Speaking of memories and their retrieval into a comtemporary society, fraught
with things like reproductions of every possible permutation, and taking up
a thread from Bayla, what about Holocaust memorials - do they have a place
in aesthetic or didactic culture or is it more of an obscene fascination
for pictures at an execution?  Perhaps the aesthetic value of things like
this is not so much its veracity as the qualities which such exhibitions
embody - whether it be to force a point home or to sensitively educate the
ones who survived by proxy, as it were?
 
Besides which can museums of this nature, specifically the ones on site, in
Poland and thereabouts, not be considered as prison memorials in a sense?
 
In a different vein of thought altogether, this original-reproduction dis-
cussion doesnt seem to look at the perhaps dying art of editioning prints
or books.  In this case, each produced item is at the same time an original
and an identical duplicate.  Or is printmaking just an animal that cannot
really be classified?
 
Then again, at another tangent, our University Art Gallery boasts a collection
of indigenous craft, some of which has been made specifically to be exhibited.
As a matter of fact, to a very large extent, the vast majority of currently
produced and sold indigenous craft is made specifically for this purpose.
Ultimately, a lot of it is of bad quality, but there are a fair amount of
locally produced gems, which are functional objects, like Milk Pots and beer
distillation vessels - I would also say that contemporary house painting by
groups such as the Venda people, is done for exhibitory reasons as well as
others - I dont know if anyone out there is aware of the blossoming of
graffiti in this country, since the end of apartheid.  If there is anyone
who may be interested in this aspect of "ethnic" culture, you may be
interested in getting hold of "Art and Ambiguity", an exhibition catalogue
from the Johannesburg Art Gallery, from 1992, and Nettleton and Hammond-
Tooke's  "African Art in South Africa".
 
Robyn Sassen
University of the witwatersrand
Johannesburg
South AFrica