Article
Inconstant memory
Born in Johannesburg in 1955, William Kentridge has become well known all over the world since the 80s for his animated films, which are hand-drawn and feature South African landscape ruined by mining. This serves to symbolise the processes of forgetting and remembering in the wake of apartheid. Since 1992 he has also worked with the Handspring Puppet Company, which uses plays like Woyzeck, Faust and King Ubu for reflecting on colonialism.
Charcoal and a rubber are essential to William Kentridge, born in Johannesburg in 1955 and now a draughtsman and film director. His work consists in drawing and erasing: in drawing and erasing contours, and in deepening black and rubbing highlights in. On his papers, there are continual changes recorded by a camera. Some phases remain as drawings, but most of them vanish again before the completion of his films, which are 4 or 8 minutes long.
A man shaving looks at himself in the mirror and sees his face slip away. A cat changes into a telephone, a head into a rock, a brain into a cave. A weeping man drowns a house and sweeps a landscape away with his tears. X-rays reveal vague structures within the darkness of the body, out of which emerges a road on which an accident happens and the dead are borne away. Hills rise out of the landscape, dead bodies melt into the earth, and craters burst open. No images can be relied on to show lasting truths, yet the changes seem to express a search for them. The fleeting is an uncertain foundation, but there seems to be none better.
With lines in black charcoal William Kentridge ploughs through South Africa’s past. The picture-stories are set in the landscape round Johannesburg, South Africa’s first industrial centre, which is marked by exploitation of the earth, mines, undulating hills and sudden disused and waste areas. ‘Drawing is not unlike the structure and evolution of the South African landscape,’ said Kentridge in a talk with Okwui Enzewor (cited by Enwezor, Okwui in Truth and Responsibility. A Talk with William Kentridge, in Parquet 54, 1998/99).
The process of landscape-erosion, in which traces of exploitation are continually shifted and wiped away, has been transformed by Kentridge in his 9 films made since 1989 into impressive images for wavering between forgetting and remembering. They accompany the end of the apartheid system, the first elections and the work of Truth and Reconciliation Commission in trying to show the complex tensions in a postcolonial memory.
Already in the first of his films: ‘Johannesburg, 2nd great City after Paris’ (1989) Kentridge developed his two figures Felix Teitlebaum and Soho Eckstein, whose fortunes he has now been chartiing for years. Soho Eckstein is always in a pinstriped suit and is a mine owner and building boss, an exploiter who poses as a philanthropist and is concerned in ‘Monument’ (1990) to have a monument raised to himself. He seems to be heading for no good end, as his technology, for instance, turns against him. In ‘Mine’ (1991), ticker-tape bearing messages from the stock-exchange winds round him like a python. He becomes a sick unconscious man, out of whose body in ‘History of the Main Complaint’ (1996) rise images of fear and guilt. In Stereoscope (1998/99) he is taken captive by blue lines, which come out of telephones, tape-recorders, telegraph wires and loudspeakers, pierce walls and finally penetrate the whole city.
Felix Teitlebaum, though, is naked, sympathetic, empathetic, romantic and consults the planets rather than stock-exchange reports (‘Felix in Exile’, 1994). He stands alone in seeing demonstrations of the exploited, the landscape strewn with corpses, protesters beaten and others killed. William Kentridge comments: ‘In starting on films, I viewed them (Felix and Soho) as opponents. One of them looked rather like me, and the other like a typical industrialist from German expressionism of the 20s. But then I realised that he looked even more like my grandfather.’ Their antagonism is based on their conflicting aims. Soho’s motto is ‘Grab hold of the rudder!’, and Felix’s is ‘Empathise with the suffering and pain around you!’ These two aims, says William Kentridge, may be taken to be ‘two elements of South African white or Jewish life. But I am more inclined to believe that they are two ways in which I perceive them.’ (ibid)
Early paintings by William Kentridge show the influence of the German expressionist painter Max Beckmann, as do the ambience and style of his drawings. In the 20s, expressionism came to the fore in both painting and filming, especially in Germany. Many of the film-drawings – like those of human features looming out of the depths of images, of crowds crushed in a street-gully, and especially those of the greedy capitalist Soho Eckstein – borrow the imagery of the class struggle, but this imagery’s billboard quality and pathos, used formerly for supporting a certain class, become in Kentridge’s hands more ambivalent. While his character wavers between Soho and Felix, his images waver between accusation and sympathy.
