Critical writing and the arts

Dr Tony Monda Art Zone
WRITING is a system of human communication by means of conventionally recognised visible marks linked to a spoken language. For scholars and visual artists, writing is a means to the acquisition and transmission of greater knowledge. It preserves oral history, from which most of our early skilled craftsmen and sculptors learnt their craft.
Since its invention, people have used writing to establish a sense of self and a history. Language is more than a spark of the human spirit by which the essence of a culture reaches into the material world; it is as divine and mysterious as a living organism.

Much of the power of writing comes from its flexibility. Once the preserve of a few professional scribes, the art of writing has become an accepted learned skill which has grown into mass literacy; making it a democratic form of communication. In the 4th century BC Aristotle saw writing as a way to express “affectations of the soul”. If languages disappear, cultures die. We also sacrifice rare indigenous knowledge and the intellectual achievements of millennium if we do not record or write about it.

Although 7 billion people can read and write today, 300 million people, roughly 5 percent of the global population, still retain a strong identity as members of an indigenous culture rooted in history and language and attached by myth and memory to a particular place. For these indigenous people writing and recording their ways of life and culture would indeed revitalise and improve their very lives.

In contemporary Zimbabwe when art is created — it is in the privacy of the artists’ studio. The art critic and historian are usually not present to witness the artists’ creations.

However, when the art displayed in public galleries, the work becomes public property — open to scrutiny, critical appraisal and historical evaluation. As such, writing on the arts becomes the handmaiden of art history; the chronicler of the mind and heart, and the creator of other histories.

For the visual arts and other academic disciplines, creations and manifestations, writing becomes humankind’s most far-reaching, influential creation.
From antiquity the fundamental purpose of writing has remained unchanged; to chronicle life and convey meaning to it, whether passionate, light-hearted or profound.

So powerful is writing that the prophets and evangelists spread the gospels throughout this universe by means of writing. Through writing the beginnings of civilisation, history, cultures and art are defined from the moment civilisations, architects and artists develop it. A written record provides the human details of history, beliefs, names, dates, thoughts, emotions and action.

In Zimbabwe, due to the lack of documentation, historical texts, books and other reference publications, many universities and tertiary institutions have taken to using this writer’s Art Zone column as their source of reference. Exam papers questions are set on what has been recorded and published within these articles, without the institutions’ proper acknowledgement for the use of this writer’s intellectual material which is being improperly used without prior permission or approval.

Institutions should make provision to fund the research they use for teaching within their curricula.
Today for the arts in Zimbabwe, writing’s greatest authority is its ability to move hearts and minds and record life, provide research material for further development and improvement of the arts disciplines and its purveyors. Bearing this in mind Zimbabwe lags light years behind in its efforts to sustain the visual arts due to the dire need of well documented and articulated discourse on the visual arts. The development of the arts in Zimbabwe can only come from a concerted effort to document and record every little development that occurs in the arts thoroughly.

It is estimated that roughly 86 percent of the world’s estimated population can read or write. This makes writing the one of humanities most effective, powerful and relevant mediums of communication and development.

Writing has immortalised artistic genius, politicians, religions, medicine, science and technology, sports people, the spains, musicians, artists and the manyhistories of art. The construction and reclamation of our history renders specialised writing very crucial to the development of contemporary African art and culture, more especially so in post-independent Zimbabwe.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and a Doctorate in Business Administration( DBA) in Post-Colonial Art and Heritage Studies. He holds a Law and Art Diploma from Georgetown University, Washington, DC and worked with WALA (Washington Area Lawyers’ Association). He also studied law and photography at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, USA. He is a practising artist, art critic, musician, author, designer and corporate image consultant.