The South African artist William Kentridge (he’s based in Johannesburg) has impressed many of us as a major figure in the art world at least since he was given a grand exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the summer and early fall of 2002. Of course, calling him an “artist” doesn’t quite do him justice, for Kentridge is not only an animator, an illustrator, and a sculptor, but he works fluently in film, theater, tapestry and opera. Apologies, then, if I’ve left out one or two other mediums.
This new documentary, a product of Art21 and PBS, focuses by and large on the opera “The Nose,” which was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich and is based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol. It has a surrealist twist (a bureaucrat’s noggin bids him adieu and heads off to climb up the social ladder) which clearly appealed to Kentridge, just as other artists in other fields – from Peter Greenaway and Franco Zeffirelli to David Hockney and Werner Herzog – have been unable to resist becoming involved with opera. In the present instance, “The Nose” received several performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
When the Kentridge exhibition was shown at LACMA, several of his short animated films were on view, but the catalogue for the show could not really convey how effective they are. That’s one thing that’s useful about “Anything’s Possible.” We are given clips from some of the works as well as scenes with Kentridge at the drawing board, so to speak.
There is one brief segment, a sequence from “Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old” (1991), in which an imploded building – no doubt demolished for something newer but less attractive – collapses upon itself. There is that sense of the bleak, of decay and change, which complements some of Kentridge’s other perennial concerns, be they (racial) conflict or forced migration, or the devastation of the landscape and, always, an overriding sense of alienation.
The way Kentridge works is by making a drawing in chalk or charcoal, filming one frame, erasing parts of the drawing or making additions, filming this, with the changes, that is, the rubbing out, always faintly visible like pentimenti as the film advances. The work has a slightly “crude” look to it, but that of course is its character, even trademark. They are distinctive, unique, and memorable.
William Kentridge: Anything is Possible is both an introduction, a supplement to monographs about the artist, and a companion piece for any collection of his short films. ER
