Notes

William Kentridge’s rich multidisciplinary practice includes printmaking, drawing, painting, photography, audiovisual multimedia, animation, sculpture, tapestry, large scale installation as well as theatre and opera direction. The simultaneous nature of his artistic practice generates a cross-pollinating relationship between works where one medium informs another. Kentridge describes his printmaking process as a way of ‘thinking out loud’. His prints often inform and inspire his later drawings and his theatrical productions and vice versa. This is key to creating the running narrative and aesthetic style that is unmistakably Kentridge’s.

Kentridge draws on myth and literature as well as personal experience for subject matter, besides his political themes. In the tradition of Synthetic Cubism Kentridge often uses text to create nuances in the meaning of his works. He uses puns and word-play to contradict the political content with wit and humour. Kentridge's work Errors (Eros) in School/Predispositions towards Error, consists of two disordered pages from a book on human development. The title of the chapter has two ‘R’s crossed out in red conté which creates a double entendre that reads ‘Eros’, referring to the Greek god of love and desire, instead of ‘Errors’. Two nude figures, a man – possibly a Kentridge self-portrait – and a woman, have been printed on the book pages in black ink, preventing the viewer from reading the full text. 

The man steps forward and reaches towards the woman. He seems to be holding something in the fingers of his outstretched hand. The woman has no arms and her legs seem to be cut off mid-thigh, deeming her helpless and without agency. The figures are framed by a rectangle suggesting that the man is an artist in front of an easel, sketching a female subject.

A red line is drawn through the middle of the two figures, linking the encircled words ‘Baconian Idols’ on one side of the composition to ‘Australian Burgundy’ on the other. The first refers to the Elizabethan English philosopher Francis Bacon’s theory on the ‘Four Idols on the Mind’, the foundation of the scientific method. But it also brings to mind the artist Francis Bacon, another double entendre. The combination of figures and text creates a playful and contrasting dance of meaning for the viewer to enjoy.

Kentridge investigates the nature of perception in a self-reflexive and poetic way. The genius of his work lies in his ability to give the viewer the opportunity to explore and ruminate over the human condition. This print asks questions on gender dynamics; on the tension between love and logic; on the relationship between an artist and his sitter and on the male gaze in art.

Jessica Goldring