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274 ChApter 11 Frank McEwen and Joram Mariga: Patron and Artist in the Rhodesian Workshop School Setting, Zimbabwe elizabeth morton The Rhodesian Workshop School, in existence from the late 1950s until 1973, is one of the best-known African workshops. Its key patron, the Britishborn aesthete Frank McEwen, is a prominent figure in African art history who has been credited with spurring the growth of stone sculpture in Zimbabwe. With a host of talented artists—such as Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Joseph Ndandarika, Sylvester Mubayi, Henry Munyaradzi, and Joram Mariga— McEwen was able to mount successful international exhibitions in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere. McEwen’s departure from Rhodesia in 1973 (combined with the war of independence in the 1970s) left stone sculpture moribund for some years, nevertheless the workshop artists and their successors regained their momentum in the 1980s and 1990s. For the last twenty years Zimbabwean sculptors have ranked among the finest in the world. Although there is a considerable body of work dealing with McEwen and his workshop, most notably Ben Joosten’s recent monograph (2001), surprisingly little has been written about the dynamics of the Rhodesian Workshop School. In fact, most of the scholars investigating the material have relied heavily on McEwen’s own descriptions and have not looked beneath the surface to examine the relationships among McEwen and his artists. The result is that they have depended on his chronology as well as his version of events, both of which are not entirely accurate in many cases. An often tense dialectic ran through the workshop. on the one hand there were McEwen’s expectations of what kind of people his artists should be and how they should carve. From the artists’ perspective, the problem was how to obtain McEwen’s support even if they did not fit into his preferred profile. Many modern African workshop patrons have sought to control the style, reception, and marketing of their artists, tending to prefer rural teenage boys or illiterate, uneducated men whom they could train from scratch. Not only could their training be controlled, but so could their access to other media FrAnk mCewen And JorAm mArIgA 275 and forms of art. on the face of it, McEwen’s workshop was much different from the closed environments of Le Hangar or Cyrene. Although he claimed to promote untrained peasants, McEwen had by far the best-educated artists of any of the workshop patrons. His artists were also the most independent, in the sense that many had alternative forms of employment and thus could support themselves without his goodwill. Joram Mariga’s involvement in McEwen’s workshop, between 1962 and 1969, is a story that is unique in the African workshop setting. As the individual who rediscovered Rhodesia’s long-sought soapstone deposits, he triggered the transition at the workshop from painting to stone sculpture. Mariga, who learned much from McEwen and who adopted many of his ideas, was nevertheless an intellectual in his own right who had his own artistic philosophy. Although many African workshop artists chafed under their patrons’ control, Mariga was the only one who contested his patron’s interpretation of what the workshop’s art meant. This intellectual disagreement set the stage for McEwen’s cruel betrayal of Mariga in 1969—which effectively derailed the latter’s sculpting career for two decades. McEwen and the Formation of the Workshop School Frank McEwen is a well-known figure in African art history and ranks as one of the foremost patrons of modern black artists. Although British by birth, he spent much of his life in France, where he had attended art school and became a mover and shaker in the postwar art world. By the mid-1950s, however , he grew disillusioned with newer trends in Western art, such as abstraction , as well as with newer art schools that prioritized technique over creativity. Hence, he jumped at the opportunity to become the founding director of the new Rhodesian National Gallery, a job he held from 1957 until 1973. His goal from the start was to leave behind the increasingly sterile Western artworld and to use his gallery to promote vibrant new forms of African art. Although McEwen was an extremely dynamic director with tremendous networking ability, his promotion of art was always hampered and shaped by the many institutional liabilities that he faced. His major audience, the white Rhodesian bourgeoisie, was extremely racist and in no way predisposed to supporting modern black art. This audience, which McEwen publicly...

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