William

Kentridge

Wants

to

Starve

the

Algorithm:

The

artist’s

genius

stems

in

part

from

his

radical

willingness

to

let

the

studio

be

a

safe

place

for

stupidity.

Trying to describe what William Kentridge does is like describing our constantly changing weather or the color blue. One resorts to comparison, like blue is the color of the sky or the March temperature felt like last August’s, and we’re none the wiser. Kentridge is an artist, yes. He makes puppets and opera. He is a performance artist and interviews himself. He is an animator and an excellent draftsman. He lectures convincingly in gibberish, and a marching band plays in his studio. His materials are mostly charcoal and India ink. He uses rulers and cameras, makes scurrying rats out of paper that dart across his work table, constructs paper vases and pots that he rearranges on the shelf like a Morandi painting. He’s a filmmaker and a printmaker. He works alone; he has assistants. He is constantly improvising.

Kentridge doesn’t start with an idea, plan or storyboard. The gesture tells him what to do next—the sweep of charcoal across a blank page, for instance, becomes a body in motion. Movement provokes the next action into endless associations. He dramatizes the process so that the viewer can watch his mind in the act of creation. He shows us how his mind works: fluid, flexible, florid and unique. His images are not fixed but march into the next and the next, seemingly without end. For instance, a woman turning into a tree, “… is a metamorphosis and always comes at a crisis point—a way to earn transformation.”