Brett Murray, well-known for his sculptures, is a white south-african who began working in art during the later half of the twentieth century. While he predominantly works with steel sculptures, he also does some painting and other artwork. No matter what he is doing, however, he always tries to incorporate a sense of neutrality in his work; He wants people to see and understand others' perspectives and opinions, and to see life as a whole from an outside point of view. He attempts to accomplish this by adding satirical, eye-opening affects to whatever he is doing. Even with good intentions, this still can be misinterpreted for ignorance, or could be disliked by people who are intolerant to new ideas. An example of this can be seen in one of Brett's recent pieces called "The Spear".
The painting is of Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, and exposes him in an indecent manner. While it was only meant to symbolically represent the corruption in government, it caused an uproar around the country. Throughout the turmoil, Brett continued to persist that he express his opinions. The way that Brett Murray communicated these thoughts and opinions was especially useful during apartheid because he could help people to see from a different point of view what it really was. Without his contribution, it might have taken longer to abolish apartheid, and I believe that the world would be lacking his artwork.
People like Brett Murray can teach us about how peoples' opinions may differ, but that we should try to understand and fix everything as a whole. Apartheid, being a time of segregation and racism, was filled with assumptions, corruption, and misinterpretations that could easily have been spotted if there were more people like him. I believe that learning more about Brett and people like him will enable us to help others to be more open minded and tolerant to new points of view, which is essential to fixing problems that we may or may not even know are there. This leads me to recommend his artwork to almost everyone, because it is not only educational and historical, but can also be interesting to look at.
People like Brett Murray can teach us about how peoples' opinions may differ, but that we should try to understand and fix everything as a whole. Apartheid, being a time of segregation and racism, was filled with assumptions, corruption, and misinterpretations that could easily have been spotted if there were more people like him. I believe that learning more about Brett and people like him will enable us to help others to be more open minded and tolerant to new points of view, which is essential to fixing problems that we may or may not even know are there. This leads me to recommend his artwork to almost everyone, because it is not only educational and historical, but can also be interesting to look at.
1A, 12/19/13
Evan P.
Brett Murrary seems like a very unique, expressing artist. I’m fascinated by his urge to create his artwork outside of his point of view but instead of other’s perspectives. One thing that could be improved is possibly including his background information and speaking about how he perused the career of sculpturing because I feel like that would definitely have an impact on his significance as an artist during apartheid. Other than that, you did good on presenting his type of artwork he creates and the meaning behind his masterpieces. -Jade d.
ReplyDelete