February 16, 2014
At the end of January, on one of those Book Lounge evenings which have become a fixture on the calendars of Capetonians, Brett Murray launched his eponymous monograph to a packed audience, introduced by cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro. Always ready to turn his sardonic eye upon himself, Murray referred to his book as representing ‘nothing more than the end result of a massive mid-life crisis. It was either do this book or get a Harley Davidson and grow a ponytail and trawl the bars on Long Street’.
If you Google Murray’s gallery, the Goodman, the words which come up on the drop down menu, are ‘zuma’ and ‘the spear’ – references to that astonishing moment of cultural conflagration in May 2012 when the wrath of the entire State seemed focused on Brett Murray’s painting of President Zuma, dressed as Lenin, but with a flaccid appendage on display.
A press photo of a painting on his solo show at the Goodman which the artist had intended as a sarcastic visual comment on a morally weak president rapidly went viral, attracting international attention. Locally, the artist found himself under threat of being stoned to death.
Looking back at the entire brouhaha, Murray commented: ‘It’s just a pity that all the work I have produced up to The Spear, and all the work I will make going forward will always be seen in relation to this event.
‘It nearly didn’t see the light of day. I was ambivalent about adding the dick to the painting. I thought then, and still do now, that it might have been a stronger and a more layered work without it’.
It is unlikely that there will ever be again an artwork that will provoke such a storm. Murray’s speech presented his case for making the work in the first place, and for artistic freedom, and dissected in detail the often ludicrous legal proceedings which followed.
You’ll find the full text of Murray’s speech on his website
