Gavin Jantjes
A South African Colouring Book
1973-1974
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Gavin Jantjes
A South African Colouring Book
1973-1974
Physical Qualities
Screenprint on paper with mixed media, Sheet: 602 × 452 mm. (23 11/16 × 17 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Art Acquisition Fund, and Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia & Pacific Islands Acquisition Fund
Object Number
2016.115.5
These newly acquired works are within an eleven-part suite that is canonical today. Gavin Jantjes made A South African Colouring Book at a time when Black Consciousness led anti-apartheid activism within his nation. This key ideology is cousin to Black Power in the United States; leaders read many of the same anti-colonial texts. Initially led by Steve Biko (1946–1977), Black Consciousness remains active in many parts of the world, as do central tenants of Black Power.
Jantjes’ series critiques apartheid’s classification of people by color, and it doubles down on disenfranchised people who willingly embraced their oppressor’s culture. In Colour This Labour Dirt Cheap we see repeated prints of a woman cleaning a bath she can never use, and art handlers ferrying precious cargo they cannot afford. The True Colours of the State reproduces a famous 1960 photograph by Laurie Bloomfield of policemen beating people who protested being evicted from their homes in the state’s forced removal campaign. Read the script clipped to the top of each work. Here are the words of Prime Minister B.J. Vorster (1915–1983). In one script he understands the people imaged only as units of labor; in another he wonders whether other countries have laws that secure the same “peace and order” as South Africa.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2016; Helen Jackson, Washington, DC
Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art
Kreamer, Christine, Mary Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Harney and Allyson Purpura. 2007. Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution; Milan: 5 Continents Editions, pp. 220-222, no. 18.21a-k.
