Art Must-Sees this Summer: William Kentridge, Five Themes

William Kentridge: Five Themes, a traveling exhibition stopping into the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth showcases the artist's work for the past 2+ decades. The show includes multiple small screens of his famous films, with accompanying pieces ranging from drawings and prints, to sculptures and books. It is an art show exploring the essential development and dominant themes of Kentridge’s oeuvre.

Kentridge's work draws on his interest in theater, utilizing its archetypes as a way of presenting the conflicting issues he himself has had as a South African Jewish man who witnessed the realities of the apartheid. His films are pieces that explore the two faces of oppression. Kentridge’s working method, in which he draws in charcoal each image on a single piece of paper, then photographs each image frame by frame, reflects on the issues of oppression and conflict present in all societies. Wherein even though the oppression may be legally absent, the scars of history remain; a metaphor inherently present in his process as each image that is erased to make room for a new image leaves a visual ghost behind. One cannot ignore that as a Jewish man he is also sensitive to his own history of oppression, and the questions that arise from the paradox of economically successful Jews thriving on the oppression of others, as in Apartheid.

I myself am particularly interested in this issue as part of my family is of Lithuanian Jewish decent and retreated to South Africa before the war, when the Russian military did eventually enter their former town, all of the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered. This genocide scenario may be different from the issues in Africa, but it is not so far from the issues of oppression, ownership and prosperity, so prevalent in the mining industry and corporate powers reliant on the natural resources of the African continent. These issues are universal, and simply living in an ‘enlightened’ country such as the United States does not make one any less participatory in ethical dilemmas of conscience. Kentridge’s perspective is one of the complex nature regarding the burden of action and inaction.

The review for this work from the Dallas News by Gaile Robinson was not flattering. Unfortunately, the writer did not have the insight to comprehend the strength of Kentridge’s aesthetic. His view is that the ‘best part of a Kentridge film: [is] watching the artist's hands at work’ a typical suggestion from someone conveniently ignoring the issue. In a city who’s own segregation and conflict of race and economic segregation is very much alive, it was disappointing to see such a perspective with Robinson expressing irritation at the lack of convenience offered, due to the length each film, and the museum bench being ‘uncomfortable.’ Seems somewhat appropriate when the theme is the conflict of ignoring the status quo of oppression, a subject anything but comfortable for the majority of us ‘white folk.’

This travelling exhibition was curated by Mark Rosenthal of the SF MoMA and will be travelling to the MoMA in February 2010, William Kentridge: Five Themes will be on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth until Sept. 27, 2009.

This is the second installment of the five Must-Sees for the Summer 2009, as the season approaches an end.