William Kentridge: What We See & What We Know |
Events |
Written by In the document |
Published: October 07 2009 |
Thinking About History While Walking, and Thus the Drawings Began to Move…Drawing for Felix in Exile [Felix's room/Nandi with telescope] (1994); drawing (charcoal and pastel on paper) coll. the artist copy right(c) the artist William Kentridge (b. 1955 in South Africa, based in Johannesburg) began creating his signature ‘drawings in motion’ in the late 1980s. These animated works are created through the laborious process of photographing charcoal-and-pastel drawings with a 35mm motion picture camera, adding new marks and erasures frame by frame to make the drawings ‘move.’ As a continuous record of ceaselessly changing drawings, marks that could not be erased completely are left behind as the animation progresses. These indelible marks contribute a stately air to his expression that could be described as the accumulation of time itself. Kentridge’s works are deeply affected by the history and contemporary social circumstances of South Africa, and his series of films entitled 9 Drawings for Projection, imbued with the pain inflicted by his country’s history of apartheid, have drawn a great deal of attention from all over the world—beginning with such exhibitions as the Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 or Documenta X in 1997—as an artistic expression/practice of anti-Eurocentric postcolonial criticism. However, a closer reading shows that, beyond their sociopolitical appearances, Kentridge’s works have consistently been engaged in the verification and storytelling of the universal and primordial issues faced by humans in the modern age: the good intentions and the collapse of an individual in his or her resistance to the status quo; the ambiguity of protection and oppression; the effort to reintegrate one’s fragmented self and the impossibility of doing so; and so on. The artist’s persistent use of the simple technique that he himself has called “stone-age filmmaking” could also be understood as a result of his intent to seek the origins of modern narrative creation, or to uncover the pathology of colonialism from within the Enlightenment as he travels back through history. His unsophisticated animation technique stands in direct opposition to the contemporary mainstream of sophisticated cel and computer-generated animation. The extremely original and powerful expression of his works, however, demonstrate that old-fashioned hand-drawn animation on paper still holds an enormous potential as an expressive medium, and his works have influenced younger generations of artists since the early 1990s. William Kentridge is one of the most closely watched artists in the world, with a large-scale international exhibition that opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in March 2009, subsequently traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Texas), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Albertina (Vienna), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). The Japanese exhibition—Kentridge’s first solo exhibition in the country—is the result of three years of close work between the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and the artist himself. 19 film works (including 4 film installations), 36 drawings, and 63 prints will be exhibited, covering the full scope of Kentridge’s artistic activities, from the 9 Drawings for Projection (1989–2003), a representative body of work that is centered on the history of South Africa, to I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), his latest work based on the Shostakovich opera The Nose. * The text provided by The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. |
Last Updated on September 04 2009 |
This is the long-awaited first solo exhibition of William Kentridge. He creates drawn animations using time-lapse photos which are taken while partially revising drawings made using charcoal and pastel paints. It is a “history” worth celebrating to hold this solo exhibition in that recent years his creations have made a strong impression through many group exhibitions. Indeed, we can recognize the history, politics and social circumstances of the South African Republic through his animations since they were created based on the fact that he was born in the country. Nonetheless, in his drawn animations created by editing deliberately and adding postproduction using music, there are images which can never be accomplished using state-of-the-art technology, which makes it impossible for us to keep our eyes off them. These unsophisticated moving images included in his creations enchant us today when we are flooded with videos and animations. All the films presented in this exhibition are worth seeing. Therefore, I recommend you experience them personally, and allow sufficient time to do so. Next year, this exhibition will be held at The National Museum of Art, Tokyo and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. Nevertheless, for now, I suggest we should rush to The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto to enjoy this exhibition, which has been prepared meticulously over three years in cooperation with the artist. (Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)