Before making animated films William Kentridge worked as an art director and prop-man for films and studied drama in Paris. Since 1992 he has used his experiences with various media in working with the Handpuppet Spring Company, which he directs and for which he develops film images for multimedia settings. He has introduced his own style of puppets, which are large, carved from wood, angular and rough and stand next to the puppeteers on stage. With all his productions – ‘Woyzeck on the Highveld’ (1992), ‘Faustus in Africa!’ (1995), ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ (1997), ‘Ritorno d`Ulisse’ (1998) and ‘zeno at 4am’ (2001) – he has travelled to Europe and the USA.
Materials from the history of European literature and music are thus put explicitly into a post-colonial context. William Kentridge not only changes the setting into a South African landscape, in which poor Woyzeck is misused for inhuman experiments, or Faust makes a pact with the devil; he also explores to what extent these works reflected, veiled or furthered the colonial relationships of their time. Hence Alfred Jarry’s theatre of the absurd with King Ubu can be a means to keep at a tolerable distance the real horror which the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has to face.
Kentridge’s projects, not only his theatrical ones, link various historical periods and levels. Even the medium of hand-drawn films, in which a week of work leads to 20 seconds of film, is due to the uneven growth of modernism. Kentridge’s emphatic ‘handwriting’ is unusual in animated films and would be unusual even in the field of graphic design. The music accompanying the films, as in the days silent films, increases the feeling of looking over one’s shoulder for a lost Eden. Kentridge’s films, made with 16 and 35 mm cameras, have also been issued by him as videos and laser-discs. They show him to be an artist seeking a place of his own among the eras and genres.
A man shaving looks at himself in the mirror and sees his face slip away. A cat changes into a telephone, a head into a rock, a brain into a cave. A weeping man drowns a house and sweeps a landscape away with his tears. X-rays reveal vague structures within the darkness of the body, out of which emerges a road on which an accident happens and the dead are borne away. Hills rise out of the landscape, dead bodies melt into the earth, and craters burst open. No images can be relied on to show lasting truths, yet the changes seem to express a search for them. The fleeting is an uncertain foundation, but there seems to be none better.
With lines in black charcoal William Kentridge ploughs through South Africa’s past. The picture-stories are set in the landscape round Johannesburg, South Africa’s first industrial centre, which is marked by exploitation of the earth, mines, undulating hills and sudden disused and waste areas. ‘Drawing is not unlike the structure and evolution of the South African landscape,’ said Kentridge in a talk with Okwui Enzewor (cited by Enwezor, Okwui in Truth and Responsibility. A Talk with William Kentridge, in Parquet 54, 1998/99).
The process of landscape-erosion, in which traces of exploitation are continually shifted and wiped away, has been transformed by Kentridge in his 9 films made since 1989 into impressive images for wavering between forgetting and remembering. They accompany the end of the apartheid system, the first elections and the work of Truth and Reconciliation Commission in trying to show the complex tensions in a postcolonial memory.
Already in the first of his films: ‘Johannesburg, 2nd great City after Paris’ (1989) Kentridge developed his two figures Felix Teitlebaum and Soho Eckstein, whose fortunes he has now been chartiing for years. Soho Eckstein is always in a pinstriped suit and is a mine owner and building boss, an exploiter who poses as a philanthropist and is concerned in ‘Monument’ (1990) to have a monument raised to himself. He seems to be heading for no good end, as his technology, for instance, turns against him. In ‘Mine’ (1991), ticker-tape bearing messages from the stock-exchange winds round him like a python. He becomes a sick unconscious man, out of whose body in ‘History of the Main Complaint’ (1996) rise images of fear and guilt. In Stereoscope (1998/99) he is taken captive by blue lines, which come out of telephones, tape-recorders, telegraph wires and loudspeakers, pierce walls and finally penetrate the whole city.
