Born in 1955 in Johannesburg South Africa, William Kentridge is a socially and politically engaged artist, particularly in the South African culture, regarding the issues during white supremacy and the condition of apartheid. (See http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-kentridge-2680 )
His works are often seen as animations based on charcoal drawings which have been filmed, frame by frame, and adjusted and adapted between each photograph take. The style has been suggested as a palimpsest (or manuscript like), collection of works to develop a story or narrative. On first glance they suggest simple narratives and, whilst they appear naive in some ways, they are in fact deep reflections on South African politics.
Caroline Christoph Bakargiev has written a book about William Kentridge following her curatorship of the dOCUMENTA exhibitions, and for Societé des Expositions du Palais de Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1998, who suggests a number of points such as 'his observations are a type of peripheral artwork on culture, in that they are out of the mainstream from the West' as they reflect the culture in South Africa, but they are also a "shiny and glossy magazine style". In an interview with Caroline during dOCUMENTA 13, he explained in exhibitions that he feels that the work he does, 'justifies his existence'.
"I believe in the indeterminancy of drawing, - the contingent way that images arrive in the work, - lays some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are and how we operate in the world" William Kentridge, 2010, retrieved from;- (see http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/williamkentridge/flash/ retrieved 09/2/2015 for interview with Museum of Modern Art, New York).In 1989 he exhibited the first of his animated film pieces, entitled "Johanesburg, 2nd greatest city after Paris", which is a number of works of fiction created about Johanesburg, with his unique black-and-white charcoal drawing style and includes portraits of his alter ego characters, those being "Soho Eckstein, property developer extraordinaire" and the character "Felix Titlebaum" who takes the role of the antithesis of Soho, (as an alter ego perhaps more closely attuned to William Kentridge himself). The animated series then runs on through Monument (1990), Mine (1991), Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (1991), Felix in Exile(1994), History of the Main Complaint (1996), Weighing and Wanting (1998), and Stereoscope (1999), up to Tide Table (2003) and Other Faces, 2011. (Reference; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kentridge, retrieved on 9th February 2015, and in turn based on an exhibition statement; "William Kentridge - May 6 - June 18, 2011 - Marian Goodman Gallery", Mariangoodman.com. originally retrieved 1 March 2014.
(See also http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kentridge-felix-in-exile-t07479 )
It is likely that much of his influence has come from many of his own experiences of living in South Africa and in Johannesburg in particular. The artist is from a wealthy intellectual family background whose own father (Sidney Kentridge), was a High Court judge, whom was also involved in the decision-making during the trials of the Sharpeville Massacre. That must of had an effect on William, as the Sharpeville Massacre was a turning point in the history of South Africa. His mother was also a lawyer, and both parents were strongly supportive of the impoverished black indigenous people who had been continually persecuted under the apartheid regimes.
Whilst he thinks or tries to think politically about the situation in his own country, his animations are not a specific documentary of an event as such. They are certainly influenced by events in S.A. but it's important to point out that they are not an accurate portrayal of any situation that may have happened in that country's history. What he does, is to almost make a romantic image of situations, which is particularly poignant in the film "Monument" and this feeling appears again somewhat in the film "Mine" which also features the alter ego characters of Soho and Felix.
Kentridge refers to his works as "Stone Age animation" as unlike the professionally produced, graphically accurate films that come out from Hollywood ( - where there is a small army of artists and animators and directors together with the supporting cast to make such films), Kentridge creates his animations completely on his own. It does this simply by affixing a sheet of paper, stuck on the wall, with a camera about 5 metres away from the drawing. He makes the simple charcoal drawing and then takes one or two pictures or 'frames', then he returns to the drawing, erases a very small part of the charcoal line, re-adjusts the movement or motion within the drawing, and then goes back to the camera to start the cycle again. Overall there may be up to 20 drawings in a film, but the erased and adapted charcoal drawings on their own may be modified very many times, with each frame that is taken, perhaps running into thousands of recorded frames overall.
Whilst the work is a metaphor for much of the commentary that is going on in South Africa, and whilst it is not a direct documentary of specific events, it does take all its ideas and notions from social, societal and political life around what is happening at a cultural level in South Africa.
Kentridge trained as a theatre director initially, and then as an actor. He exhibited at the documenta 13 exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and the only change that he has made to his process is to use a digital capture format, rather than the original cellulose film formats through a handheld video of perhaps 35mm or 16mm film. As this medium is no longer readily available all his animations are now digital, and are usually available to view on YouTube and Vimeo.
(For an example of his process and methods, see the San Francisco MOMA interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_UphwAfjhk - Retrieved 9/2/2015)
A number of other works by William Kentridge might be "How we make sense of the world" available on the Huffington Post website, (the Louisiana channel), together with another works; "What will come, has already come" 2007.
( See reference; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G11wOmxoJ6U for Luisiana channel, retrived 9/2/2015)
Dr Rowley commented on how Kentridge has failed in so many fields as part of his career progression, - which he readily admits this himself, as he has been an actor, a theatre director and a painter etc., but ultimately his total honesty for his work as an artist and animator comes through clearly.
An alternative example of Kentridge's works, not based on the charcoal format, might be "the failure of time" a film made in 2012. This is an alternative to the usual drawings that he does, and in this film he appears to be walking over and over a set of chairs. This is repeated, as in a loop. This takes its style which is also black-and-white, from the early types of cinema emerging at the end of the 1890s and beginning of the 20th-century. At this time, there were two cinematic styles emerging, i.e. when 'cinema' was first invented. The first style was of the documentary type and came from the inventors of cinematic films, the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis.
(See reference site; http://www.earlycinema.com/pioneers/lumiere_bio.html retrieved 9/2/2015)
The other type was a black-and-white staged theatre animation style created by George Méliès, (Born Maries Georges Jean Méliès, 1861-1938 ), an example of this would be the animation of the man in the moon which many people can recall.
(See reference site: http://www.earlycinema.com/pioneers/melies_bio.html retrieved 9/2/2015)
It is interesting, in that whilst William Kentridge is going back to the style of early cinema, (and this is also referred to the fact that he called his work "Stone-Age"), in a way he's combining both of the old styles and his observations on life in South Africa with particular reference to the truth and reconciliation process, which was to bring both sides; the rich white elite and the poverty stricken blacks, together. His own processes of his own work which is to combine black and white through charcoal on paper manifests itself clearly here, a style of documentary type observation as content which is of his own making and pure imagination, he calls them "fairy-tales" as mentioned, as a kind of documentary style, but these are not documenting any specific events for himself. In a way therefore he's combining both the Lumiere 'documentary' style and Méliès's staged theatre animation together with black and white, as in the destruction of the apartheid system of South Africa.
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