William Kentridge
"Art must defend the uncertain"
“William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows,” is a new show which opened recently at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles and prompted me to refresh this resource on Kentridge.
Contemporary South African artist William Kentridge is a fascinating artist to introduce to students for his versatality and inventiveness, and a source of inspiration/ideas for teachers: His studio practice is collaborative and expansive, spanning drawing, filmmaking, printmaking, sculpture, hand-drawn animation, tapestry, theater, opera, and installation. Many of the materials he works with are simple, inexpensive and low tech; for example, book pages, newspaper, cardboard, charcoal and india ink.
Poetic and Political
Kentridge transforms sobering political and historical events into powerful personal allegories and his subject matter often encompasses bigger questions of freedom and loss. Kentridge's tendencies towards poetic, philosophical, and theatrical ways of thinking are all stronger than any specific political mindset. His work explores things like the slipperiness of time, self, shadows, uncertainty, incompleteness, possibility... he is constantly transforming states, dismantling stories and assumptions about violence, injustice, segregation and racism, creating new narratives at "the edge of coherence".
ToK Reflection: Art and Social Issues
- In what ways can an artist respond to social injustice?
- Should an artist be political?
- How can an artist express rage or outrage?
- Is bearing witness taking a position?
- What example of injustice do you feel strongly about in the world today?
- Do you want art to have a more political or poetic impact?
- Can art be both?
"The edge of coherence, the most interesting state for art to be in"
What is it about shadows that captivates you?
"When you see a shadow, you understand you’re seeing a very limited part and you have to fill in the rest yourself.(W.K)
Words appear in your work as intertitles, thought bubbles, alerts, internal captions. How do you approach the use of text?
"Some of the phrases are very clear, but a lot of them are kind of ambiguous. You’re not quite sure what they might mean. You have the sense a phrase had a meaning in its original state, but that’s been taken away, so it’s a riddle that doesn’t quite have a solution. It’s at the edge of coherence. That, for me, is the most interesting state for a work of art to be in. It’s not random, but it’s not all explained. (W.K)[1]
Kentridge's drawing animation technique
William Kentridge uses drawings to create films. In his works, unlike in traditional animation that employs multiple drawings to denote change and movement, Kentridge erases and alters a single, stable drawing while recording the changes with stop-motion camera work. He draws then films, makes erasures and changes, and films it again. He continues this process recording each change to the drawing with a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. Watch this video to see how it works.
Studio Response
Select an article or story from the news that provoked a strong personal reaction in you. Find some additional information about the events that took place (research first!)
Re-present an aspect of the news story as if you were a participant or witness. You can create a a single image, a story board or a short animation. What is a story board?
A storyboard is a graphic representation of how your video will unfold, shot by shot. It's made up of a number of squares with illustrations or pictures representing each shot, with notes about what's going on in the scene and what's being said in the script during that shot
Want to try your hand at a charcoal drawing animation? With charcoal and a kneaded rubber eraser create a sequence in a single drawing as shown in the video above. Draw one image first, then partially erase and superimpose another. Work the various images together as if looking through time and space. Details for this assignment are coming soon in a new Art Seed: Draw, Record, Erase, Record
Additional Resources
MOMA William Kentridge: Five Themes
Kentridge on the The Art21 website
and these related pages
Drawing Animation
A simple animation can be created with a series of stills: photos or drawings, using a smart phone, or with i-movie or other computer software programs.Remember flipbooks? Its the same general idea, only...
Seed: Bearing Witness
There are many forms of social injustice, racism, religious persecution, sexual abuse, violence, environmental damage, sadly the list goes on. Whatever topic speaks strongly to you, you can find a meaningful...
Kentridge on thinking like an artist
if you have the time to watch William Kentridge's six lessons on drawing (really a lesson on his way of thinking) approx an hour each, this one, Lesson Five is especially worth a listen, you can skip the intro and start 6 minutes in.
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Footnotes
- ^ ARTICLE BY LEAH OLLMAN in the LA TimesDEC. 2, 2022 https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-12-02/william-kentridge-artist-opera-the-broad
