you have never heard of but are about to fall in love with.

Now in its third year, the list previously tipped its hat to the work of Lerato Nkosi, Dada Khanyisa, Luyanda Zindela, Haneem Christian, Cinthia Mulanga and an array of others living and/or working in South Africa who have affirmed their inclusion by rising to the challenges of adulation. A big thank you to our patient jury of Wanted contributors, without whom this list would never have come together.

With not an ageist bone in our collective body, in recognising the young shoulders upon which the future of art rests we dare not forget how their path was cleared or, in the case of writer Percy Mabandu’s reflection on artist Lefifi Tladi at 74, lit up. Our guest columnist, the art collector and champion Elana Brundyn — former CEO of the Norval Foundation and founder of the new Brundyn Art & Culture space and consultancy — draws on a 2022 archaeological discovery from Roman times to propose a new art commitment in the often art-poor hospitality industry.

Finally, in Gifted, RMB Latitudes Art Fair co-founder Roberta Coci sneaks us into her world, from the metaphorical bottling of a favourite scent to the podcast we must subscribe to and one or two art references, naturally. In the Cape, they can perhaps be excused for thinking that art season starts in February, but on the highveld, we know better. Welcome to art season.

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