Volume 41, Number 10 · May 26, 1994
Dog's Bone
By Breyten Breytenbach
I can just about describe myself as an alumnus of the University of South Africa here in Pretoria.[1] Years ago, when I shied my time away in the shade of Maximum Security wing, on a hillock just outside Moustache City, I was graciously allowed to enroll for studies with UNISA. If memory plays me no tricks the subjects were, inter alia, the History of Art, Afrikaans, Philosophy, and Zulu. One was permitted to procure a number of text-books, and of course I promptly abused this privilege. Thus I got hold of Gombrich's Art and Illusion; for me it still is a seminal work when you want to know more about the magic of making paintings, when you recognize the ancient human need for 'writing the self and re-writing the world,' or—as Walter Battiss, the late painter associated with this institute, in whose honor I am now speaking, put it—when you start looking for the mechanisms which will enable you to prove that the metaphysical is sometimes more real than the physical. 'For [according to Battiss] this is what art is all about: to shift rivers and to displace mountains… Life is sculpted time. By living we fashion time.'
Feature, 4184 words
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