William Kentridge

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William Kentridge (born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955) is a South African artist.

[edit] Early life

Kentridge took a B.A. in Politics and African Studies and then a degree in the Fine Arts. At the beginning of the 1980s he studied mime and theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Between 1975 and 1991 he was acting and directing in Johannesburg’s Junction Avenue Theatre Company. In the 1980s he worked on television films and series as art director.

[edit] Career

In 1989 he created his first animation work, 2nd Greatest City After Paris, in the series Drawings for Projection. In this he used a technique that became a feature of his work: successive charcoal drawings, always on the same sheet of paper, contrary to the traditional animation technique in which each movement is drawn on a separate sheet. In this way Kentridge’s videos and films keep the traces of the previous drawings. His animations deal with political and social issues from a personal and – at times – autobiographical point of view, since the author includes his self-portrait in some of his works.

The political content and the unique techniques of Kentridges' work have propelled him into being one of South Africa’s top artists. Working with what is in essence a very restrictive media, using only charcoal and a touch of blue or red pastel, he has created animations of astounding depth. A theme running through all of his work is his peculiar way of representing South Africa. He does not portray it as the very militant or oppressive place that it was for black people but he doesn’t emphasize the picturesque state of living that white people enjoyed during Apartheid either. Instead he presents a city in which the duality of man is exposed. In his series of nine short films he introduces two characters, namely Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. These characters depict an emotional and political struggle that ultimately reflects the life of many South Africans of the time.

In the introductory note to Felix In Exile Kentridge writes: "In the same way that there is a human act of dismembering the past there is a natural process in the terrain through erosion, growth, dilapidation that also seeks to blot out events. In South Africa this process has other dimensions. The very term ‘new South Africa’ has within it the idea of a painting over the old, the natural process of dismembering, the naturalization of things new." Not only in Felix In Exile but in all his animated works the concept of time and change is a major theme that. The way he does this is through his erasure technique which contrasts with conventional cell animation whose seamlessness de-emphasizes the fact that it is actually a succession of hand-drawn images, This is implemented by drawing a key frame, erasing certain areas of it, then re-drawing them and thus creating the next frame. In this way he is able to create as many frames as he wants based on the original key frame by simply erasing small section of it. Traces of what has been erased are still visible to the viewer and as the films unfold a sense of fading memory or the passing of time and the traces it leaves behind are portrayed by William Kentridge’s technique which grapples with what is not said, what remains suppressed or forgotten but can be easily felt.

In the nine films that follow Soho Eckstein’s life, an increasing vehemency is placed on the evanescing health of the individual and of the contemporary society in South Africa. Conflicts between anarchic and bourgeois individualistic beliefs, which is again a reference to the duality of man, indicate the idea of a social revolution in his works by poetically disfiguring surrounding buildings and landscapes. Kentridge states that although his works does not focus on apartheid in a direct manner, but rather on the contemporary state of Johannesburg, his drawings and films are certainly spawned by, and feed off, the brutalized society it left in its wake. As for more direct political issues, his art presents ambiguity, contradictions, uncompleted movements and uncertain endings which all seem like insignificant subtleties but can be attributed to most of the calamity he presents in his work. In his mixed media triptych "The Boating Party" (1985), based on Renoir's painting of the same name, the Havoc caused by seemingly uninterested aristocrats is perhaps his most severe comment on the state of south Africa during Apartheid. The languid diners sit at ease while the surrounding area is ravaged, torn and burned, an interesting contrast that is well reflected in his style and choice of colours.

"My drawings don't start with a ‘beautiful mark'. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion." – William Kentridge

Kentridge used the same technique in his animations, Sobriety, obesity and growing old (1991), Felix in exile (1994), History of the main complaint (1996), Stereoscope (1999) and Weighing...and Wanting. In 1999 he made Shadow procession with black cardboard cutouts on book pages and maps. He has exhibited at Documenta X, Kassel (1997); the 24th São Paulo Biennial (1998); and the Venice Biennial (1999). He has had personal exhibitions in London, New York, Sydney and Johannesburg, although perhaps his largest exhibition to date was at the Musée d'art Contemporain in Montréal in early 2005.

He thinks about the activity of print making as being about getting the hand to lead the brain, rather than letting the brain govern the hand.


[edit] External links

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