Given the need to construct a national archive, this work is a stellar example of what local productions (researching, writing, publishing) can mean as we tell our own stories, especially against the broader movement for a more inclusive, international art history that recognises and celebrates the contributions made in South Africa.

This project is the first to bring together such a wide range of local writers and perspectives. Project initiator and director Gavin Jantjes is a South African artist currently based at Norway’s National Museum. Pallo Jordan, former Minister of Arts and Culture, supported the idea with seed funding to commission and develop the manuscript. Jantjes, together with editor-in-chief, Mario Pissarra of Africa South Arts Initiative (ASAI), commissioned and oversaw the exciting process of writing the book.

Visual Century Volume 1: 1907–1948
Volume one begins after the South African (Anglo-Boer) War, at a time when efforts were being made to unify the white "races," and ends with the coming to power of the Afrikaner nationalists. This period encompasses two world wars, the steady erosion of the rights of black South Africans, and the rise of organized black South African resistance to white rule. In terms of art history, it begins with the appropriation of South African art into the lexicon of Western modernism, and ends with growing evidence of the magnetism of European and North American art production for South African artists, white and black.

This volume provides critical perspectives on the ideological and institutional frameworks for white and black artists of the period, and the art they produced. Discussions of public art and architecture, traditionalist African art, and Western style painting and sculpture are complemented with consideration of the roles played by museums, art education, art societies and exhibitions, art historical writing and patronage. Fresh perspectives on the art of the first half of the twentieth century highlight complexities that still resonate today.

Visual Century Volume 2: 1945–1976
Between the end of the Second World War and the Soweto uprisings, South Africa was increasingly isolated from the international world as a result of its policies of racial discrimination and extreme social engineering. Threatened by internal revolt and international pressure against a backdrop of decolonization and the Cold War, the apartheid state adopted increasingly severe repressive measures, with significant consequences for the art of the period, as artists were harassed, banned, excluded from institutions and censored.

This volume addresses the fertile cultural ambivalences of this period. These include the relationship between Afrikaner nationalism and the emergence of an "official" South African art, which would come to be challenged by the steady increase in the number of modern black artists and new informal art centers. The impact of white patronage, the responses of migrant workers to rapid change, and artists’ responses to the repressive political climate of apartheid, as well as to emerging black nationalism, are all canvassed. The allure and impact of European and American art, along with modernist discourses, for South African artists both at home and in exile, not least the struggles of black and white artists to define an African identity, are also explored.

Visual Century Volume 3: 1973–1992
Bracketed by porous transitional moments in the early 1970s and 1990s, this volume covers a period characterized by a deepening of the struggle for democracy, at a time when historical preoccupations with race were increasingly intertwined with burgeoning debates on class and gender. Unprecedented internal and external pressure resulted in both heightened introspection and action in and through the visual arts.

The essays in this volume address a multiplicity of ways in which artists responded directly and indirectly to the chall