Painting life and philosophy in Mozambique
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Malangatana
Julio Navarro, ed.
Mkuki na Nyota, Dar es Salaam
2003 (English edition)
Translated by Harriet C. McGuire, Zita C. Nunes and William P. Rougle
224 pages
Review by Barbara Murray
What a joy to open this book and feel the rich uniqueness of Malangatana’s spirit flow over you – the vibrant energy, the colour, the movement, the people and creatures that are undeniably African. Originally published in 1998 in Portuguese by Editorial Caminho (Lisbon), this English translation is a welcome addition to the growing – though still woefully limited – number of monographs on significant contemporary artists in Africa. The great strength of the book is the extensive range of high quality reproductions, which make the breadth and depth of the work by this Mozambican artist available to the world.
Of the 155 reproductions, 93 are in full glorious colour, many on double page spreads. Arranged in chronological order, the works reveal Malangatana’s journey as a painter, from youth, through love, war, prison and adulthood to maturity as the modern master of Mozambican art. The earliest painting reproduced is ‘The Crying Blue Woman’ 1959. Its strong colours, bold figuration and free perspective, applied with loose brushstrokes, pull us deep into the red interior of an emotion-filled narrative. Already there is the detail that fascinates and the positioning of elements and colours that moves the eyefrom one area to another. The early works relate incidents in the personal life of the artist: a love affair, Luisa, a betrayal and a divorce. Through the medium of religion, specifically the symbols and morality of the Catholic church, these personal events become stories of Adam and Eve, universally recognisable tales of love and pain. From this first painting to ‘Untitled’ of 1998, which is the last work reproduced in the book, we can delve into Malangatana’s experiences and interpretations of the central motifs of his life: relationships, the individual in society, the body and the human community.
The early works depict open space, leaving gaps between people and objects. Gradually, in the paintings of 1960 and 61, we begin to see the massing, joining and linking of everything within the frame, expressing that wholeness and interrelationship which was to become one of the distinguishing characteristics of Malangatana’s vision. In ‘The Final Judgement’ 1961, limbs reach across the gaps in space, and streams of blood and tears link the creatures and people. In ‘Zukuta’, the woman stands naked except for her crucifix, completely surrounded by a crowd of heads that press in on her. Evocations of social pressure and the influence of the community appear throughout the works, sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit as in ‘Cell 4 – Expectation’. Whether grasped by claws and teeth in ‘Large Monsters Devouring Small Monsters’ or lovingly mingled in ‘The Flight of the Sacred Doves’, creatures are unavoidably interrelated and inevitably one. Catholicism, sorcery, supper, war, voting, the heart of the crocodile, party time, a magic flute, the family council, nocturnal rituals and the dentist – all are part of the whole. Malangatana’s is the African interpretation of the universal oneness that is found in philosophies from Buddhism to particle physics – the chaotic, organic, abundance of life. His works challenge and interrogate the increasing alienation, mechanisation and isolation in western societies.
"The works reveal a journey as a painter from youth, through love, war, prison and adulthood to maturity as the modern master of Mozambican art"
Despite the wide array of issues to consider, the text in the book is disappointingly limited. Two introductory essays, a brief biography, a chronology of artistic activity and 27 extracts from various articles provide some background. However, only 5 of the extracts appear in English, and this is particularly frustrating when so little has been published on the artist.
In the first of the two essays, the renowned Mozambican architect and artist, Pancho Guedes, recounts his meeting and relationship with Malangatana and provides some insight into the singular development of the artist in the context of colonial Mozambique. Guedes’s carefully precise descriptions of one or two paintings offer a particularly useful approach to the work of Malangatana. By concentrating on the details, the positions, colours, relationships of elements, Guedes steers us away from mythologising and points us to the reality that is Malangatana’s subject. The pen and ink drawing ‘Moving House’, for example, encapsulates communal effort with striking simplicity: everyone helps; all are under one roof. In ‘The Small Dentist’ the artist dramatically illustrates his experience in a dental clinic – the helplessness of the patient, the towering dominance of the dentist, the fearful array of implements; it is a reality some of us can relate to. ‘Forced Labour’ is interesting for its insistence on the individuality of each man within the crowd, the position of the clock, and the premonition in the threat of the workers’ tools. A drawing entitled ‘The Pickaxe’ is a superb study of line and motion.
