William Kentridge is a South African animator known for his animated drawings. He uses a technique where he draws in charcoal, erases parts of it, and adds more charcoal, photographing the progression to create animations. This represents how history can never be fully erased. One of his works, Stereoscope, explores this process and issues of how reality has different points of view. It features his characters Felix and Soho, who started as representations of different political ideologies but Kentridge came to see as different sides of the same person.

1. William Kentridge – animator of drawings
South African

He is white & Jewish –

becomes the model for his
character Felix
His parents were politically active during Apartheid times so
he was raised to be aware of inequalities in power and
possessions

‘Stereoscope’ is one of his
animated drawings 
 issue of New Media … is
drawing really ‘Art’?
Shows 2 views – our brain
interprets these as one.
This means that reality has 
different points of view
A ‘stereoscope’

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kentridge
http://www.youtube.com/embed/c6Y5hiIGrUY
No Longer available due to a copyright claim by the Marian
Goodman Gallery! (Watch on our server)
There is re-mix using it with strange music.
Point about New Media as a valued and valid art work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeUu-pTNaK8
Meditation on Stereoscope by Philip Hartigan
http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/kentridge.htm

3.  He uses blue to represent lines of
communication – both pleasant and
unpleasant. e.g. water connecting
people

 Also the line of a bullet Colour
moving to kill
 symbolism
i.e. its
meaning
Music? Minor key = plaintive;
haunting; mourning; unresolved;
Discordant combinations of notes.
Music is normally not part of art.
Kentridge:
“But I think there are other people who do say that the films
are about space between the political world and the personal,
and the extent to which politics does or does not find its way
into the private realm.”


4. Felix Felix is the natural man – naked
– has nothing, not even clothes

Soho is the suited capitalist –
rich – has everything
A political duality!

Soho
Also a personal duality!
“I understood Soho and Felix much
more as two different sides of one
character rather than two different
characters.”
homepage.mac.com/.../tonekentridge.html
All drawings from Stereoscope
(Artthrob)

5. Materials & Technique
 Kentridge draws in charcoal, erases it,then adds more charcoal

 He photographs this activity as it progresses 
 This says that history can never be erased – the past is always
visible and recorded
Issues of ‘New Media’

 This is a new way of working
with drawings
- not like traditional animation

technique where 1 drawing = 1
frame

 He also works intuitively - no
fixed story plan – this is very
different to traditional film-
making

6. EXTRA Lilian Tone says of Stereoscope:
Kentridge says of Stereoscope: “Somehow the stereoscope here works
as a surrogate for the camera.
“I wanted a sense of transience, of a city
It is like the X-ray, the M.R.I., the cat
bustling, telegraph wires and power
scan, other instruments that have
stations.
appeared in your films, which represent
Early on I knew that it would involve lines different ways of seeing, different
of communication, telephone switchboards. ways to represent and understand the
The idea of the stereoscope, of the double world.”
room, came quite a lot later.” homepage.mac.com/.../tonekentridge.html
homepage.mac.com/.../tonekentridge.html

7. EXTRA
Lilian Tone:
When you first told me about your ideas for Stereoscope, you
were not sure if you would be using your usual characters, or any
characters, but later somehow Soho made his way into the film.
How have the characters of Felix Teitlebaum and Soho Eckstein
evolved over the past ten years?
Kentridge:
Initially I would always conceive Soho as an other, as an alien,
very much based on images of greedy industrialists from Russian
and early Futurist propaganda drawings, of George Grosz and
German Expressionism. But after a few films I understood that in
many ways he looked like my paternal grandfather, and in fact
years ago I had made some drawings of my grandfather in his suit
on the beach that looked just like Soho. This made me understand
that maybe he was not as far from me as I had anticipated.
homepage.mac.com/.../tonekentridge.html