The
2005 Venice Biennale: William Kentridge
and the Limbo of Contemporary Art
51th International
Art Exhibition
William Kentridge and the Limbo of Contemporary
Art
June 12-November 6 2005
Venice, Giardini and Arsenale and other
venues
Reviewed by Simone Osthoff
Curated for the first time by two women,
the 2005 Venice Biennale was structured
around Maria de Corral exhibit "The
Experience of Art", located in the
Italian Pavilion at the Giardini gardens
(showcasing forty-two artists), and Rosa
Martinez’s exhibition "Always
a Little Further" at the Arsenale
(showcasing 49 artists). The Biennale
also included many artists selected and
exhibited by fifty-five National pavilions,
of which, about half were located at the
Giardini, while the other half spread
throughout the city. Thus a visit to the
Biennale can range from a pleasant stroll
through the park to a multi-day physical
and visual marathon if viewers are interested
in seeing all the artists in, at least,
the two main exhibition spaces.
Corral’s exhibition title "The
Experience of Art" echoed the 1960s/70s–an
era when artists challenged the notion
of art as commodity through the physical
dematerialization of their works by emphasizing
experiences, performances, and concepts.
Since the 1960s, the question "Is
art finally dead?" has often been
raised, but the idea of art as action
or art as idea did not, of course, produce
the end of art. Immaterial art, in fact,
created its own alternative commodity
market, in which the left over of performances,
proposals, and scores became the art’s
byproducts commercialized along with the
artists themselves. Today the market of
contemporary art continues to flourish
as the number of exhibition venues, publications,
curators, art critics, art programs, as
well as the number of international biennials
and other mega-shows increases. In a recent
interview, veteran conceptual artist Daniel
Buren observed that, "the proliferation
of contemporary art museums today is a
kind of technical revolution that may
actually be as significant for artmaking
as the invention of oil paint." (1)
And yet, despite the growth of the art
system, art looks increasingly similar
everywhere in a globalized uniformity
that has been accompanied by a general
crisis of art criticism worldwide. (2)
Could it be, then, that art since the
1970s has been neither dead nor alive,
but dwelling in critical limbo? From time
immemorial the space between life and
death, visible and invisible realms has
been the domain of shamans, priests, magicians,
and artists who connected high and low
dimensions of life often raising the question
of transcendence. The mediation between
these dimensions, through the process
of drawing and film, is the subject of
William Kentridge’s installation
displayed on four walls of a large room
as part of the exhibition "The Experience
of Art" in which Coral highlights
the relation among artists of different
generations. Kentridge’s installation
had two titles: Day for Night and Seven
Fragments for Georges Méliès,
2003; and Journey to the Moon,
2003; all filmed in 16 mm and 35 mm and
projected in loop on DVD. The nine short
films were screened in different sizes–two
very large projections occupied almost
a full wall each, while the other walls
had smaller dyptic and tryptic projections
that formed closely connected narratives.
The titles refer to the early film visionary
Georges Méliès, whose original
Journey to the Moon was made in
1902.
Méliès (1861-1938) was a
pioneer of sci-fi film and creator of
fantastic cinematic effects out of his
late 19th century experience
with vaudeville, magic tricks, and the
shadow projections of lantern shows. As
a filmmaker–and also writer, director,
actor, set designer, and distributor–Méliès
created wild narratives made specifically
for the screen and no longer possible
for the stage. He employed stop motion
and dissolves in the camera, orchestrating
cinematic rhythm with both editing and
carefully choreographed acts paving the
way for a range of filmmakers from Jean
Cocteau and Jacques Tati to Disney, Busby
Berkeley, and George Lucas. Kentridge’s
homage to his genius underlies the connection
between drawing, performance, and filmmaking,
as well as between magic and early sci-fi
special effects at the onset of the silent
cinema.
A veteran of international biennials and
solo shows, Kentridge–born in 1955
in Johannesburg–is African by birth
and European-Jewish by descent. He became
internationally known in the 1990s with
his drawn animations, which share with
Méliès an interdisciplinary
sensibility rooted in theater and in the
special effects of puppetry (Kentridge
studied mime and theater in Paris in 1981-82).
In the 1990 decade, he structured his
short animations around two fictional
alter egos who both resembled himself–Felix
Teitlebaum, the constant nude and melancholic
character; and Soho Eckstein, the pin-stripped-suit
greedy industrialist. Based on the artist’s
experience of the South African apartheid
and its aftermath, those stories address
abuses and human suffering in terms of
memory and consciousness, from both a
local and a timeless human perspective.
And even though those images were rendered
in charcoal and in black and white, they
are marked by the gray nuances of history,
literalized by the shadow marks, smudges,
and ghosts lines left on the paper surface
after the artists photographs each scene
in stop motion, then erases and makes
incremental adjustments to the images,
which are created one frame at a time,
without the help of assistants.
Contrasting to his 1990s animations, the
2003 short films at the Biennale employ
the artist himself as the central actor
and performer in his studio. Dressed in
his traditional slacks and well-ironed
long sleeves light colored shirts, Kentridge
creates poetic and humorous vignettes
focusing on the self-reflective nature
of art. We see him drawing and "erasing"
on paper with charcoal, ink, and paper
cutouts. We see him pacing in the studio,
reading, daydreaming, and moving objects
around– coffee cups, pen and brush,
rags, charcoal sticks, erasers, paper,
books, newspapers, chairs, tables, collage
papers on walls, ladders. His narratives
are at the same time comic, witty, and
romantic: after drawing a nude woman (who
is visible to him only in his drawings),
the artist looks at the moon outside his
studio window longing for his muse, while
we see her following and shadowing him
all along. Kentridge continuously plays
with additive and reductive processes,
which, like the rabbit produced out of
the magician’s hat, are manipulations
of space and time, simple cinematic tricks,
appearing/disappearing acts, often accomplished
with the simple change in the projection
speed and direction. Through these media
manipulations the artist defies gravity
and produces uncanny visible/invisible
juxtapositions, and thus, with uncomplicated
tricks and prosaic subject matter, raises
the question of transcendence.
Kentridge’s recent films reflect
on visibility’s own limitations while
rejecting the idea of transparency and
direct access to experience. By combining
the languages of drawing and film, this
talented draftsman becomes art’s
trickster. Underlying philosophical connections
between presence and absence in signifying
processes, Kentridge draws from a long
tradition of artists which includes Dante,
Bosch, and Cervantes, who before Méliès,
located art in the limbo between life
and death, material and immaterial dimensions.
Kentridge’s visual quest for meaning
and signification offers viewers some
of the best moments of the "Experience
of Art" making us forget, for a while,
the intense heat of the Venetian summer,
as well as the shortcomings of much contemporary
art showcased in this mega event.
(1) Tim Griffin, "In
Conversation: Daniel Buren & Olafur
Eliasson," Artforum, May 2005,
p. 210.
(2) James Elkins,
What Happened to Art Criticism,
Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago, 2003.
