Have you ever been to an exhibition that leaves you overwhelmed, speechless, and in awe, and still processing the magnitude of it all?
That was me when I saw William Kentridge’s exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in August 2024. I was overwhelmed with emotions until I forgot to eat lunch that day. Different exhibition evokes different perspectives and feelings; I can process them quickly due to my training in visual culture. However, it has been six months since the exhibition, and I am constantly revisiting his works. I was unsure if I should approach it reflectively or dive into the analysis of his works. In the end, I decided to write this reflectively to confront my emotions about his works so that I could analyse his works objectively in the future.
I want to highlight the artist’s biography before writing about my experiences. The reading of the artist’s biography is essential as it gives context to the artwork.
Context means “the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.”
With this definition, we need to understand the time period, the locality, the influences (local or international), experiences and education in understanding any artworks. For example, if I look into William Kentridge’s works, I should not interpret them solely through my Malaysian lens. I should interpret them based on South African history because his artworks are a socio-commentary about South Africa. Therfore, reading his biography recognises that every artist who creates puts themselves into anything they produce, not only through the arts but also in other fields.
William Kentridge’s background
I took this photo about his background from the museum catalogue.
Click on the thumbnail to read his biography.
Professor Clingman mentioned in his keynote that Kentridge is of Jewish descent, and he did not really understand Hebrew, yet anti-apartheid, but working with the black South Africans. His education was Anglo-colonial, and growing up, he was also surrounded by African languages that he did not understand. His parents are apartheid lawyers in South Africa — Professor Stephen Clingman mentioned that Kentridge could have been a lawyer like his parents.
William Kentridge infused his background and many influences into his artworks. His artworks were influenced by Honore Daummier, Francisco De Goya, and William Hogarth. I did a quick reading on Honore Daummier, Francisco De Goya, and William Hogarth revealed that they have something in common: they create artworks as a form of social commentaries. Professor Clingman also highlighted that Kentridge was drawn to forms of art that merged the political with the formally inventive, especially from the Soviet artists in the 1920s, German expressionism in the 1930s and the Neue Sachlichkeit. In summary, German Expressionism focused on “the artist’s inner feelings or ideas over replicating reality, and was characterised by simplified shapes, bright colours and gestural marks or brushstrokes” and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) started in Germany in the 1920s in response to Expressionism. As indicated by its name, this movement emphasized the a return to “a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.”
There is a lot to read, but these will give an idea of how someone will be inspired by different artworks and interpreted them as inspiration to their artworks.
Artist Appreciation
(During my visit, I found out that Taipei Fine Arts Museum did not put the artwork labels next to some of the artworks. They do have the artwork labels through a Google drive document, but it was difficult to map out the labels based on the layout of the artworks in the museum. For this reason, I may inaccurately tag some artworks. Please contact me if you have found any inaccuracies).
Technical details
One of the things that caught my attention was his strong technical art skills. While there are many talented self-taught artists, there is something about his strokes and figure drawings that were similar to academic art. My instinct about him trained in fine arts was correct. If you read the biography earlier, he studied Fine Arts at the Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–1978) and the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Generally people who studied in fine art school learns the structure and technical aspects of drawing, and also the theoretical aspects which contributes to the practical aspect which makes their artworks stand out. There are exceptions to the case which self-taught artists can achieve that level of technicality, and that makes art so unexpected sometimes.
The short snippet of the video shows of the how the artist use the red lines as the structure, while he fills it in with charcoal and did a stop motion with it. For more detailed visuals, visit here.
The other aspect that reveals his formal art training is that he used a lot of sketchy red outlines in charcoal drawings. Using red pencils as outlines is a common sketching technique in animation and art. Sketching with red pencils is to actually give a guide before inking in black. The downside of doing it in black is that the outlines can appear too dark. If done in red pencils, those markings can be erased easily. I have use this method for most of my sketches and it is very helpful. After sketching in red pencils, I either inked them in black or painted over them. Most of the time, the red lines are less noticeable, especially after scanning the final artwork.
I wondered why he used more charcoal, as every artist has their rationale for using any medium. I read this interesting point from his website:
“When I started at art school, I used to do oil paintings, and I still make ‘Sunday paintings’. But oil painting is always, in some sense, trying to get an effect, something that looks like a nice picture. Drawing is a very different process. The speed of putting the marks down, the fact that they are dry yet changeable, and that you can alter the as quickly as you can think (you don’t have to wait for the paint to dry and then scrape it off), gives the work an immediacy. Also, I’m insecure about colour: I don’t trust my taste.”
