Hey, has anyone else noticed it's been a bit quiet around here? Sorry if you've been lonely, but I have been a little distracted by certain personal and grave matters. Here's a picture of my cat to make it up to you:
I also went during the week to see Conrad Botes' Cain and Abel at Michael Stevenson. I've been a fan of Botes for years, and he's probably one of the few South African artists that can elicit fandom. I was disappointed at first with some of his reverse glass paintings. They started to teeter on the border of the decorative, where his style of mark-making (which is very compelling) seemed to blot out content and narrative. It's like the Van Gogh trap where dramatic brushwork gets mistaken for meaning. It seemed most apparent in the Hostile Territory series. Of course this is a rather harsh judgment, but when compared to the more powerful narrative works such as Cain slays Abel, and the originals of the comic Cain en Abel, it is quite apparent. Those two works, using the bare bones of Christian mythology, elicit all the emotions that religion stands for: fanaticism, guilt, jealousy, pain, regret and eternal punishment. All hope is drained out. When combined with powerful symbolism and dramatic style they make moving art. The old myth is transformed into a metaphor for violence and masculine conflict, both internal and physical, which seems very relevant.

The actual Cain and Abel story is interesting in itself. Growing up in a religious household I often wondered why God didn't accept Cain's sacrifice. Thinking about it now, the story seems to be about the conflict between newly settled farming communities and the older order of nomadic hunter gatherers. Two ways of life are in conflict. Technological progress wins out, but the price is dire. Cain denies sodality with his fellow man, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God, who hates lip, curses Cain to wander the earth unhappily for eternity.

Later religious legends continue the theme of eternal wandering, such as the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew. Like it's the worst imaginable torture, living with your deeds forever.I really like these legends as metaphors for violent humanity, murderous and pitiful, bitter and hopeless, covering themselves in sackcloth and ash. And also as metaphors for humanity's 'progress': destructive, genocidal, guilty.