Felix Teitlebaum, though, is naked, sympathetic, empathetic, romantic and consults the planets rather than stock-exchange reports (‘Felix in Exile’, 1994). He stands alone in seeing demonstrations of the exploited, the landscape strewn with corpses, protesters beaten and others killed. William Kentridge comments: ‘In starting on films, I viewed them (Felix and Soho) as opponents. One of them looked rather like me, and the other like a typical industrialist from German expressionism of the 20s. But then I realised that he looked even more like my grandfather.’ Their antagonism is based on their conflicting aims. Soho’s motto is ‘Grab hold of the rudder!’, and Felix’s is ‘Empathise with the suffering and pain around you!’ These two aims, says William Kentridge, may be taken to be ‘two elements of South African white or Jewish life. But I am more inclined to believe that they are two ways in which I perceive them.’ (ibid)
Early paintings by William Kentridge show the influence of the German expressionist painter Max Beckmann, as do the ambience and style of his drawings. In the 20s, expressionism came to the fore in both painting and filming, especially in Germany. Many of the film-drawings – like those of human features looming out of the depths of images, of crowds crushed in a street-gully, and especially those of the greedy capitalist Soho Eckstein – borrow the imagery of the class struggle, but this imagery’s billboard quality and pathos, used formerly for supporting a certain class, become in Kentridge’s hands more ambivalent. While his character wavers between Soho and Felix, his images waver between accusation and sympathy.
Before making animated films William Kentridge worked as an art director and prop-man for films and studied drama in Paris. Since 1992 he has used his experiences with various media in working with the Handpuppet Spring Company, which he directs and for which he develops film images for multimedia settings. He has introduced his own style of puppets, which are large, carved from wood, angular and rough and stand next to the puppeteers on stage. With all his productions – ‘Woyzeck on the Highveld’ (1992), ‘Faustus in Africa!’ (1995), ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ (1997), ‘Ritorno d`Ulisse’ (1998) and ‘zeno at 4am’ (2001) – he has travelled to Europe and the USA.
Materials from the history of European literature and music are thus put explicitly into a post-colonial context. William Kentridge not only changes the setting into a South African landscape, in which poor Woyzeck is misused for inhuman experiments, or Faust makes a pact with the devil; he also explores to what extent these works reflected, veiled or furthered the colonial relationships of their time. Hence Alfred Jarry’s theatre of the absurd with King Ubu can be a means to keep at a tolerable distance the real horror which the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has to face.
Kentridge’s projects, not only his theatrical ones, link various historical periods and levels. Even the medium of hand-drawn films, in which a week of work leads to 20 seconds of film, is due to the uneven growth of modernism. Kentridge’s emphatic ‘handwriting’ is unusual in animated films and would be unusual even in the field of graphic design. The music accompanying the films, as in the days silent films, increases the feeling of looking over one’s shoulder for a lost Eden. Kentridge’s films, made with 16 and 35 mm cameras, have also been issued by him as videos and laser-discs. They show him to be an artist seeking a place of his own among the eras and genres.
Author: Katrin Bettina Müller
Bio
William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg. Since his parents were lawyers who defended black demonstrators, he learned as a child to question distinctions made in the apartheid system and saw himself as belonging to a left-wing fringe group. In 1976 he finished courses in politics and African studies, then he studied art and soon taught design-printing. At this time he also began working as a set designer for film productions. In 1981-2 he studied drama at the École Jacques LeCoq in Paris, then at the end of the 70s he began exhibiting in Johannesburg. His animated films combine storytelling and draughtsmanship and have been shown since the start of the 90s at many exhibitions and festivals. He has also been travelling since 1992 as a director of the Handpuppet Spring Company.
Works
Tide Table (2003) and Learning the Flute (2003)
Exhibition / Installation,
2004
Solo exhibition, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, USA
Ubu and the Truth Commission
Production / Performance,
2003
WITH THE HANDPUPPET SPRING COMPANY
Zeno at 4am
Production / Performance,
2003
WITH THE HANDPUPPET SPRING COMPANY
Medicine Chest
Film / TV,
2001
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Exhibition / Installation,
2001
Solo Exhibit, Washington DC, USA
New Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition / Installation,
2001
Solo Exhibit, New York, USA
William Kentridge, Recent Editions
Exhibition / Installation,
2001
Solo Exhibit, Robert Brown Gallery, Washington DC, USA
The Short Century
Exhibition / Installation,
2001
Group Exhibition, Museum Villa Stuck, München + House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany + Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA
The Self Is Something Else
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany
A Double View
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
Kwangju Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, Korea
3 rd Shanghai Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, China
7th Havanna Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, Cuba
