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The Neo-Expressionists | 2019
Dr. Ashraf Jamal
The Neo-Expressionists | 2019 Dr. Ashraf Jamal In this form and medium of art-making that which is given voice are the singularities which make us human. One approaches a painting by Metelerkamp or Selibe as though one were encountering a familiar stranger, for the intimacies their paintings offer are at once recognisable yet surprisingly obtuse. One does not recognise oneself in that encounter; rather, one recognises the other of oneself – one’s doppelganger; one’s more remote being. It is the psychological complexity of Neo-Expressionism, when combined a daring technical flare, which, for Berman, fosters a greater fluidity, rawness, and honesty in art-making. And if, as a movement, Neo-Expressionism signals a return to honesty in South African art, it is because it refuses a literal-minded and opportunistic fixation upon a received oppression. Never reactive, Neo-Expressionism asks us to think and feel the complexity of being human. Its painterly verve is not only a matter of formal significance. Rather, NeoExpressionism’ very painterliness – its refusal to hide its materiality – is also the surest marker of its libertine and libertarian drive. Neo-Expressionism, in other words, is the art of freedom rather than bondage. Which is why, for Berman, it is the art form which will restore to art its sacred, and profane, purpose and occupation.