Many of Malangatana’s works have political resonance and the long civil wars in Mozambique are well represented. ‘Sending off to War’ offers a concentrated depiction of the emotional bonds that are torn when a son, father, brother, lover, husband has to go to fight. The closeness evoked by the suckling infant and his kneeling mother, the woman’s head turned in anguish, the restraining arm of the lover, the village elders looking on, the large crying mouth above the soldier’s head, his staring eyes, the linked lovers’ hands and that vertical, hard, straight, separating gun – each brushstroke a vital part of the reality and emotion experienced.
In 1961 Malangatana was arrested on charges of supporting Frelimo, the Mozambican liberation movement, and spent two years in jail, before being acquitted for lack of evidence. His impressions of incarceration are depicted in black and white drawings. Among them is ‘The Cell for Punishment’, in which the bars become part of his flesh and the tears from the empty eye-sockets form a piercing chain. It expresses an unbearable sadness, and yet conveys deep resilience in the rich curling hair and intricately patterned clothing. From the same period comes ‘The Prisoner’s Dream’, a lyrical hymn to the female body. It is one among the many sensual studies of love reproduced in the book.
Bodies, their physicality, sensuality and sexuality, are the primary source of dynamism in the works. With line and paint, Malangatana describes an extraordinary range of ‘touch’ and different qualities of ‘flesh’: the soft and innocent, the sensuous, the erotic; bodies writhing, entwining, devouring, destroying, embracing; the animal and the human, bird, snake, fish; the child and the elderly, male and female, lizard, vulture and dove, with tongues and teeth, fingers, nails, claws, blood, tears, hair and feathers, bone and breasts and eyes. Bodies form in the spaces left by other bodies. Careful study of the details reveals many pleasures and possibilities. In paintings that contain many bodies and limbs that flow over and around each other, almost always in immediate contact, the eyes create a rhythm that leads us from face to face, registering the individuals within the whole. The ‘look’ often connects directly with the viewer, drawing us into the frame as participators. In ‘The Child, That Hope’, the delicate newborn lies sleeping in his soft green skin while the eyes of the community encircle him, including here as elsewhere, the presence and protective eyes of the bony ancestors. The eyes of ‘Madmen, Do Not Touch Me’ bring us close, very close, to fear – the fear that can be experienced at night on any city street.
The second essay is by Frederico Pereira. While the links it provides to Malangatana’s poetry are important, it is largely an example of common western interpretations of non-western artwork i.e. it emphasises the role of dreams, fetishes and demons, talks of ‘Original Culture’ (the essay is littered with capitals and italics) and of a "primordial psychic mass" which "inhabits" Malangatana. Pereira says that Malangatana has "no private images" and no conscious intention i.e. that the images flow from the collective unconscious of his tribe: "Where did this strange thing come from? What does it mean? It hardly matters." But the meaning does indeed matter. For humanity, it matters as much as the meaning in the work of Hieronymous Bosch or Pablo Picasso. Malangatana is an inventive and creative individual. He is as important in the development of artistic expression in Africa as Picasso is in the development of artistic expression in Europe. Why is it that some people happily accept ‘Adam and Eve’ with its serpent, yet find ‘A Scene of Sorcery’ too "imaginative"? Is ‘The Lost Girl’ so far from Leda and the Swan, or ‘Fortune Telling’ something people in other cultures don’t encounter? Malangatana’s elegantly simple and meaningful ‘Hi there’ is a work of art that Matisse would have enjoyed and respected. Some day the scales will balance, and this book, in presenting a full range of the work by this significant contemporary artist, is a step in that direction.
Barbara Murray is a Zimbabwean artist and critic living in London
