William Kentridge: Three Early Drawings

  • In 1980, when he made these three drawings, William Kentridge was 25 years old and still uncertain of the direction...

    William Kentridge circa 1987

    © Image courtesy Kentridge Studio

    In 1980, when he made these three drawings, William Kentridge was 25 years old and still uncertain of the direction his life would take. He had already decided against what he called the “obvious” choice of following his illustrious parents, Sydney and Felicia Kentridge, and his pioneering grandmother, Irene Geffen, the first female lawyer in South Africa, into the law, choosing instead “the very unnatural and hard thing to do”, “being an artist”. But for Kentridge at this time (and, of course, later) “being an artist” was a complex identity. He was described in a review in 1983 as “Johannesburg set designer and theatre ‘omni-person’” in recognition that he not only designed sets, workshopped productions with colleagues in the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, acted in the plays, directed some of them, and made visual promotional material, like posters, for all of them. Moreover, before 1980 he had made several short films. And, following his studies at the Johannesburg Art Foundation under Bill Ainslie between 1976 and 1978, he taught etching at the Foundation for two years. And he was making art.

  • But, in the same way that the Junction Avenue Theatre Company was not conventional theatre – in workshopping productions and...
    Sir Sydney and Lady Felicia Kentridge

    © Image courtesy South African Jewish Museum Archives

    But, in the same way that the Junction Avenue Theatre Company was not conventional theatre – in workshopping productions and performing them in uncommercial venues and community halls around Johannesburg and Durban, Kentridge’s early art exhibitions were staged in what would have been called ‘anti-establishment’ galleries and the work itself was decidedly uncommercial. For his first solo exhibition, in November 1979, at the Market Gallery, Johannesburg, Kentridge chose around 30 monoprints “of figures in dark courtyards, similar to a prison exercise yard” and a handful of pencil drawings on paper. And, on his second solo exhibition at the Market in February 1981, he showed 40 ‘Domestic Scenes’ etchings in hard ground aquatint, soft ground and dry point; 8 untitled drawings in black floor polish on canvas; and a few pencil drawings on paper including the three present drawings. Soon after this exhibition, Kentridge went to Paris for two years to study mime and theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq.

  • Conspicuous by their absence from these lists are oil paintings or any other use of colour. Kentridge has only rarely...

    Irene Geffen

    © Image courtesy South African Jewish Museum Archives

    Conspicuous by their absence from these lists are oil paintings or any other use of colour. Kentridge has only rarely used the oil medium because, for him, it seemed to be “always, in some sense, trying to get an effect, something that looks like a nice picture”. Drawing, on the other hand, encourages searching and, with that, the sense of immediacy. On these principles, Kentridge would soon discover his signature medium, charcoal. But there are no charcoal drawings in his first two exhibitions.

     

    The image of Kentridge’s later charcoal works tends to overshadow the delicacy of these early pencil drawings: they obviously lack the strong mark of the charcoal drawings and the provisional quality that makes them so arresting. The pencil drawings seem tentative, rather than provisional, as if the artist is questioning his right to express himself rather than boldly testing his relationship with the world. But the drawings were done at a time when the pendulum of Kentridge’s early career was swinging against visual art and firmly towards theatrical practice. Moreover, the most familiar form of visual expression at this time, in his own work and in his teaching, was the delicate wiry line of dry point etching. Emulating this style in pencil could hardly capture a robust physicality or strong emotion. The subjects of Kentridge’s three drawings reflect the refined nature of his medium.

  • William Kentridge, A Formal Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist, 1980
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    • A Formal Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist, signed and dated 17 November 1980, seems to capture Kentridge’s uncertainty at this point in his career. The embossed mark of Irene Geffen’s Notary stamp recalls the possibility of his pursuing a career in law but everything else in the drawing revolves around conflicting definitions of art. The drawing is a mock-heroic self-portrait with the artist seated in the left centre, his body facing the front while he turns his head and shoulders to the right in the direction of the voluminous curtains such as were used in formal portraits in the Baroque era. Other indications of the European tradition of grand-style portraiture are the table on the left with a classical urn containing flowers (possibly arum lilies); and, in the right centre near a fragment of classical architecture, a study of a hand like those made by Renaissance artists seeking the appropriate grand gesture for their subjects.