Based on this statement, every artist has weaknesses in a particular art style or medium. At the end of the day, we need to think how can we create to convey our message. What is our voice in the world?
Despite his admission about his insecurity in colours, he has more colourful artwork, which is evident in some of his animations and projections.
Animations
Short snippets of De Como Não Fui Ministro D’Estado. For full videos, you can search on Youtube.
His animations are more varied. He has some stop-motion with charcoal drawings, but some are also mixed media. I noticed he likes using the book’s pages in many videos, and the motif of pages is repeated his videos such as Sibyl (as shown below). I am unsure if those old books are superimposed, but that felt like a story. Most things are written and also superimposed on images to create complexities and layers, which is often the case in history, especially with one with a diverse identity.
He approaches his artworks through interdisciplinary approaches.This is evident in his earlier artworks at the exhibition entrance. At the beginning of the exhibition, I was exposed to charcoal artwork, which was flat, but then it kept building up to charcoal drawings, animation, sculptures etc towards the middle and the end of the exhibition. Professor Clingman mentioned in his keynote that William Kentridge used erasure and redrawing for projections. He adds or alter an outline, photograph the changes, which all the changes makes up the animated films.
Short snippets of Sibyl. For full videos, you can check out his website or search on Youtube.
Sibyl is one of the more colourful videos I have observed during the exhibition. He departs from the use of charcoal and combined different elements in Sibyl. Based on my quick research on Kentridge’s website and YouTube, Sibyl was originally an opera and theatre piece involving performers. However, I only saw the video for Sibyl in Taipei. Imagine there were performers together with this video; I think I would be spellbound to see visuals and performances at the same time.
Why am I drawn to his works?
Despite being in different parts of the world, I felt an emotional connection to it because Malaysia was once colonised by the British. Besides that, I used postcolonialism as a framework to analyse my artworks for my dissertation, and I had to understand what postcolonialism is and its consequences. One of the consequences was the divide and rule practised by the British, creating class separation among the different ethnicities. While not entirely the same, apartheid, where racial segregation is defined by the law in South Africa.
As his bio highlights his art influences, the visuals are more straightforward than other art styles despite being layered and nuanced. This helps people understand the message faster than something abstract, in which people cannot make out the shapes unless they are trained in visual analysis. I may not understand the depth of the South Africa history but because of the clarity of the visuals, I can understand and do further research about South Africa’s history and politics.
I also learned how to combine our weaknesses and strengths to create something. While Kentridge has a vast body of work, he realised he preferred charcoal due to his insecurity with colours when he started. I am also drawn by the variety of his works beyond charcoal. The longer someone has an art career, the more the artist will push the boundaries of art. Perhaps in William Kentridge’s case, as Professor Clingman mentioned, his limitations and background became the space where he did his work.
Professor Clingman explained that William Kentridge inhabit the space in between different types of boundaries, and he work in between spaces to create works. Find out more (the timestamp already included in the link).
Conclusion
There is a saying that writing is thinking. Unfortunately, it has been very hard to process my thoughts about Kentridge’s exhibition because each section of his exhibition is very complex, layered and nuanced. There were days that I felt that I had reached my limits for thinking. This post aims to share my experiences in observing his artworks without analysis. If I add analysis, I will never finish this post. Also, I believe more in agile than the waterfall method, which means I can iterate my writing as I go along.
Despite the struggle, I am still interested in his works. Moving forward, I will break down his works so it is easier for me to examine them.
References
Cambridge Dictionary. “Context.” Accessed January 25, 2025. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/context.
Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn. “READING ROOM: William Kentridge.” Kentridge Studio, n.d. https://www.kentridge.studio/william-kentridge-2/.
MoMA. “New Objectivity.” Accessed February 11, 2025. https://www.moma.org/s/ge/curated_ge/styles/new_objectivity.html.
O’Toole, Sean. “William Kentridge’s Life, Art, and Studio.” Royal Academy, November 1, 2022. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ra-magazine-william-kentridge.
Taipei Fine Arts Museum. “北美館｜「威廉．肯特里奇」開幕座談 Opening Program of William Kentridge｜專題演講 Keynote Speech.” YouTube, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA5r4NL8DQ0.
Tate Gallery. “German Expressionism.” Accessed February 11, 2025. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/german-expressionism.
Wainwright, Lisa S. “William Kentridge: South African Artist and Filmmaker.” Britannica, n.d. https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Kentridge.
