The Visionary Animal | An Insight into San Rock Art

‘Visuality’ as a source of understanding San rock art from southern African countries

Public lecture by Renaud Ego

Wednesday 4 April 2018

18:30 – Alliance Française of Cape Town

Thursday 5 April 2018

18:00 – Origins Centre, Wits University

The interpretation of San rock art has been instructed by the two fundamental categories of anthropology: myth, and ritual. These modes of interpretation seek to explain what these images are saying, without asking what they are doing. Overall, these modes of interpretation have not been taking into account the operations of figuration that are present within visual thought. Even though San rock art incorporates elements designated by these two categories, it functions neither as mythological narrative, nor as ritualistic dance; it is quite simply not its visual purpose.

It is therefore important to reposition the study of San rock art within the framework of visual anthropology which is founded on a relational analysis of these three fundamental modes of figuration: narration, dance and painting. Talking does not speak to painting; this is why [painting] is something completely different – consisting of lines and colours. As such, we may begin to release these images of their unique identity, which, even though they possess relative autonomy within the modes of figuration of a given culture, they nevertheless have an irreducible singularity within the visual thinking that informs them. Their symbolic impact is drawn from processes of figuration that are consubstantial to their medium.

Paintings operate through the work that was put into their production, and their meaning is fully incorporated into their visual form. To illustrate this point of view, which is the core of the collection of essays, L’animal voyant (The visionary animal), various examples will be discussed, particularly themes such as rain animals, and therianthropes conflating human and animal bodies.

Renaud Ego lives and works in Paris. He is a French poet, novelist and essayist, notably in the fields of literature and art. Beside his literary works (poetry and novels), his essays and theoretical work are concerned with a question pertaining both to literature and visual arts, “What is an image?” For the last 20 years, a considerable part of his research work has been dedicated to studying southern African rock art.  Renaud Ego published a first monography (in French) entitled “San, art rupestre d’Afrique australe  (San, rock art from southern African countries) in 2000, and a second book, L’Animal voyant, in 2015, that will be soon published in English under the title The Visionary Animal. His last essay, Le Geste du regard, deals with the birth of the image in Palaeolithical art in Europe.