South African literature has always been constitutionally focused on the now even when framed as historical or speculative, writes Andrew van der Vlies

The particularities and grit of South Africa's interregnum have, to a large extent, dissipated.

In April 2004, in the lead up to the second instalment of his eponymous new art award, Brett Kebble was at his home away from home, a double-storey Johannesburg residence hidden behind a wall at 65 Fifth Avenue, Inanda. "Art," he said from across a large polished wooden dining table, the room decorated with landscape scenes by long dead white artists, "is what people in a particular environment produce with their hands as a reflection of how they live and see things."

The ongoing privilege of white artists is supported by an elaborate industry founded on the seemingly unshakable hegemony of whiteness, argues Sharlene Khan. The outcome is the perpetuation of a warped system that continues to disadvantage the majority of this country's citizens

The contribution of black woman artists to this country's art history is largely unwritten and for the most part remains critically ignored, writes Gabi Ngcobo, whose contribution highlights the work of Zanele Muholi and Nandipha Mntambo

"As the African predicament becomes ever more complex, the manifestations of the crisis are to be found in a loss of the virtues of curiosity and astonishment at what the (African) world might be," state Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall in a recent essay on African metropolitan modernity.*

"The crux of the exhibition Picasso and Africa is the dialogue between Picasso and the African continent – revealing the way in which this influenced and changed his artistic output, and showing his work in the company of classical African works of art." Laurence Madeline and Marilyn Martin, preface to Picasso and Africa catalogue

There is no fixed point of entry into the subject of the Avant-Gare, and a invitation to engage with its "Ghostly Persistence" in contemporary discourse, to borrow an expression from Hal Foster, prompted two spirited essays - complemented here by an epilogue on language and media.

Formal language has its limits, write Sean O'Toole in an explanatory overview prefacing a series of articles on artistic modernity. This tends to explain why this issue is less about art practice than it is about the language we use to construct, define and record its bearing on our lives

Who are the dealmakers and powerbrokers in South African art? As artists here increasingly gain international recognition, how many of the artists, gallerists, curators, theorists, patrons and public administrators who make up this list are even South African nationals? Why bother with such a list?