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Lot Essay
South African artist William Kentridge's approach to animation is a unique and labor intensive process. It involves fusing many altered and erased charcoal drawings into one continuous film. For each film (all under ten minutes), Kentridge produces approximately twenty drawings. Drawings then become part of the process of the creation of film and what remains are the visible traces of the artist's technique, the addition and subtraction of lines and forms to the drawings themselves. It is difficult to decipher in Kentridge's work whether the artist is drawing a film, or developing a film out of a drawing.
Kentridge created Felix in Exile in 1994 as the fifth in the series of films based on two characters, Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. "Felix in Exile was made at the time just before the first general election in South Africa, and questioned the way in which the people who had died on the journey to this new dispensation would be remembered--using the landscape as a metaphor for the process of remembering or forgetting." (William Kentridge in C. Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge, Paris 1998, p. 90)
History of the Main Complaint is the sixth film in the same series. "It was made shortly after the establishment, in April 1996, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a series of public hearings into abuses of human rights and perpetrated during the apartheid period. These hearings, in which individuals told their personal stories, were held in order to retrieve lost histories, to make reparation to those who had suffered, to provide amnesty, and to create a general context for a new post-colonial and post-apartheid era of national reconciliation. The underlying theme of History of the Main Complaint is Soho's personal recognition of responsibility." (C. Christov-Barkargiev, William Kentridge, Brussels 1998, p. 110)
Although Kentridge's films, prints, drawings and theatre productions make reference to various political and social situations, it would be a misinterpretation of the artist's oeuvre to categorize his work as solely politically and socially motivated. "While it does share with classic agitprop art an immediacy, emotional urgency and accessibility, it targets no particular person, class or regime as much as the broader, erosive power of forgetting, the phenomenon of "disremembering"." (Leah Ollman, Art in America, January 1999, p. 71)
Kentridge created Felix in Exile in 1994 as the fifth in the series of films based on two characters, Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. "Felix in Exile was made at the time just before the first general election in South Africa, and questioned the way in which the people who had died on the journey to this new dispensation would be remembered--using the landscape as a metaphor for the process of remembering or forgetting." (William Kentridge in C. Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge, Paris 1998, p. 90)
History of the Main Complaint is the sixth film in the same series. "It was made shortly after the establishment, in April 1996, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a series of public hearings into abuses of human rights and perpetrated during the apartheid period. These hearings, in which individuals told their personal stories, were held in order to retrieve lost histories, to make reparation to those who had suffered, to provide amnesty, and to create a general context for a new post-colonial and post-apartheid era of national reconciliation. The underlying theme of History of the Main Complaint is Soho's personal recognition of responsibility." (C. Christov-Barkargiev, William Kentridge, Brussels 1998, p. 110)
Although Kentridge's films, prints, drawings and theatre productions make reference to various political and social situations, it would be a misinterpretation of the artist's oeuvre to categorize his work as solely politically and socially motivated. "While it does share with classic agitprop art an immediacy, emotional urgency and accessibility, it targets no particular person, class or regime as much as the broader, erosive power of forgetting, the phenomenon of "disremembering"." (Leah Ollman, Art in America, January 1999, p. 71)