Introduction to the symposium: Ivan Vladislavic, writing visual culture, and the globalization of a South African 'artworld'

The introduction to this symposium considers South African author and editor Ivan Vladislavic’s engagement with South African visual culture and the significance of this to his emergence as a “world writer”. The symposium opens with an article by Sean O’Toole, which provides a comprehensive biographical context for Vladislavic’s engagement with art and proposes that his oeuvre be understood as a unique form of “creative criticism”. In their articles, Sue Marais and Jane Poyner offer close readings that draw out the critical role played by the visual cultures of the rarefied art world and everyday life, respectively, in two key texts where this creative criticism is in evidence: “Curiouser” from The Exploded View (2004) and Portrait with Keys (2006). James Graham’s article examines the nature and outcomes of Vladislavic’s work with other writers and visual artists as an editor, providing a theoretical framework that connects the biographical and formal concerns of the other articles by illustrating the cooperative ethos that undergirds Vladislavic’s critical and creative engagement with visual culture. The symposium therefore illustrates Vladislavic’s critical role in the negotiation of globalized artistic and literary fields, and in the constellation of a South African “artworld”.