Aesthetic Obedience: Gert Swart, Calvin Seerveld and The Peace Tree (1991)
KLC Arts Fellowship
In “The Necessity of Christian Public Artistry” (2000), Calvin Seerveld wrote that “artistry, amateur or professional, must be conceived and produced, performed and contexted with a poignant neighbourly love.”[1] Later, he added that such artistry must “recognize and share imaginatively the suffering of the world neighbours God gave us, never to rest in educated irony, and to move onward step by step in hope doing what is just. Of the three things Scripture says remain – faith, hope and love – the most human of these is hope.”[2] He then turned to three public artworks that he believed fulfilled this calling: Cathedral of Suffering (1994) by Britt Wikström, The Peace Tree (1991) by Gert Swart and friends and Sarah (1956) by Georges Rouault.
More than two years before the birth of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with great hope, would name “the Rainbow Nation,” a multi-racial group of artist-volunteers built the towering, hope-filled Peace Tree, from colourfully painted tyres. All the project materials were donated – by local (white-owned) businesses. Over the Christmas period, it stood, to mixed public delight and disdain, in a place of political and cultural power: the main square of Pietermaritzburg in South Africa, the provincial capital of what is now KwaZulu Natal but was then Natal.
It was a gift offered to the city during a terrible period in South Africa’s history. There was hope in the fact that Nelson Mandela, who had been released from prison in February 1990, was now president of the ANC, and was leading negotiations with President F.W. de Klerk to end apartheid and establish a multiracial government. But in 1991 the achievement of this goal was by no means certain and political tension and violence among rival groups was virulent everywhere, with violence in Natal, to cite Seerveld, “among the worst for trouble spots in the crying beloved country.”[3] Against this furore, The Peace Tree was a determined collaborative call, uttered not in words but through the materials from which it was made, to turn “swords into ploughshares” (Isa 2:4) – during the 1980s, tyres, such as those from which The Peace Tree was constructed, had been used in a barbaric method of extrajudicial torture and execution enacted in South Africa’s black townships. It was known as “necklacing.” People accused of collaborating with the apartheid government would have their chest and arms encased in a gasoline-soaked tyre which would be set alight.
How did Seerveld become aware of The Peace Tree?
Gert Swart: I first met Calvin Seerveld in 1992, when he was a guest speaker at a conference in Potchefstroom University in the Transvaal (now Northwest Province) of South Africa. The conference was optimistically called “Africa Beyond Liberation: Reconciliation, Reformation and Development” and Seerveld’s address was titled “Necessary Art in Africa: A Christian Perspective.” I had been interested in his ideas about art and aesthetics since the publication of Rainbows for the Fallen World in 1980 and was honoured to show him slides of The Peace Tree. Seerveld asked for copies of the slides, and I heard later that he had referred to them in one or more talks. A few years later, when I was preparing the catalogue for the 1997 exhibition “Contemplation: A Body of Work by Gert Swart” at Pietermaritzburg’s Tatham Art Gallery, I asked him to write a short reflection on The Peace Tree. He did so, and this was precious to me. Although I consider The Peace Tree to be one of the most important works of art I’ve had a hand in making, it has not been much studied or written about, although reviews, some positive, others negative, appeared in the local press.[4]
Before we examine Seerveld’s words, what led you to advocate for The Peace Tree’s creation?
