Those of us who know people who know people (even though we may not, in effect, be people ourselves) know that Cape Town is literally crawling with art celebrities right now. Well okay, there is Marlene Dumas, but she's so famous that she has the effect of about ten people. All of whom are suddenly refreshing our memories about how much we've always loved painting. And then there's the critics' conference, which makes us feel that art itself is a kind of celebrity, it's getting so much attention. And then there's the sudden public unveiling of Robert Sloon, who turns out to be from Trinidad. It's all very disorienting, but exciting too, and he's very very funny and claims to be Ed even though we know Ed is from Bloemfontein.

Maybe it was this general euphoria which caused me to talk to a total stranger hanging out in Campus Art & Hardware, boldly and irrelevantly informing him that he looked like this artist guy I'd once seen a photo of called Moshekwa Langa. He said, “I am Moshekwa Langa.” I nearly said, “Yeah, right, and I'm Marlene Dumas,” until it occurred to me that he may be serious.

Now I must say I haven't ever spoken to a celebrity before. I've seen Dennis Hopper eating lunch on a film set, but he was about 30 metres away and wearing a wig, and I've seen the guy with the huge arms from Hotel Rwanda eating a muffin in Vida e Cafe, but that's it. So I didn't know what to say. I told Moshekwa I liked his paintings, and hoped he believed me it was true (it really is) and I wasn't just doing mindless garbled celebrity-induced babbling.

He was, understandably, perfectly calm, and shook my hand and asked what my name was, and when I told him, he knew I wrote for Artheat! Let me put that another way: MOSHEKWA LANGA READS ARTHEAT! Say what you like about Artheat, say it's crap, biased, parochial, pretentious, white, wrong, up it's own arse, and run by a criminal-looking fellow from Trinidad, but Moshekwa Langa reads it! That made me feel good. Artheat is here and it's doing something, and in the hazardous, poverty stricken, chaotic, fragmented minefield that is African art criticism, that's an achievement.

Labels: artheat, celebs