William Kentridge

African Arts, Summer, 2002 by Laurie Ann Farrell

New Museum of Contemporary Art New York, New York June 2-September 16, 2001

Only thirteen years ago, William Kentridge had difficulty persuading New York art galleries to look at slides of his work. Today he is perhaps the most internationally celebrated South African artist, and in the last few years has received considerable exposure and acclaim in the United States.

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, Kentridge trained in the fine arts at the University of the Witwatersrand while earning a degree in politics and African studies. He went on to study mime and theater for two years at L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and briefly worked in the film industry. This background, combined with the influence of a politically active family, a desire to work in media not known for major statements, and a personal sensitivity to social injustice in South Africa, sheds light on Kentridge's works on paper, films, and theatrical collaborations.

Several years ago Neal Benezra, then Deputy Director and Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, Staci Boris, Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Dan Cameron, Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, separately approached Kentridge about doing a major exhibition in the United States. The artist suggested that the three work collaboratively. The result is an impressive retrospective survey, presently touring major American museums, that includes eleven animated films, recordings of theater productions, two film installations, line drawings, and more than seventy graphic works, all of them highly complex, nuanced, and self-referential.

I first saw this exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (February 28-May 13, 2001), and then several times at the New Museum. The New York adaptation began with Shadow Procession (1999), a seven-minute film of paper cut-out figures marching to music by the Johannesburg street musician Alfred Makgalemele. Casting shadows across the highly reflective floor that one had to cross to enter the exhibition, the film created a liminal space between the street entry and the galleries. The procession appeared to consist of refugees or displaced workers and composite figures of trees and humans. Ubu, a character in many of Kentridge's works, made a brief appearance. These figures marched along, carrying their belongings to a new place.

Turning the corner into a small room, the visitor encountered examples of Kentridge's earlier works on paper: eight etchings from the Hogarth in Johannesburg series (1986-87) and three other graphic works. The next space included several series of drawings from Kentridge's first eight films, all of which screened continuously in one large room in the back of the gallery.

One of these films, History of the Main Complaint (1996), made its international debut at Documenta X in 1997. It shows Soho Eckstein lying comatose in a hospital bed. Soho is one of Kentridge's recurring characters, a greedy capitalist who built his empire during the apartheid era. In the film Soho has nightmares in which he witnesses a man being beaten in the street and a figure stepping in front of his moving car. Soho's imagining himself to be the driver of the car can be read as an admission of his guilt for participating in the capitalistic gains of apartheid. Yet, when Soho looks in his rearview mirror, the viewer sees the eyes of his melancholic alter ego, Felix Teitlebaum, who also has a recurring role in Kentridge's films. Felix is usually shown naked, sitting in the middle of an open field, "listening to the world" through huge megaphones and headphones. As the reflective artist, he is the counterpart of the active, all-consuming Soho.

Kentridge has stated that he himself is the model for Felix, and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for that character's actions. The artist has acknowledged on many occasions that Soho Eckstein descends, in part, from George Grosz's portrayals based on the German Weimar bourgeoisie. The business suits seen in Max Beckman's drawings greatly influenced his conceptualization of this character as well. After Kentridge developed Soho Eckstein, he recognized Soho's similarity to a photograph of his own paternal grandfather, and by extension, an older version of himself. This film suggests that Soho's dream is a reflection of the character's hidden fears and desires--a dream that other whites (including Kentridge himself) must also share.

Kentridge uses neither storyboards nor scripts for his films, preferring to work on impulse and whim. Stereoscope (1999), which also screened in this space, includes an eclectic collection of images and ideas: trams, the notion of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky that electromagnetic charges generated by petting black cats can electrify a city, archival photos of the Johannesburg cityscape, and found images of a switchboard. Kentridge employs stereoscopic technology, using side-by-side images that one looks at with each eye but reads as one image, to bridge gaps between what we see and what we know. Here he fuses the physical characteristics of Soho Eckstein (forever in his pin-striped suit) with the pensive, withdrawn characteristics of Felix Teitlebaum (who again appears naked, in a contemplative state). Borrowing characteristics of Mayakovsky's poet in The Tragedy, Soho is the "scapegoat/martyr who assumes the burden of the world's suffering" (Lynne Cooke, William Kentridge [exhibition catalogue], p. 52). Set to music composed by Philip Miller, Stereoscope raises issues of accountability, signaled in part by the appearance of the words "give" and "forgive" at the end of the film.