William Kentridge

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge is a South African artist whose acclaimed charcoal drawings, animations, video installations, shadow plays, mechanical puppets, tapestries, sculptures, live performance pieces, and operas have made him one of the most dynamic and exciting contemporary artists working today.

Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—William Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal  home experiences to public subjects often framed in otherwise narrowly defined terms. Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he contronts and displays political events into powerful poetic allegories. He photographs his charcoal drawings and paper collages over time, recording scenes as they evolve. Working without a script or storyboard, he plots out each animated film, preserving every addition and erasure, creating optical illusions with anamorphic projection to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.

 While Kentridge’s youthful notion of becoming a conductor was never fully realized, music has always played an important role in his art. In 2005, he both directed Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2007) and created Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005), a combination of miniature mechanized puppetry, animated films, kinetic sculptures, and drawings set to various pieces of music, including some from The Magic Flute. 

I like his choice of music for the film above, it reminds me of 1930s Jazzy films. Kentdridge was recently awarded with a Kyoto award for Arts and Philosophy, being the first Africian recipent for Japans presetigious award for global achievement. He was given the award to signify his outstanding work for insights into and reflections on human nature in his art. The award honours 'signifant contributions to the betterment of humankind'.