    • All these details are summarised in the inscription at the bottom right centre, 'A Formal Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist'. There is no confirmation from the time that this was the actual title of the drawing but, with no other evidence available it certainly seems captures its purpose. The inscription, of course, is an inversion of the title of James Joyce’s first novel, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ except that Kentridge has introduced the word ‘Formal’ seemingly to capture both the grand-style aspects of his drawing – and the pretensions of his claims to be an artist. Kentridge had worked with an imagined historical Joyce in the Junction Avenue Theatre’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties in November 1978. While preparing to go to Paris, he must have felt some identification with Joyce’s hero Stephen Dedalus, self-evidently a projection of the author, who at the end of the novel finally leaves Dublin for Paris to devote himself to art.

  • William Kentridge, Untitled (Three figure studies)
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    • The list of drawings shown at Kentridge's second Market Gallery exhibition may or may not be complete and may even be not entirely reliable. Thus the drawing listed as 'Seated Man Being served by a Standing Companion' might relate to the 'Formal Portrait' discussed above, despite the omission of the second figure of the title. But 'Lunch in the Garden' aptly describes the third drawing of the present group to which we will turn in a moment. However, it would be a stretch to connect the undated drawing of three nudes to either the 'Birth of Venus' (which had also been shown on the first Market Gallery exhibition) or 'A White Annunciation 1' or 'Woman and Lamp', or 'A Circus'. But these titles do seem to connect Kentridge's project at this time with European Art History which is certainly reflected in the style of the 'Three Nudes'.

    • In 1980, the nude was decidedly out of favour in the South African academy and so Kentridge's use of it is significant. His composition recalls the design of Renaissance 'Judgement(s) of Paris' or 'The Three Graces' and the style of the three figures suggests reference to artists such as Titian or Rubens. But, as in the 'Formal Portrait', this tradition seems to be invoked only to be parodied: the precise central placement of the principal woman's buttocks constitutes an improbable punctum that precludes any possible moral purpose; and the detail of the man on the right scratching his buttocks transforms the heroic potential of Renaissance history painting from the sublime to the ridiculous. On the eve of his departure for Paris, Kentridge clearly had a deeply ambivalent relationship with European Art History.

  • William Kentridge, Lunch in the Garden, 1980
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    • Lunch in the Garden, signed and dated 27 November 1980, also connects with the European tradition recalling in both title and feel the ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbe’ of Giorgione and Manet, and the ‘Fetes Champetres’ of Watteau and others. The drawing is inscribed ‘8 Junction Avenue’ which Kentridge, in a personal communication, confirmed was the address of a student commune where he stayed with his wife Anne Stanwix - and the rest of the Theatre Company - for a time before leaving for Paris. The commune comprised a series of cottages around a shared garden. Bill Ainslie is reported to have encouraged his students at the Johannesburg Art Foundation to draw in their gardens.

    • The drawing features a palm tree; a colonnade with a table set for lunch; a rockery; various figures relaxing; a garden tap; and the commune’s dog (‘Doggie’), sleeping – altogether a veritable suburban ‘Fete Champetre’. But the changes in scale, and of viewpoint, between these discreet incidents determine that Kentridge has composed this scene, not with conventional Renaissance perspective, but with what he described later as the “completely arbitrary and changeable” nature of filmic space, an experience he had learned in the few films he made before 1980. “The freedom that came from being able to play with space” was to underpin all his subsequent ‘Drawings for Projection’ – in fact his entire narrative output.

  • Available Works

  • Words by Prof. Michael Godby

     

    References:

    Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge, Brussels: Societes des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Brussels, 1998.

    Email communication from William Kentridge and Anne McIlleron, 31 May 2024.

    Email communication from Steven Sack, 18 June 2024. Steven Sack was a founder member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company and resident at the Park Town commune.

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