Das Lied von der Erde
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Group Exhibit, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
Anndale Galleries
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Solo Exhibit, Sydney, Australia
Stephen Friedman Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Solo Exhibit, London, Great Britain
Marian Goodman Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Solo Exhibit, New York, USA
Vertical Paintings
Exhibition / Installation,
2000
Solo Exhibit, P.S.1, New York, USA
48th Biennale Venice
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Group Exhibit, D’Apertutto, Italy
6th Biennial Istanbul
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Group Exhibit, Turkey
Life Cycles
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Group Exhibit, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany
Kunstwelten im Dialog
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Group Exhibition, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany
Tachikawa Arts Festival
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Group Exhibition, Japan
Projects 68: William Kentridge
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Museu d’Arte Contemporani de Barcelona
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibition, Spain
Serpentine Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, London, Great Britain
La Vielle Charité
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, Marseille, France
Neue Galerie Graz
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, Graz, Austria
Marian Goodman Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, Paris, France
Goodman Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
1999
Solo Exhibit, Johannesburg, South Africa
Weighing and Wanting
Film / TV,
1998
Ritorno d’Ulisse
Production / Performance,
1998
WITH THE HANDPUPPET SPRING COMPANY
Nominee for Hugo Boss Prize
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Group Exhibit, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
XXIV Bienal de Sao Paulo
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Group Exhibit, Brasilia
The Drawing Centre
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Solo Exhibit, New York, USA
Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Solo Exhibit, San Diego, USA
Stephen Friedman Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Solo Exhibit, London, Great Britain
Palais des Beaux Arts
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Solo Exhibit, Brussel, Belgium
Kunstverein München
Exhibition / Installation,
1998
Solo Exhibit, Germany
Stereoscope
Film / TV,
1998
1998-9
Ubu tells the Truth
Film / TV,
1997
Sexta Bienal de La Habana
Exhibition / Installation,
1997
Group Exhibit, Cuba
2nd Johannesburg Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
1997
Group Exhibit, South Africa
Applied Drawings
Exhibition / Installation,
1997
Solo Exhibit, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
History of the Main Complaint
Film / TV,
1996
10th Sydney Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
1996
Group Exhibit, Australia
Colours: Art from South Africa
Exhibition / Installation,
1996
Group Exhibit, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany
Eidophusikon
Exhibition / Installation,
1996
Solo Exhibit, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia
Faustus in Africa!
Production / Performance,
1995
WITH THE HANDPUPPET SPRING COMPANY
Africus 1st Johannesburg Biennial: Memory and Geography
Exhibition / Installation,
1995
Group Exhibit, South Africa
4th Biennial
Exhibition / Installation,
1995
Group Exhibit, Istanbul, Turkey
Felix in Exile
Film / TV,
1994
Felix in Exile
Exhibition / Installation,
1994
Solo Exhibit, Goodman Gallery,Johannesburg, South Africa
45th Biennale Venice
Exhibition / Installation,
1993
Group Exhibit, Italy
Ruth Bloom Gallery
Exhibition / Installation,
1993
Solo Exhibit, Los Angeles, USA
Woyzeck on the Highveld
Production / Performance,
1992
WITH THE HANDPUPPET SPRING COMPANY
Drawings for Projection
Exhibition / Installation,
1992
Solo Exhibit, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa + Vanessa Devereux Gallery, London, Great Britain
Mine
Film / TV,
1991
Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old
Film / TV,
1991
Five Gouache Collage
Exhibition / Installation,
1991
Solo Exhibit, Heads Newtown Galleries, Johannesburg, South Africa
Monument
Film / TV,
1990
Art from South Africa
Exhibition / Installation,
1990
Group Exhibit, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Great Britain
William Kentridge: Drawings and Graphics
Exhibition / Installation,
1990
Solo Exhibit, Cassirer Fine Art, Johannesburg, South Africa
Johannesburg, 2nd Great City After Paris
Film / TV,
1989
Responsible Hedonism
Exhibition / Installation,
1989
Solo Exhibit, Vanessa Devereux Gallery, London, Great Britain
Cassirer Fine Art
Exhibition / Installation,
1988
Solo Exhibit, Johannesburg, South Africa
Hogarth in Johannesburg
Exhibition / Installation,
1987
Group Exhibit, touring nationally, South Africa
In the Heart of the Beast
Exhibition / Installation,
1987
Solo Exhibit, Vanessa Devereux Gallery, London, Great Britain
Cassirer Fine Art
Exhibition / Installation,
1986
Solo Exhibit, Johannesburg, South Africa
South African Arts Association
Exhibition / Installation,
1986
Solo Exhibition, Pretoria, South Africa
Cassirer Fine Art
Exhibition / Installation,
1985
Solo Exhibit, Johannesburg, South Africa
Domestic Scenes
Exhibition / Installation,
1981
Solo Exhibit, The Market Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Projects
This artist took part in the following project(s) organized/funded by the culturebase.net partner institutions.