GS: The Peace Tree was a crucial project for me during an explosive period when everyone was on edge no matter your race group. From an early age, I had struggled with my position and privilege as a white South African living in a regime where so many people were living under harsh oppression. By 1983, I had already cut short my fine arts training in Durban for ideological reasons and while working full time as an artist had been active as the founding member of the Community Arts Workshop in Durban. We would have 250 students pass through our sessions each week, the majority of whom were disenfranchised black students. In 1990 – my wife and I had now moved to Pietermaritzburg – I ran a sculpture group at Midlands Arts and Crafts Society and started reaching out to other race groups involved in the arts including members of the Community Arts Project, Sawubona Youth Trust, and Christian Outreach. The highlight of our collaboration was the preparation and installation of The Peace Tree. Seerveld would later write that:
The Peace Tree is great artistry with breath-taking relevance. Its workshop, people-friendly feel, quietly shared – without pointing fingers – humbled the memorials to conquest and victory which otherwise fill Pietermaritzburg’s main square. Gert Swart and fellow artists gaily painted tyres and hung them up to convert necklaces of death into festive decorations which herald the coming South Africa where all things can become new. The Peace Tree shows startling metaphoric ingenuity within an idiom known to ordinary people, and its lustre breathes the love of Christ which forgives, beckoning neighbours to joy in their belonging together.[5]
Seerveld makes a significant point here about The Peace Tree as a kind of counter-monument, because it is precisely not advocating for hegemonic cultural pride or superiority. Nor is it accusatory. It stands for the promise of something new and unprecedented, just as Christmas does. This is interesting because an important urgency, for Seerveld, especially in the context of any new approach to nation building, was a “critique of monuments” as these were predominantly conceived.[6]
GS: The other sculptures he was likely referencing were the Statue of Queen Victoria (1887) in front of (what is now) the KwaZulu Natal Legislature Building – Pietermaritzburg was long referred to as “the last outpost of the British Empire” due to its deep colonial roots – and the nearby Anglo-Boer War Memorial (1908). It is also worth adding that The Peace Tree stood in the grounds of the Tatham Art Gallery. The building the gallery occupies was once the Supreme Court; in 1996 it would be declared a national monument. Not surprisingly, white people generally chose to ignore our tree, but black people approached us, saying how pleased they were to have their struggle for freedom represented in the city centre for the first time.
It wasn’t easy getting this symbol of hope erected in that very visible city centre location. Indeed, you were prepared to be civically disobedient to achieve your ends. This aligns with Seerveld’s words in Rainbows for the Fallen World: “I believe passionately in Jesus Christ as the Lord of disobedient modern life, and I believe that my Lord wants us as his people to be busy in the birth of a culture – in daily, long-range cultural obedience – as an ordained way to spread the Good News of his Rule.”[7]
GS: Yes, that’s true. When we first approached the Tatham, we shared that we would create the sculpture from old tyres but didn’t refer to their political significance. Nor did we mention the sculpture’s intended scale of around six metres in height. But word got out. While we were painting the tyres at the Community Arts Project premises in an old Lutheran church, the Tatham’s Educational Officer informed us that the project could no longer go ahead on the Tatham grounds. Instead, we had been given permission to erect the “Christmas tree” in the parking lot of the Solly Kramer Bottle Store (a liquor outlet!) further down the road. We refused this shift in location and threatened to erect our tree with or without permission in the Tatham grounds. This led to an urgent boardroom meeting with the Tatham management and an Alderman from the city council. We were well represented by members from the different arts organizations involved. Later, an urgent city council meeting was held where “our” Alderman presented our case with a few of us also in attendance. After much debate, we were given the official go-ahead, and the council instructed the treasury to take out a R1 million indemnity policy.
But I’d like to add that aesthetic and cultural obedience relates not only to valuing works of art in terms of their creation and installation, but also in terms of their documentation, whether visual or textual, so that their impact can go far beyond the context of their physical display. For instance, if my friend, the artist Zak Benjamin, hadn’t had the presence of mind to photograph the installation of the tree, Seerveld would never have seen images of it and would not have been able to write what he did about it. And we would probably not be discussing it here.
Authored by Jorella Andrews and Gert Swart with Walter Hayn. Images remastered by Laurel Weeks. Gert Swart is a South African sculptor. See his website gertswart.com for details of his work and gertswart.com/the-peace-tree for further documentation about The Peace Tree.
[1] Calvin Seerveld, “The Necessity of Christian Public Artistry,” in Redemptive Art in Society, ed. John H. Kok (Dordt College Press, 2014), 1.
[2] Seerveld, “Necessity,” 24.
[3] Seerveld, “Necessity,” 25. This alludes to Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country (1948).
[4] While we were researching this essay, Bethany G. Meyer, an intern at the Tatham Art Gallery, assisted us by unearthing a wonderful scrapbook with press cuttings relating to The Peace Tree project. With kind permission from the Tatham, these may be viewed on Gert Swart’s website under the “Portfolio/The Peace Tree” tabs.
[5] Calvin Seerveld, “The Peace Tree”, in Contemplation, A Body of Work by Gert Swart (1997), 22.
[6] “We need a critique of monuments”: a comment made by Seerveld in 1969. See Johan Snyman, “Suffering in High and Low Relief: War Memorials and the Moral Imperative,” Pledges of Jubilee: Essays on the Arts and Culture, in Honor of Calvin G. Seerveld, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995, 179.
[7] Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for the Fallen World, Aesthetic life and artistic task [1980] (Toronto Tuppence Press, 2005), 48.