(RSS)William Kentridge, virtuoso artist
William Kentridge’s virtuosity is unmistakable. His visual art spans across traditional media and techniques such as printmaking and drawing, to pioneering short movies and celebrated success - notably from as early as the 1980’s - in the challenging field of animation and new media.
William Kentridge's art
His work consistently offers a depth of engagement, a wealth of interpretability and unmistakable aesthetic integrity. William Kentridge's art can perhaps be best described as the art of motivity, energetic movement, both subtly and graphically, through social and political issues, an evocative individual - occasionally autobiographical – fusion of experience, fiction and imagination.
He has achieved distinction in the international art arena, from critics, academia, art dealers and the public alike and has won prestigious international awards such as the Goslar Kaisserring Award placing him in the company of artists of the stature of Henry Moore, Max Ernst, Cindy Sherman. As well as appealing to serious art connoisseurs, his work is accessible and popular in more mainstream genres as proven by The Loerie award he received from the South African marketing industry for his Another Country, animated music video for Mango groove. He has exhibited widely and is featured in a large number of publications.
All the publicity notwithstanding there seems to remain an air of mystery, a kind of special artistic glamour, around the personage and work of William Kentridge.
Background and History
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955. He took a B.A. in Politics and African Studies and then a degree in the Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. He subsequently studied mime and theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
From 1975 to 1991 he acted in - and directed the Junction Avenue Theatre Company. He subsequently also did work on television films and series as art director before the release? in 1989 of his first fine art animation. This piece, 2nd greatest city after Paris, forms part of the celebrated series Drawings for projection.
He employed a technique consisting of drawing successive images on the same sheet of paper which became a thallmark of his anmation work. This contrast was in contrast with the conveventional approach to animation at the time, namely cell-animation in which each frame of the animation is a separate drawing. This powerfully conveys something of the theme of chaos, complexity, convergence of boundaries and dissolution of the finite which recurs in much of his work. Kentridge’s videos and films keep the traces of the previous drawings simultaneously subtly accentuating visual remnants of the creative process while evoking a dream-like quality, again in contrast to animation conventions at the time’s concern with establishing ‘suspense of disbelief’ through the pursuit of photographic and naturalistic realism.
His animations, Sobriety, obesity and growing old (1991), Felix in exile (1994), History of the main complaint (1996) and Stereoscope (1999) all use similar techniques. In 1999 he made Shadow procession with black cardboard cutouts on book pages and maps.
He has exhibited at X Documenta, 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.
Offering a glimps into his relationship to art, in a discussion about the activity of printmaking Kentridge describes it as being about getting the hand to lead the brain, rather than letting the brain govern the hand.
Keywords (links): William Kentridge, Drawing, Printmaking, Short Movies, Animation, Biography, Fine Art, South African, Video.