CBC : World-renowned South African artist William Kentridge on his wide-ranging, politically engaged work

William Kentridge is a South African visual artist and filmmaker. (Norbert Miguletz)

When he was three, he wanted to be an elephant. When he was 15, he wanted to be an opera conductor. But William Kentridge followed a different path altogether — to become one of the most celebrated visual artists working today. From charcoal drawings and sculptures to immersive videos, theatre and opera productions, his work engages with politics and memory.

Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955. His parents, the children of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, were both prominent anti-apartheid lawyers, raising him with a political awareness that infuses his work in all its forms. His powerful black-and-white drawings and inventive animated films and works for the stage reflect the crimes of apartheid and colonialism, but also the potential for transformation and joy.

Kentridge's major exhibition last fall at London's Royal Academy was hailed as "enthralling." His current retrospective at L.A.'s Broad Museum has been described simply as "extraordinary." One of Kentridge's most recent projects is a series of films about his life in the studio, called "Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot." It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.

Kentridge spoke to Eleanor Wachtel from the studio adjacent to his house in Johannesburg.

A still image from William Kentridge's film series Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot. (Kentridge Studios)

The simplest materials

"Charcoal is a very basic material; it's a burnt piece of wood.

"The charcoal is this dusting of carbon on the surface of the paper, and you can adjust it very easily. It's a very soft material, so you can wipe off the drawing you've done with a cloth — or with an eraser, if you want to use an eraser. You can adjust it as quickly as you can think.

"The idea of an image having the potential to change is important. The mark you make is provisional. Here is the mark on the sheet of paper. Are we not happy with it? Let's change it. Let's see what it can become. In that sense, any thought or any sequence of thoughts is possible. What it makes possible is understanding the world more as process than as fact.

You start with a blank sheet of paper, and by the time the drawing is finished, there is a statement.- William Kentridge

"When you're making the drawing, the process of making the drawing, the activity of making the drawing, is the process of discovering what the drawing is. You start with a blank sheet of paper, and by the time the drawing is finished, there is a statement."

A still from South African artist William Kentridge's film series about his life in the studio called Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot. (Kentridge Studios)

Questioning the status quo

"In terms of most of the other boys in school — and remember, this was South Africa in the 1960s, this was an all-boys, all white school, modelling itself on an English public school — for most of them there was no questioning of the status quo. So it was an anomaly to be in a family where the given was the injustice and the anomaly of South Africa in the world of nations.

How could it not have stood out to me every day when I was there all those times before?- William Kentridge

"It felt like an extraordinary thing — how one naturalizes the circumstances that one is in. So that for many years you would go to a public swimming pool and swim there, and only the week after, or two days after, suddenly they said, 'Oh, swimming pools would not be segregated.' And suddenly Black children were swimming in the same pools. How could it not have stood out to me every day when I was there all those times before?

"It's not something to be proud of, but it's a condition of how I absorbed the world around me."

For the record

"Later on when I was at university, and even before then, I would go to listen to some of the cases my father was involved with. I particularly remember the Steve Biko inquest, which was when I was just finishing university and studying at an art school. I was aware that this was kind of remarkable. In retrospect, now, all these years later, I think, 'My God, why wasn't I in the courtroom every day of those spectacular cases?' But I certainly had a sense of them and of their importance.

"It was a bit like knowing your father's an actor and then seeing him on stage and the court is his audience. But I think what made him so good at it was that the rage and the indignation were so deeply felt. It wasn't a performance of indignation — or it was a performance of indignation on the back of real indignation.

Those performances and arguments and cross examinations in courts are still strongly remembered. Both as examples of what a lawyer can do, and of the circumstances and history of those years.- William Kentridge

"It was for the benefit of the record of the case that was being made — knowing that this would be kept as a record. Both of what he was saying, but also of the terrible things that the other side would be saying, or that the judge or magistrate might be saying.

"And in fact, it has been the case that those were remembered. Those performances and arguments and cross examinations in courts are still strongly remembered. Both as examples of what a lawyer can do, and of the circumstances and history of those years."

A still image from William Kentridge's film series Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot shows Kentridge standing beside himself offering critique. (Kentridge Studios)

Alter egos

"I think I wanted to show the split of the self inside the studio. Part of you is watching the other person being dissatisfied with yourself as the artist when you're the critic, when you're the viewer watching it. Partly to make external the internal dialogues and arguments one does have. To show the processes of what happens in the studio, and that's an internal one, but through the process of filming double, it's possible to make it an external one.

"That's what artists and studios do, make things which are normally invisible, palpable and visible.

That's what artists and studios do, make things which are normally invisible, palpable and visible.- William Kentridge

"Yes, there is the self, but the other self is not identical. So you may put your hands in your pocket, but your mirror reflection might say, well, I choose not to put my hands in my pockets. So it was an elaboration, another way of showing the split. And then, how can one play? How does this game of being doubled and quadrupled in the mirror continue? What are the variations that can play through?

Unusual self-portraits

A charcoal drawing of a coffee pot by South African visual artist William Kentridge. (Kentridge Studios)

"I don't know what the coffee pot represents, but there's something in them. The way that they look like a woman in a skirt, the way it spreads out at the bottom and the way the mouth, the lid, can open as if it's a voice shouting.

"There are anthropomorphic elements there that call to me — it's almost a puppet, as well as a coffee pot. The different facets catch light in different ways, so it has different degrees of grey and black tonality in it.

"And then it becomes like a character in Commedia dell'arte — that's there in the studio as a possibility of an image to perform many different roles and many different things.

This coffee pot is an image which just comes through a lot, and one could say that it's a kind of self-portrait without ever thinking of it as a self-portrait.- William Kentridge

"The books you read are a way of describing who you are, they become a kind of self-portrait. Over the years, all the drawings you've done as an artist are another way of describing who you are, so they become a self-portrait in a third-person way.

"This coffee pot is an image which just comes through a lot, and one could say that it's a kind of self-portrait without ever thinking of it as a self-portrait. It's interesting if I think of it as self-portrait because it's a very feminine object. So I think I'm happy to have a feminine self-portrait as one element of who I am."

Holding on to memories

"I'm now at an age of 67 where I suddenly can't remember someone's name and I think, 'Oh, there we go, there goes the memory. This is the first step. It's going to start rolling down the hill faster and faster. Hang on to it while I can.'

"Yes, it has a personal element, as well as the question of when is memory too much and when is it not enough? There are people who are stuck reliving a traumatic event forever.

In general, I'm in favour of memory rather than amnesia. There are a lot of people who say, politically, the only hope for countries that have gone through civil wars is to have a massive national amnesia for at least two generations.- William Kentridge

"In general, I'm in favour of memory rather than amnesia. There are a lot of people who say, politically, the only hope for countries that have gone through civil wars is to have a massive national amnesia for at least two generations.

"So only now in Spain are they starting to talk about the civil war as a public conversation, because it's been too painful until now, many people have said. Some theorists say that was a necessary amnesia, others say no. Having that amnesia means you just never discussed it and you haven't dealt with it and the traumas just continues, it's kicked down the road.

In South Africa, where we spoke about what had happened under apartheid as soon as apartheid ended, it seemed to me a better way of dealing with it."

William Kentridge's comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Article published on https://www.cbc.ca

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