On Ivan Vladislavic on Willem Boshof on conceptual art

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Periodical article

Title:	On Ivan Vladislavic on Willem Boshof on conceptual art
Author:	Murray, Sally-Ann
Year:	2008
Periodical:	Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume:	20
Issue:	1
Pages:	16-37
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	prose arts
About person:	Ivan Vladislavic (1957-)
Abstract:	This paper uses 'Willem Boshoff' (2005), a monograph by Ivan Vladislavic (South Africa), as a means to explore the idea of art in relation to Vladislavic's prose. The author attends to the representation of art 'in' a number of his works, and refers to his increasing body of critical work 'on' art, but the emphasis is on investigating his writing 'as' art. To this end, the author acknowledges existing critical observations concerning Vladislavic's fiction and essays, among them his efforts to re-spatialize and expand forms of English in the local context, and his treatment of words as if they possess all the materiality of sculptural 'ready-mades'. However, what the author proposes is more dramatic: extrapolating from Vladislavic's claims for Boshoff as a visual artist who is fundamentally a writer, and reading in Vladislavics critical commentary on a major South African artist the traces of his own artistic interests as a writer, she suggests that Ivan Vladislavic, working in prose, is himself a conceptual artist. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract]